The award-winning (not really) Pine Tar Rag!

When Saturday Night Live tried to spoof the appearance of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and the boys before Congress they had a hard time finding a way to be more absurd or funnier than the real thing. That’s for two reasons. First, the real thing was pretty absurd and almost tragically funny, and second, Saturday Night Live hasn’t been funny for years.

One thing they nailed, however was Sammy Sosa’s virtuoso performance as the Dominican shoe shine boy. Sammy, who can somehow understand every word spoken about him in English (especially if it has to do with how great he is) apparently forgot how to speak English for the hearing. How convienient.

SNL labeled the hearings as “see no evil, hear no evil” and Sammy as “speak no English.”

Most of the actual questioning went like this.

“Mr. Sosa, have you ever seen any players taking steroids or heard them talk about it?”
“Banana lampshade?”

“I want to start with Mr. Canseco and go down the table. What do you know about the current testing policy?”
Jose: “From what I hear it’s a joke.”
Sammy: “I no know, no?”

And on and on. But Sammy wasn’t even the most ludicrous guy on the panel.

What most people will remember about the hearings will be the pathetic fake crying, granny glasses wearing, “I’m not here to talk about the past” performance by Mark McGwire.

Mark claimed that he wouldn’t talk about the past because he might get some of his “friends in trouble.” So are we to believe that he’s clean, but half of his old A’s and Cardinals’ buddies were using?

No. He was just trying for any and all reasons why he couldn’t come right out and say he didn’t use steroids, when in fact, the only reason he couldn’t say it is because he didn’t want to room with Lil’ Kim for 15 years.

Your weekly reason to live

Cardinals’ announcer Wayne Hagin is busy trying to spin his way out of a mess of his own making. On Saturday, Hagin told a local Missouri ESPN radio affiliate (regular listening audience…nine) “I’m going to say something that is the absolute truth, and he will be mad at me for saying it if it gets out, but Todd Helton, a tremendously gifted baseball player, he tried it. I know he tried it because Don Baylor told me. He said to me, ‘I told him to get off the juice, that he was a player who didn’t need that, get off it. It made him into a robot at first base defensively, and may have altered his swing.’ He got off it, but he is not unlike so many athletes who have tried it because they wanted to get into that level playing field.”

Hagin has since said that he was referring to “supplements, creatine, not steroids.”

Sure.

And he said that even though he said “juiced” that there was “no way I would have said Todd was on steroids.”

Hagin is a former Colorado Rockies announcer and so you figure that he’s got a pool of goodwill that he can go to and get Helton to forgive him, right?

Not so fast.

Helton was quoted on Sunday in the Denver Post as saying, “I am not going down without a fight if someone talks bad about me and lies about me. I don’t care if it was an accident or not. I am forever linked to it.”

He told ESPN Radio (the national one, with actual listeners) the he is seriously considering suing Hagin.

OK, so this will blow over, right? I mean, it’s obvious that Hagin was just shooting his mouth off one time on a podunk radio show and it’s been blown all out of proportion. Helton will cool off and this will all go away. Right?

Uh…well, maybe not.

In a column Monday, Denver Post writer Mark Kiszla wrote that Hagin told the Denver Post’s Mike Klis, “Don Baylor told me he suspected Todd Helton of experimenting with steroids.”

Oops. Better lawyer up there, Mr. Hagin.

Your weekly reason to put your head in the oven

Former Cubs’ catcher Gabor Paul Bako II probably thought his job was in jeopardy when the Dodgers traded worthless Japanese pitcher Kaz Ishii to the Mets for mostly worthless Mets’ catcher Jason Phillips. Bako, a career .239 hitter is coming off a season with the Cubs in which he hit .203 with surprising power for him (one homer), but was only hitting 2-11 (.182) at the time of the trade.

Bako’s competition? Dave Ross who is now 0-17 on the spring. Wow. How is that even possible? Bako, sensing a challenge, has two hits in his last four at bats and is now hitting a robust .267. You might want to make a note of that before your fantasy draft.

Now, the Dodgers are planning on starting Phillips, using Gabor as the backup backstop and sending Dave Ross out to the desert with a shovel and Hee Seop Choi.

Spit it out!

“It’s a sad day, it really is. It signifies a couple of things, too, that this team is going in a different direction. I think hopefully a winning one.” — Mets’ catcher Mike Piazza on the release of longtime Mets’ mascot Joe McEwing.

And finally…(mock applause fills the Internet)

As you know, Desipio’s media empire never ceases to…uh…exist…and so we’re proud to announce, that like ESPN we’re getting into the TV drama business! That’s right, we’re in the process of creating our first scripted drama…or is it a comedy? It’s probably a farce. It’s called “The Front Office” and it details the daily happenings of the front office of a baseball team, in Chicago, with a baby bear for a mascot.

Stay tuned to DesipioTV, channel 1206 on the DirecTV Para Todos dish for its premiere.

Oh, and we’ll be publishing the scripts here at Desipio.