Free Manny Ramirez T-Shirts, for our hardcore Los Angeles Dodgers fans, courtesy WCBias.com.

Get Your Free Manny Ramirez T-Shirts Today! OK, so they’re not exactly “free,” but we couldn’t get Billy Mays to pitch these things and had to do something to get your attention …

You either love him or hate him, even more so now that Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez has been suspended 50 games for testing positive for a banned substance in the eyes of Major League Baseball.

If you still love Mann-Ram like we do, and want to show your support for the Dodgers left fielder, WCBias.com is here for you with our No. 99 Free Manny T-Shirts. Get them while they’re hot today! Or, if it’s a hat you’re looking for, we have FREE MANNY HATS, too.

Support Manny, the Dodgers, and the free content on WCBias.com, by picking up a few for your friends. Heck, get a pair of those Free Manny G-Strings for your moms on Mother’s Day. Nothing says I love you Mom like Free Manny Panties.

Nothing says devistating fire like a little crab dinner.

Sooooooooo, yeah.  Still goin’ strong my friends.  We’ve got a packed living room these days, the GF’s mom is here AND we’ve got J who, thanks to his recently conferred PhD., will be known as The Good Doctor from here on out.  We’re enjoying the Dodgers first inning outburst (thank you, Matt Kemp) and watching J’s condo burn on KEYT.  Again, I feel like I’m not going to work tomorrow but since that bit me in the ass today I’m not taking anything for granted.

One of the people I feel the worst for here is the GF’s mom–she’s been to California once before and never been to Santa Barbara, she comes out and immediately gets exposed to this mess.  Oh well, I guess  black lung and a night on the couch is getting off pretty lightly in this mishmash.

I almost put $50 on the Nattys to win tonight–I was thinking that with Manny out the Dodgers would be demoralized and drop one tonight but so far so good, Wolf’s pounding the zone and when you get staked to a 5-run lead after one all that you need to do is throw strikes to a team like Washington.  Enough about that though, back to the rock.

Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games. In the meantime, he'll be joining the circus.

Driving home from work today I noticed a yellow tent on the side of the road.

No joke, there’s some ghetto-ass circus that came to town a couple days ago.

And that circus reminded me of a post I wrote a few months back when Manny Ramirez came to La-La-Land, and how I said Manny was bringing a circus with him after all the drama that went down in Beantown.

While Manny is a stud (I won’t vote him on to the WCBias.com All-Stær(oid) Team with the first ballot) and has been a blessing for the most part during his time in Los Angeles, today’s news of his 50-game suspension – for use of a banned substance – showed just how much of baggage can fit in a Range Rover.

But are you really surprised another one of the game’s legendary sluggers was on the juice?

I’ve been saying this for years. If MLB and the other major sports continue to turn a blind eye to testing for HGH, athletes are going to use it. And why not? There are plenty of reports out there that suggest HGH isn’t all that bad for you — so guys take these things like Tic-Tacs.

And it obviously hasn’t hurt guys like Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or Alex Rodgriguez’s pocketbooks. As long as there is millions of dollars on the table, athletes are going to abuse the system and take this stuff.

Especially if the leagues aren’t testing for it.

So the only way they’re going to get caught, is if something gets leaked, an unnamed source comes forward, or if someone gets fails a test for a drug that is testable and is related to the use of HGH or another performance enhancer that typically won’t be tested for (i.e. Manny getting hit for taking a female fertility drug that’s been known to help athletes testosterone levels following a ‘roids cycle). So Manny did the stuff in the offseason and got busted in spring training on his way back to real world.

And we all know this isn’t the last we’ve heard of performance enhancers.

This has become a traveling circus of its own. The circus came to New York a few weeks ago, starring A-Rod, and now it’s on its West Coast swing.
And are the NFL and NBA immune to this traveling road show. Not a chance.

It came to San Diego in 2006 when All-Pro linebacker Shawn Merriman was suspended for FOUR whopping games – and didn’t face nearly the criticism that Bonds has. And Bonds was never even suspended.

And you know it’s only a matter of time before somebody big gets nailed in the NBA.

It’s obvious guys are doing something to make themselves look Hulk-like, or Superman-like in the case of LeBron James or Dwight Howard.
Your body can’t humanly do the things some of these athletes are capable of doing: at their respective positions.

“But B$lim,” you say, “those guys have been huge since high school.”

So has A-Rod, and he’s reportedly been on the stuff since his prep days. So what makes you think LeBron and Co. haven’t messed around with HGH since an early age?

Guys can’t naturally do the things those guys do.

Shortstops shouldn’t hit 550+ home runs.

And centers shouldn’t be in dunk contests throwing down from the free-throw line.

I think John Smoltz summed it up best today when he said, “Sooner or later there will be enough wake-up calls.” That wake-up call would be the major leagues testing for HGH and all performance enhancers like the International Olympic Committee does with Olympic athletes.

But until the circus comes to town, we’ll just never know who the real freaks are and who just looks freakish thanks to the smoke and mirrors.

The downside, of course, is that Los Angeles has a pretty depleted farm system and you know they’re not going to part with any of the outfielders, Russ Mart, Hudson or any pitchers so what’s left to deal exactly?  I like James Loney as much as the rest of us but is there really a market for a first baseman with no power?  Nobody’s going to want Juan Pierre or Casey Blake you know.  Anyway, it’s still way to early to get serious about this but you know the front offices are thinking about it so we might as well too.

Barry Being Barry

Yesterday I had one of the worst fantasy days of all time.  My men (and I use that word “men” loosely) combined for 0 HRs and a sickening 36 ERA.  36!  Not even at my very, very worst in slowpitch softball have I ever even approached a 36.  The day started ugly with Kerry Wood getting his ass handed to him, snowballed with an atrocious performance by Fernando Rodney and then crapped the bed with Joel Hanrahan’s “what the hell just happened” 8th inning of muerte.

Normally those three things would be the worst things that I would read online in the course of any given day but THIS STORY probably takes yesterday’s cake.  The fantasy bullpen meltdown actually drove me away from sports for the evening, meaning the Dodger game was skipped in favor of downloading weepy guitar chords that I promptly clumsily butchered.  The real loss there was I didn’t get to see Barry Zito pitch, which bums me out.  Zito has long been one of our favorite pinatas but these last few games have actually been fairly nails and were it not for an exploding bullpen of his own last night he would have picked up a Win.

G Slim (remember when he used to post on here?  I don’t.) and I have had a few conversations about Zito’s career arc and we seem to have reasonably decided that in fact he was never really *that* good and had one great season (2002) and a few good ones mixed in (01/03), so he is essentially Kevin Milwood with more durability and the claim to have bagged Alyssa Milano (TWITTER FOLLOW ALERT).  Sure that contract is still an easy target but it’s not like it’s his fault that Sabean threw those dollars his way.  What’s he going to do, turn down the money?  Good to have you back, Barry.  And yes, I added him on my fantasy team (and dropped Kevin Milwood).

Negative surf out there today my friends, might as well stay home and watch Augusta play like it’s freaking Golf N Stuff

Chris Davis, killing your fantasy team since 2009

.  Oh, and while you’re wrapped up in the Tradition Unlike Any Other, you may have missed this bit of managerial magic by the semi-maligned Joe Torre, I’ll break it down for you here, yahoo style:

Top 2nd: LA Dodgers

Wait, what?  One run?  From where?  Weirdest thing I have ever seen.  Wolf hits a shot that finds Haren’s glove, both Dodger runners are caught in no man’s land, Haren flips the ball back to Lopez who, instead of touching second, jogs towards Pierre and tags him out to complete the double play.  Ethier sprinted home and touched the plate prior to Lopez tagging Pierre but nobody cared and both clubs headed towards the dugouts.  Well, nobody cared except cagey manager JT who lobbied for the run.  What in the what?  Because Lopez took his time in tagging out Pierre, Ethier’s run had theoretically crossed the plate prior to the 3rd out being recorded and since the D-Backs had already vacated the field they couldn’t appeal the play, which would have been the normal course of action.  JT is inside of the game like he is living in the Matrix.  That is freaking tight.

Oh, and speaking of freaking tight, this is freaking tight.  If you missed the Season Finale on Friday night then I feel bad for you.  Actually, you know what?  I actually am jealous of you because now you can go to hulu and check it out (or you can stream full seasons on Netflix, that is a great service).  This is as good as TV gets.  I loved The Wire, I think Breaking Bad is pretty amazing but Friday Night Lights never disappoints.  Never.  It is like the anti-Chris Davis of TV shows.  Chris Davis…I don’t even know what to say.  You are in danger of entering the Andruw Jones Zone and trust me my friend, that is not a place where you want to find yourself.

Today was a shit day.  Instead of being nestled comfortably at my desk surrounded by copious amounts of early baseball games I was stuck in a godforsaken conference room in Thousand Oaks being lectured along with 20 or 30 other poor saps about how the economy really isn’t that bad and we can sell temps if we just try (note: this was the second day of this mishmash, yesterday was even worse and involved tremendous amounts of scrotum chilling Role Playing.  Whatever you are imagining in your head, trust me when I say that it is worse than that).

Anyway, on the drove home, while stuck in the usual Camarillo traffic I had the pleasure of listening to the Dodger bullpen choke away three runs in the 8th and then blow a leadoff triple in their half of the 9th to lose by one run to the lowly Padres. Am I mad?  Yes, but not for the reasons you might think–look, it’s a long season, there are going to be other bullpen boners and stranded runners (I’m looking at YOU, Casey Blake) so crying about something like this isn’t going to do any good.  It’s the overriding notion that “the ninth inning is sacred and reserved only for THE CLOSER and THE CLOSER shall never pitch any inning other than the ninth inning so help me God” that’s got me creased (Joe Maddon, you and your three-headed-monster in Tampa Bay get a free pass here).  Let’s review today’s pivotal inning, shall we?

Bottom 8th: San Diego

So in the 8th the Pads are rolling Giles-Gonzalez-Headley up there…not exactly Murderer’s Row but still, their three best hitters, right?  Now in retrospect only one of the three did any real damage (even though Headley’s ball was smashed and happened to find Loney’s glove) but wouldn’t it make the most sense to bring Jon Broxton in in the 8th and let Mota or some combo finish off the dregs of the Padres’ lineup in the 9th?  I am far from being the biggest J. Brox fan in the world but the guy undoubtedly IS the best pitcher out of the pen–why not use him against the best that San Diego has to offer?  Yes hindsight, yes blah blah blah, and yes if it doesn’t work out then Torre has to answer 1,000 questions about using the Closer out of order from Steve Phillips (you are a terrible, terrible commentator, Sir) but that’s just because people ask a lot of dumb questions regardless of what actually occurred anyway.

So yeah, shit day.  At least there are 2 Offices on tonight.  Or is it 2 30 Rocks?  Whatever, it’s a win-win either way.

Windows Live Photo Gallery is like Photoshop for dummies

Yeah so if those little small girls in those Windows commercials can make a panorama photo of their forts or whatever then I can make one of some spring training stadiums by God.  Here’s a few more for your viewing pleasure because I am a PC and I am 30 years old.

You know who is gordo?  People from Wisconsin.  Do you know why?  Because they let their children eat fried turkey legs like they are french fries, that’s why.  And yes, I was a little small bit jealous when I saw those turkey sticks of goodness–my generic old hot dog just didn’t have the same cache.

Mmmm...delicious turkey leg. Nom nom nom nom nom...

This girl literally CRIED when her dad walked back from the turkey store without a leg of her very own.

I read this story the other day and it made me sad and I don’t even have kids or anything.  If I had kids I would be flipping the F out right now.  Forget about the animals for just one second and ask yourself what kind of world are we leaving our kids?  Go humans!

Finally, and most imp0rtantly, I felt like my fantasy draft went ok.  I had the 11th pick (of 11 managers) so that was rough.  Our league is a 6×6 mixed (H, R, RBI, HR, STL OBP and W, K WHIP, ERA, QS, SVS) and I ended up with two Dodgers–Matt Kemp (4th round after taking Carlos Quentin, which I was happy about) and James Loney (17th round).  Loney figures to play in my INF slot until someone else emerges or until I get sick of him.  He was spraying line drives around the greater Phoenix area which was nice.  What’s Loney’s upside anyway?  Is he destined to become another Will Clark?  A nice fielding first baseman who will flirt with a .300 BA and maybe knock 20 out of the yard?  Geez, actually after looking at The Thrill’s career what happened there?  He was like the anti-steroid guy…drops 35 bombs in his second year in the league and then reverts into a sub-20 HR first baseman who takes lots of walks.  Weird.  I used to have like 3 autographed Will Clark baseball cards when I was little.  Hated the Giants but loved The Thrill.  Anyway friends, it’s almost time for Friday Night Lights and after the fireworks from last week’s episode you know I’m not going to miss out on this action.

Sightlines

The Mexicutioner, John B and myself left Phoenix yesterday and endured the 7 million mile drive back to civilization and immediately jumped into our 2009 Fantasy Baseball draft, a 5 hour affair held via the magic of the interweb.  I’ll get to everything else on a later post but here’s what happened during our final day in the horrifying squalor beauty of Goodyear, Arizona.  First of all, getting from Phoenix to Goodyear may seem like a trivial matter but good God it is a long way out there and but eventually we stumbled upon the home of the Indians and Reds after mistaking not one but two high schools for the ballpark.  After enduring the most Mickey Mouse parking situation of all time (at least in Surprise they didn’t charge us $5) which the Mexicutioner described as “The U-Turn of Death” we arrived in the 2nd inning, our have-yet-to-arrive-for-The-National-Anthem streak securely intact at a whopping 4 games.  Whatever, first innings are lame anyway.

The game was nice and featured a good comeback win by your Los Angeles Dodgers, sparked by a massive home run to left by Russ Mart.  I still don’t see him as a middle of the order bat and would feel much better if they permanently penciled him into the 2 or 7 slot but it might have been the hardest hit ball we saw all weekend.  Also of note was 9th inning man Charlie Haeger, a knuckleballer who is fun (if not terribly effective) to watch.  Sadly getting out of the stadium was again an exercise in futility which ended with a not-so-fun confrontation with Arizona’s finest.  The rest of the day was spent with Bud Lights, Outback Steakhouse and the last round of NCAA games.  Do Saturdays get any better?  I say no.

J. Martin--Get Used to It

Sunday involved the aforementioned drive of death which included a stop in the lovely city of Quartzsite, Arizona which makes Blythe, CA look like Paris, France.  Never have I been so terrified in a small town as I was in Quartzsite.  Have you ever seen a Burger King with a “Please do not bring weapons into this establishment” sign on the front door?  Neither have I.  On the plus side, if you are in the market for a Confederate Flag, I have just the store for you.  You stay classy, Quartzsite.  Look for some photoshopped ballpark pics and fantasy sports talk coming your way tomorrow…I’m back in the office so lord knows I have nothing to do.  Big ups to John B and el Eme–J and G Slim, we’ll get it going next year mis amigos.

So a while ago we all decided to do the Spring Training thing because baseball.  Let me tell you, Arizona is hot.  I live in Santa Barbara man, it gets to 80 degrees like four or five times a year and this whole sunshine thing is sweet sweetness.  Last night The Mexicutioner and I drove to Costa Mesa where we waited for The Golf Exec to take a shower, pack his bags, do all his mishmash and then finally left Costa Mesa around 9:00 pm.  Have you ever driven though the desert in the middle of the night?  Good god, by the time we pulled into town I could only keep one eye open at a time.  I think all the truckers thought I was winking at them but really I just couldn’t keep both eyes open at once.  We got in to our hotel at 3:30 in the morning, due largely in part to a 30-minute sightseeing tour of downtown Blythe (it only takes about 3 minutes to see everything and then another 27 to stop laughing) so our late arrival was sort of our own fault.  G Slim, god bless you for educating the poor souls in that god forsaken dump.  A special shout-out to the lovely ladies of the Sub City Sandwich shop/gas station–love ya baby.

Today we slept until like 1o:00 and again had to wait for John B to take a shower, put on all of his perfume, etc before we headed out to the new Dodger/White Sox facility–Cameltoe Cambel Back Ranch.  SPOILER ALERT: Place is beautiful.  Shockingly new, pristine, food options up the wazoo, friendly faces, nothing but sunshine and baseball my friends.  You are literally on top of the players too…Russ Mart walks past you, you can totally whisper “he is still skipping his throws to second base” and he will shoot you a dirty look.  So, so, so sick.  John B is notoriously hard to impress because BIG TIME but after visiting the gentleman’s room (very nice) he walked back to our seats and said, “This is my new favorite stadium.”  Fajitas, buffets, everything you’d want–just fantastic.  The game was good times, Clay Kershaw was dirty on the hill and also dropped a solo bomb to start the scoring, a no-doubt-about-it shot to right.  There was no Manny of course but Ethier looked locked in at the plate so expect me to draft him three rounds too early at my draft on Sunday.  Tomorrow we’ve got two games on tap…Seattle vs. Milwaukee in the morning and then Dodgers vs. Royals in the evening.  Oh, and did you know it’s hot in Phoenix?  Damn hot my friends.  Bring your sunscreen.