(Un) Clean and Jerks

The only daily comic worth a damn is Tank McNamara, a hilarious strip about sports. Its title character is "a former football star, now working as a sports commentator on TV." Created by Texans Jeff Millar (writer) and Bill Hinds (artist), the cartoon considers sports both high and low--from inspired athleticism to base business; from faithful fans to conspiring crooks. And Tank McNamara's most popular and recurring feature is its year-end contest naming a "Sports Jerk of the Year", "for which readers annually offer thousands of suggestions."

I have a suggestion, which differs in two important ways from previous years:

1. It's a three-way tie;



2. Each appearing in today's sports pages.

Call it "The Bad, the Brat and the Ugly:

• Bud Selig: Selig, Baseball's Commissioner, is part poodle, part Peter Principle--he took office when team owners found Fay Vincent insufficiently fey (i.e., pro-player), his sole qualification being owner of a franchise (the Milwaukee Brewers) with only one good year (World Series runners-up in 1982). Bud did good when he rescued the failing Montreal Expos franchise by first brokering an acquisition by the owners collectively, then moving the team to Washington before the 2005 season.
  
  But that was then. This week, Bud was a bad dog, again postponing the sale of the now Washington Nationals. Originally supposed to be settled in January, then last spring, and then during the season, this week's announcement effectively bars the Nats from the free agency market, which opened a few minutes ago at midnight. It also leaves the teams current manager, coaches and general manager in mid-air, unsure whether they'd be retained by the eventual owners. Bud's stall is particularly unfair to the team's 70 year old manager, Frank Robinson who, after an extraordinary effort this season, can't count on the chance to improve next year. So baseball's delay handicaps the Nationals competitiveness next year--precisely what the remaining owners want. There ought to be a law!--and there would have been were it not for Roe v. Wade author Justice Harry Blackmun. The bad know on which side their bread is buttered.



• Terrell Owens: The former San Francisco 49er wide receiver was dealt to the Philadelphia Eagles after a complex arbitration before the start of the 04-05 NFL season. Gifted with guts and great skills, Owens is noxious narcissist, whose pre-season contract dispute and subsequent teammate trash talking led the "Iggles" to suspend TO for the remainder of this season. Though Owens deserves no less, the players union already filed a grievance on his behalf--and the loudmouth likely will prevail under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Whatever the arbitration's answer, TO's finished in Philadelphia, depriving his team of its best player, likely ending the Eagles NFC title game appearance streak at three years. No one -- not the bratty Owens nor even TO's obnoxious agent Drew Rosenhaus -- comes out ahead.



• Rafael Palmeiro: Cuban-born and a 20 year baseball veteran, Palmerio was a fan favorite in two stints each with the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles. And when not hawking little blue pills, he seemed a Hall of Fame lock when, on July 15th, he became only the fourth player to have 500 home runs and 3000 hits.
  
  One problem: he was expelled from Harvard for cheating by having someone else take his Spanish exam . No, wait, that was Ted Kennedy. Palmeiro's fine with Spanish; he just has a problem with truth. Long rumored to be on steroids -- he hit only 22 home runs in 1992, the season he was joined in Texas by a new teammate named Jose Canseco. And then hit 37 the next year and at least 38 in the next nine non-strike seasons after that -- he emphatically denied using performance-enhancing drugs in a dramitic Capitol Hill hearing:

  On March 17, Palmeiro, Orioles teammate Sammy Sosa and retired sluggers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire testified before the House Government Reform Committee investigating steroid use in professional sports. Emphatically pointing a finger toward legislators as he spoke, Palmeiro testified that "I have never used steroids. Period."
  
  The panel found Palmeiro's testimony so compelling that he was asked to join a task force on steroids.

  Washington Post baseball columnist Tom Boswell explained the subtext:

  Palmeiro pointed his finger for emphasis, a gesture that was universally understood. He was pushing all his chips, accumulated over a career, into the center of the table. All his well-known civic and charitable good deeds, his reputation as a clean player, were shoved into the pot to counterbalance the charge, made by Jose Canseco, that Canseco had injected Palmeiro with steroids on many occasions when they were teammates.

  But less than a month after his 3000th hit, Palmeiro was suspended from baseball after testing positively for the steroid stanozolol. Though Congress won't press perjury charges, Palmerio probably injected himself out of an Oriole's uniform. He didn't help his case this week by continuing to deny intentional steroid use, insisting he was framed. Once admired by all, Palmero went from glory to goat in less than a year, managing the impossible--bolstering Jose Canseco's credibility. And that's truly ugly.

Conclusion: I predict Owens will be Tank McNamara's jerk-of-the-year. And he was. But the bad Selig and the ugly Palmerio were worse for sports in general and baseball in particular: one, by scheme or sloth, exploiting a non-existent, nonsensical, free pass from antitrust laws; the other cynically betraying the trust of fans young and old.

If neither Selig nor Palmerio are the 2005 jerk-in-chief, it's only because they're overqualified.