Posts by Eamonn Brennan at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers deserves credit. No matter what you think of the guy, he's not afraid to get into it with players in the locker room, and he's not afraid to write exactly what he thinks. Which is why he can write columns like this, in which he calls Andruw Jones "Tubbo" and "clueless" after having a summit with Jones in the Dodger clubhouse. Awesome:

Without the fans, I said, there's no reason for you to be here in Los Angeles playing baseball and no way you're getting paid $36 million over the next two years. "I don't care," he said. "You play for the team, you don't play for the fans. The fans never played the game. They don't know."

Both a Tubbo and clueless, which really isn't a very good combination for the player with the highest annual salary in Dodgers history.

Um ... yeah. Probably not the most polite way to write a column, but Jones couldn't have handled that interview any worse. Rather than claiming to do his best for the fans, or something like that, Jones officially said he doesn't care, just before pointing at Simers' belly and guessing that Simers was "going to die tomorrow." That's a fantastic way to exacerbate fan hatred, not to mention draw columnist ire. Officially, Jones now has both.

Get your Nick Johnson tear-flavored dirt! Only $1,400!

We've already covered one of the more maddening, or at least confusing, tenets to Yankee fandom, the idea that there is some sort of "class" associated with being a Yankee. This class precludes facial hair, naturally, as well as overzealous celebrations. Why? Because old men say so.

So maybe it's piling on the Yankees a little bit today -- it is Mother's Day, after all -- but Phil Mushnick's column in today's New York Post is not to be missed. If you're rich, stupid, and looking to cement your True Yankee Fan status to anyone who would dare question it, well, have the Yankees got a deal for you!

"2005 Opening Day Batter's Box Dirt Collage" for $120 (call me cynical, but the dirt looks suspiciously similar to 2006 Opening Day batter's box dirt). Ian Kennedy's "Yankees New York Yankees Clubhouse Locker Room Name Plate" is selling for $500 (how a locker name plate was used in a game escapes us, but Shelley Duncan's is a steal at $300).

For $250, you can own Jose Veras Jose Veras ' alleged "game-used" Yankee duffel bag (I can't recall Veras using that duffel bag in a game, either, but that's the beauty of the hidden duffel bag trick).

The real kicker is a Kyle Farnsworth name plate for ... $100. One hundred freaking dollars. For that, you could buy a GTA 4 and an XBOX Live subscription and actually play online with Kyle Farnsworth, which would be way cooler. As long as you're prepared to take a legendary series of virtual kicks to Niko Bellic's virtual crotch, that is.

Poor Joba Chamberlain. There he is, playing baseball with his typically intense body language -- fist-pumping and so on -- and because he's a young guy and not yet considered a True Yankee, he has to hear quasi-hypocritical nonsense from people that haven't played in ages. Case in point: Goose Gossage, who wants Joba to act like a "Yankee." Whatever that means (via BBTF):

"That's just not the Yankee way, what Joba did. Let everyone else do that stuff, but not a Yankee," Gossage said by telephone on Saturday. "What I don't understand is, the kid's got the greatest mentor in the world in Mariano [Rivera]. He's one of the leaders of the team, so you'd think it wouldn't happen on that team.

"But there's no one to pass the torch anymore, no one to teach the young kids how to act. The Mets did a lot of that [celebrating] last year, and look how it came back to haunt them."

What is the "Yankee way," exactly? Is it having a legendarily blustery owner, who gets to scream and shout and generally act like a jerkoff for 30 years? Is it having that owner but simultaneously decrying long hair, facial hair, and any semblance of individual personality among the team's players? Seriously, I don't understand. You're not a f----ing prep school. You're a baseball team. If Joba Chamberlian stops striking people out, then get mad at him. Until then, let the man pump his fist. It seems to have worked out OK for Derek Jeter.

Our NL Central man-about-town, Pat Lackey, has long voiced every baseball fan's collective wonder: Just how in the name of everything holy is Eric Gagne still closing baseball games? It's been clear for over a year that the man is not the Eric Gagne of old, but Brewers manager Ned Yost seems to be the only one not paying attention. Four or five blown saves later, and Yost still won't take the man out of the ninth inning spot.

So guess what? Eric Gagne did it himself:

"I don't sit here and make decisions five minutes after a tough loss," Yost said after watching Gagne saddle the Brewers with a defeat that never should have happened.

Minutes later, Gagne took his manager completely off the hook with a pronouncement that was evident to anybody who has watched his work of late. "I don't deserve that ninth inning right now. It's very simple," said Gagne, who surrendered two ninth-inning runs that allowed St. Louis to pull out a 5-3 victory at Miller Park. "It's embarrassing."

Ah, embarassing indeed, but who should be more embarassed? Gagne, whose tools are just clearly not there anymore? Or Yost, whose tools are supposed to involve proper decision-making and talent management? Who's done a worse job?

See, you think Ozzie Guillen's just this half-loonie guy who also happens to be a pretty OK baseball manager. Wrong! Ozzie Guillen is a media watchdog, and he's not afraid to tell you what drives the information-starved hordes:

"Who cares about Britney Spears? But she's on TV every day. Why do you think people give a ... about Jose Canseco? That ... sells," Guillen said Thursday at the end of a 25-minute pregame meeting with reporters. "Who's the manager they remember the most? ... Billy Martin. They don't remember Sparky Anderson. ... They remember Billy Martin because he was the crazy one," Guillen said. "Why do you think they like Lou Piniella? Because Lou is good? Great guy. Great baseball people. But people love Lou Piniella because he's ... up!"

Simple terms, sure, but it is something of an astute observation: 99 percent of people that Googletard Britney Spears every day aren't Googling her because they feel an emotional attachment to the singer. They're Googling her because they wish to revel in her decadent public shame, the sort of unfulfilled stuff that lurks in the Id of every well-meaning suburban mother in America. Ozzie gets that. He might well be a visionary.

Now, for his second act, a dissertation on the perils of subjectivity:

"Some people like stuff, some don't," he said.

OK, that's just bull[bleep].

OK, everyone hates Barry Bonds. We get it. Those of us who believe he did steroids, and believe he, at least in some meaningful way, tainted the game of baseball's most historic record by doing so, well, there's reason to dislike the man. Few would disagree.

What is ridiculous, however, is the fact that this man has yet to even field an offer from a team. It's not as though he's been forced to turn embarrassingly low offers down. He hasn't even been asked to play. No veteran minimums. No condition-laden half-contracts. Nothing. Which is, for lack of a better overused exclamation, utterly ridiculous. So, like David Pinto before me, I'm with Childs Walker:

Ozzie Guillen isn't known for his apologies. In all, he actually refuses to apologize about most things, whether they be foul, self-pitying outbursts, or this blow-up doll nonsense. Guillen is not a man of few words. It's just that those words are never "I'm sorry."

But! In a sheer plot twist, Guillen does want to confess one thing he's sorry about: questioning Alex Rodriguez's national ties before the World Baseball Classic (via BBTF):

"I don't feel guilty about anything,'' Guillen said Wednesday. "The only regret I have was A-Rod (Yankees star Alex Rodriguez), making that kid suffer. I was telling the truth, but I didn't have the right to put that kid on the spot,'' Guillen said Wednesday. "That was a (bleep) thing on my part; that was low-class. That's why I apologized. I never start anything. I started it with Alex, and that's why I regret it. Everything else, (heck), no, because I know I was right.''

Judging by this timeframe, Carol Slezak can expect an apology for the blow-up doll shenanigans in approximately 2010. Chicago, for the accusation that they treat the White Sox like a female dog, will probably have to wait until 2011 or 2012; more than one apology every two years is not feasible. Sorry. (Whoops.)

The White Sox, and Nick Swisher in particular, are doing their absolute best to foster the sort of idiot culture the Red Sox used to their apparent advantage in 2004. In a clubhouse commanded by Ozzie Guillen and populated by a crude-but-still-kind-of-funny sex doll, they're doing a pretty decent job. Now all they need to do is win. Gulp.

Oh, and facial hair! Yeah, facial hair is totally key, which is why Swisher and Co. have been rocking that hot mess of blond stubble throughout the season. If you want to be a "Grinder", and play "Ozzieball"/"Smallball"/"Smartball", you have to have silly facial hair. Fortunately, Swisher, John Danks and Toby Hall are going to put all that looking stupid to a cause other than looking stupid by dyeing their hair pink in honor of breast cancer research (and Mother's Day). They'll also be making a donation to Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation on behalf of the White Sox.

This is excellent news. Excellent news for cancer research, excellent news for Moms everywhere, and excellent news for those of us who just couldn't get enough of Scott Spezio's fuscia style. Whatever happened to Scott Spiezio, anyway?

Yesterday, when we heard about the Red Sox fan who was run over by a Yankees fan, we got a little frothy. Appropriately frothy, that is. There is nothing less justifiable in this world -- with the possible exception of our country's preference for Paris Hilton news to any number of crises in, say, Africa -- than baseball fans taking their fandom so seriously as to actually kill each other. Stupidity doesn't come any less distilled.

Fortunately, in something nearing redemption, the deceased man's girlfriend is clearing up any talk of baseball-related beef (via Shysterball):

But Beaudoin's devastated girlfriend Donna Dionne, 29, told the Herald yesterday, "Matt was sticking up for a friend who had been punched by this woman. It had nothing to do with a big baseball rivalry. These stories are wrong." Dionne said Beaudoin's friends, who witnessed the horror, told her the confrontation was sparked when Hernandez punched a female pal of Beaudoin's outside the bar.

See? Turns out, this man's death wasn't born of a stupid, overhyped, self-involved baseball rivalry. It was an entirely different brand of senselessness! That makes it so much better!

Oh, but don't worry baseball fans: you can still be morons.

/Slams head against desk. Repeatedly.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been fighting for the Democratic nomination for months now, but the primary results keep breaking down along the same demographic lines.

Currently, Obama and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton are neck-and-neck in Indiana, a (perhaps the) basketball-crazed state full of the same sort of white, working-class voters that proved so difficult for Obama to court in Pennsylvania.

But do voters care if a candidate can ball? Obama's campaign clearly thinks so.