By Bryce Ashland

I’ll start with the cold, hard, very-quickly-scanned-for-verification facts: Pete Rose is the only person alive that is banned from baseball for life.

His ban is one of the most tired, played-out, talked about baseball arguments of multiple generations of the sport’s biggest fans. The questions are many.

By Kjunstorm from Laguna Niguel, CA, US., via Wikimedia Commons

Should he be banned? If the ban was lifted, should he be allowed to go up for voting into the Hall of Fame? Mark McGwire isn’t banned, but with recent Hall voting, it’s unlikely he’ll ever see the inside of Cooperstown except if guided by a docent.

Would it hurt baseball if the ban was lifted and Pete got into the Hall?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I can opine all I want.

Here’s the way I see it.  Mr. Rose was a legend on the field, but after the ban, the only title he has held is Baddest Guy Who Used-to-be in Baseball.  The Worst of the Worst.  Mr. Blacklist.  And what does that get him?  A nice coat?  A bronze bust?  No.  It gets him publicity.  Almost unlimited publicity.  Sure, it’s usually negative, but “any publicity is good publicity,” says the wise old… publicist.

“So what,” you say.  You’d rather be in the Hall, I know.  But does Peter Rose really want to be in the Hall?  Of that, I’m not so sure.

Pete is our resident expert in cheating at baseball (though he didn’t actually cheat).  And in this day and age there is a lot of cheating in baseball with all of the PED shennanigans.

Whenever anyone gets suspended or is suspected of PEDs, the media looks for a sound bite, but the guys who have experience in the PED scandal are all mum about the whole thing. They’re hoping not to draw any more attention to themselves in hopes that everyone will forget and they can get into the Hall at some point.

So the press goes to Pete Rose.  He doesn’t hesitate to talk. Rose seems to be taking any and all interviewers.  He’s throwing out gems like, “I picked the wrong vice.” An inappropriate comment, but honest nonetheless.

I mean, he DIDN’T cheat.  He didn’t affect the outcome of games.  And the players these days ARE cheating and ARE affecting games.  And they are getting suspensions.  Pete got banned.

But I digress.  The point is, Pete loves the attention.  He’s obviously a self-centered person.  When asked about his thoughts on the other guys getting suspended, he makes a comment about himself.

Would anyone want to talk to Pete Rose if he hadn’t been banned?  No.  Would anyone want to talk to Pete Rose if he had been reinstated?  No.  And who would Pete Rose be if he was in the Hall?  He would be just another old guy in a museum of baseball players.  One of many.  Normal.  And that is the last thing Pete Rose wants to be.

Oh, he’s still the greatest hitter of all time (though there’s a current player still out there taking aim at that title), but when would anyone want to talk to Pete if that was all he was?  Whenever someone got close to his hits record?  How often does THAT happen?  Considering the guy in second place died 52 years ago, it obviously doesn’t happen often.

If Pete was just another guy in the Hall, he’d be a nobody compared to what he is now.  As much as Pete goes on the press circuit and writes books and says he’s sorry and wants to be reinstated, deep down inside, I think he hopes this charade goes on and on and on.

I, for one, am getting tired of it.  And I think the best thing for everyone is to ban Pete from being banned.  Take away his status.  Reinstate the guy, and induct him as fast as humanly possible.

Bryce Ashland is a long-time friend of fansmanship. He lives in Orange County, CA with his wife and three children. He is almost as fast as Owen.

From the anti-sports dungeon, succumb in stacks of notes, I’m running rampant in my mind’s eye, just to scope a look at a few sports highlights.

It has been a solid week since I’ve had a chance to really take in and swallow the world around me. I’ve been trampled with a traveler’s bug–unlike the type you scratch on a wayfarer, freewheeling Euro-trip — tugging behind a roller suitcase filled with foul, unfolded laundry in the pits of what Cheech calls Al-Laye.

Yes I said foul. And no, I won’t take back the roller-suitcase. I’m 31-years old and fighting tennis elbow without even playing tennis, so give me some grace. Sheesh.  And as for the Cheech reference, if you don’t know who he is I suspect you grew up in a Monastery conducting a dozen Hail Marys for drinking one-too-many cokes.

Jest and non-jest aside, I’ve noticed a few things this last week that might mean something to both our sport-opinions and our everyday lives. Here goes….

Barry Bonds is a Hall of Famer

And not just a Hall of Famer, but get this…he’ll be a first ballot Hall of Famer. When you hit 764 home runs over the span of a career that consisted of more MVP awards than anyone in league history, you’re due your day in the sun.  It’s true, I like Barry Bonds as much as I do the idea of a colonoscopy. He stinks. But opine aside, the man is one of the three greatest hitters of all time, blessed with a bat speed unparalleled by any of his generation–with or without the juice. Which means…

If the door is opened to acceptance of the juice, so follows Sammy Sosa.

Sammy’s popularity is equivalent to his fading skin color. He’s been cursed with the Michael Jackson disease. But, if we open the door to Bonds, how can we not do the same for a man who, alongside Big Mac in 1998, reignited the great pastime with a record-breaking home run chase for the ages? His 608 home runs rank him 8th all-time, and the man is a legend in his own right.

But get this, Clemens will be excluded.

I know it sounds shady and two-sided, but Roger Clemens pissed off more purists, than either Bonds or Sosa. His unbelievable denial of a drug he popped straight from the hip, to the elbow, down into the jugular vein, will not now, and never will be pardoned by a makeshift conclusion at a ridiculous Federal court hearing. He has turned himself into nothing more than another Pete Rose.

They should let most of these guys in. Especially Pete Rose. By Kjunstorm from Laguna Niguel, CA, US. Color-corrected, cropped and red eye removed by Daniel Case 2008-07-16 (Pete Rose) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A buddy of mine told me that two summers ago, he stood in a line at what seemed like a 5-by-7 baseball card shop, behind one overly large man wearing a Chris Sabo jersey, and two skin blotchy prostitutes, to get Rose’s autograph. For 50-bucks he walked out with a signed bat. Said Rose looked like hell, had a hollow grayness and smelled of Popov. Not even 4,000-plus hits all-time can save you from the purists’ guillotine. I still think Rose deserves the hall. So what if the man wagered against a game. He was like a switch-hitting Tony Gwynn blessed with an even softer, more fluid swing, and he played relentless and balls-out night in night out.

Which proves the disconnect between the Baby Boomer generation and ours, “ours” being ages-16 to 40.

How hypocritical to think our parents began a movement in the sixties more pornographic, pill popping, sexually explicit, than an uncut version of “Girls Gone Wild,” and yet despite this they want to preach moral stances on drugs, sex and rock n’ roll. The purists need to let it go with Lucy in the sky diamonds. She’s waiting. Because this generation has the right to judge and reinterpret the game for what it is today.  The era “we” were born into fostered PED’s and illegal sport wagering. That’s nothing like running naked in a psychedelic forest after bra-less gnomes. Embracing a moral relative stance on things, muddies the world around us, no doubt. Yet it allows for the right environment to induce all evolutionary phases of our lives.

With this, I propose a Generation X,Y,Z and Z1 rebellion via Facebook, Twitter and text-messaging.

Tweet complaints 2 @puristssuckballsanddie free Peter Rose; Post naty ill-infrmd fb mssags abt raunchy cheerldrs; Nd continue ths mssg by txt. “Lts strt a revolution btchs.”

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SsYVu1HkBA

Free Rose! Free Bonds! Free Sosa! Free Clemens! Free Palmeiro! But don’t ever let A-Rod in. Don’t even think about it. Even I have a moral code, and A-Rod is definitely the antithesis to it.

Lance Armstrong giving a talk in 2007 – Photo by Cpl. William Howard, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division via commons.wikimedia.org

“A forger of lies is a physician of no value.” – Job 13:4

Today, 1 in 4 children live in poverty.  They get ready for school and set out to dodge gang warfare — hungry ,but surviving. When they concede, they find a safety net in the gang life — lose sight of transcending their position and fall deeper into the life of drugs, prostitution and firearms.

Today, Lance Armstrong wakes up in his Malibu penthouse overlooking the sprite of sunshine bursting from the blue of the bikini spread waves. He’s wearing Prada and eating the best of organic food, fueling his suntanned physique. He’s safe and warm and full of wellness, having defeated cancer with a will unparalleled by many.

Seven-time Tour de France champion.

Billion-dollar Philanthropist.

King of the “Livestrong” bracelet, a national emblem of hope.

But he’s a liar.

And while I’m the first to practice the art of forgiveness, even I am losing my love in lieu of Lance’s other-Lance — the Lance who forced the members of his famed cycling team to dope if they wished to stay employed. And that just pisses me off.

If you ever saw the Denzel Washington-led film, American Gangster, you probably saw what a man of complexion looks like. Washington played the famed Frank Lucas — former cocaine kingpin of New York City — former inner city philanthropist, funding small businesses and turkey feeds. Lucas was a dicatator with a kind heart buried beneath brutality. He was a charitable-murderer.

Lance Armstrong is not a murderer. Don’t go that far. But he is a lying-philanthropist. And though he’s done great things — raised a billion dollars for cancer patients since 1998 — he is also the man who force-fed drugs down his employees’ mouths and covered over his lie with a blatant disrespect for his fans.

And now that his former employees are coming out one by one, admitting to Armstrong’s shady business, he stubbornly denies use of steroidal drugs. At least Lucas came clean. And though he lost an entire kingdom in the wake of his words of honesty, he relinquished, at least partly, the wrongs that swallowed his rights.

Armstrong is becoming the Pete Rose of cycling and that is just sad. Who would of thought a billion dollars would fade far into the background of such an abstract life-painting?

His seven championships and billion dollar project of hope mean less and less as the reports continue to come out. Because a man is measured by his integrity, not by words or his money, because everyone — whether wrong or right, holy or hateful —  will rot in a box in the bottom of the earth, so will Armstrong — billion dollars, good deeds and all.

Sorry–I am still drunk on exhiliration. March Madness=this peculiar look. A look like m’ gonna kill you, but I don’t got the balls to do so. Moorhead State beating you Mr. Pitino is enough to make the Louisville fans tar and feather you, with the school band backing the proceeding with a celebratory Dixieland rhythm. Seeing a snake like Rick Pitino curl up and freeze white as a ghost, was worth every bit of the unhealthy adrenaline shooting through my veins.

The selection committee today is a one man show: me. If you feel I left out a worthy opponent for the tournament then message me below. Just remember that we here at fansmanship.com are school grade friendly and will prosecute you if you speak crudely or in an unkind jest (lol).

Day One (Selection Monday @ 8:30 AM, Play-in Game @ 5:00 PM) 

Day Two (First eight to be played on fansmanship.com Thursday, March 24th, 2011)

Eight are: 2 v 15, 4 v 13, 6 v 11, 8 v 9

Day Three (Second eight to be played on fansmanship.com Friday, March 25th, 2011)

Eight are: 1 v 16, 3 v 14, 5 v 12, 7 v 10

Championship (Played on Monday, March 28th, 2011)

As today is selection Monday, Loco has been buried away in his study looking at sol: strength of laughter, cop: cheese of production, sp: staying power. Bear in mind that before I introduce the seeds 1 to 16, that I am humbled by this process and hope when it is all said and done, you will be inspired by the things you are about to witness.

Format: 1 v 16 will play winner of 8 v 9. 2 v 15 will play winner of 7 v 10. 3 v 14 will play winner of 6 v 11. 4 v 13 will play winner of 5 v 12.

Please remember to voice yourself on the thread below, because your opinions can help sway a commercial/song to victory in the tournament. This is your time to make a case for your favorites.

Argue over the Play-in Game today, as I will not pick a winner until 5:00 PM…

1. Chicago Bears Super Bowl Shuffle

2. Gatorade commercial: “If I could be like Mike.”

3. “Lil’ Penny” franchise

4.  Converse Commercial, “Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson”

5. Fu Schnikens, “What’s Up Doc?” (Can we rock), featuring Shaquille O’Neal

6. Gatorade Commercial: Michael Jordan vs. Himself.

7. Magic Johnson Slice Commercial.

8. MJ’s Nike, “Frozen Moment” Commercial

9. Bob Uecker Miller Lite Commercial from the 80’s

10. Mean Joe Green Coke Commercial, circa 1979.

11. Pete Rose, Aqua Velva Commercial.

12. George Brett 7 Up Commercial.

13. LeBron and Kobe Puppet Franchise.

14. LeBron James, “What Should I Do?” Commercial

15. Barkley vs. Godzilla Nike Commercial

Play in Round

Michael Jordan’s Awkward Hanes Commercial w/dad.

VS.

Larry Johnson “Grandma Ma Franchise.”

Vote on the thread below for the play-in winner and for your favorites in the tournament…