To some, this can seem like an ethical question. Sure this is no written rule about stealing signs in Baseball, but there are unwritten rules in every sport. Stealing signs is against that unwritten code. If your team has to stoop that low to cheat and steal signs then they need a lot of help. That being said, this debate came up because one of the better teams in baseball, the Philadelphia Phillies were given a warning by Major League Baseball on Wednesday May 12th, 2010. Apparently the bullpen coach was caught using binoculars in the dug out and Shane Victorino was caught on the bullpen phone. Now no one knows for sure exactly what was going on, but you can make a pretty big speculation. In 2001 Sandy Alderson, Executive Vice President Of Baseball Operations, sent out a memo to all teams outlining the restricted use of electronic equipment to steal signs and giving an advantage to teams. Even if they aren’t using equipment and it’s just someone from second base stealing signs, it is still wrong and shouldn’t happen. Part of the fun in baseball is guessing what the other team is thinking and what they might do. If the other team knows you are going to steal 2nd or going to throw a fastball, then all the competitive edge has been taken away and the sport no longer becomes fun. We saw this same thing in the NFL a couple of years ago and it has been brought up in baseball for years. Either way it is wrong and shouldn’t happen.

Whether or not it shouldn’t happen, it does. People are always looking for that competitive edge. I remember stealing signs all the way back in little league. Why do you think signs have become so complex now? No longer is it just 1 hand signal for a pitch. The catcher will flash through 3 or 4 signals and only the catcher and pitcher know which one is the real one. The same goes for a third base coach. They usually have a tip signal like their belt or hat and then the real sign comes after that. Stealing signs has been going on since they appeared in baseball and has become part of the game. Sure using technology to do it might seem extreme. Not sure I would support video taping the 3rd base coach. But they watch pitchers on game film to look and see if they tip pitches and give that information to their players. That is no different than stealing signs. The 1 big problem can be if you get caught, you might get hit by a 90 MPH heater the next time you are up to bat. If you have ever played baseball or softball then you know stealing signs happens a lot more than people give credit for. This debate comes up every year and every year it continues to happen. Baseball has never put a written rule in so they are obviously ok with it as long as no one is going to the extreme. With that being said it can’t be all that bad that people are stealing signs.

Baseball games in general have really slowed down. Some might even consider parts of the game boring and unnecessary. The point behind this debate is to discuss all the pauses. When we look at the mound visits, the time in between innings, and the stepping out of the batter’s box to adjust the gloves, it has all gotten out of hand. There are more pauses in baseball than there are in any sports and many of them just seem unnecessary. Does a batter really have to adjust his gloves after every pitch? I really doubt his gloves, which are already tight to the skin, shifted at all while he was standing there. Does a mound visit really need to take 10 minutes to try and build a pitcher’s confidence? If someone needs this much talking to, then he really needs to be pulled or the coach needs to do a better job. I work in a profession where I am constantly talking to my employees about how they can improve and help out the next customer better than they did the last customer. Most of my conversations are 5 minutes at most and are far more complex than “quit nibbling at the strike zone and go after this guy.” Baseball right now is struggling for an audience. We constantly see games where there is maybe 10,000 in attendance and the stadiums seem empty. A good way to attract more people would be to speed up the game and get the action going more. We constantly see the cameras show a little kid sleeping at the game, yet I never see that at a football or hockey game. There are easily way too many pauses in baseball.

Baseball has always had a lot of pauses. The average baseball game is right around 3 hours and 15 minutes, which is about the same amount of time as your average NFL, NBA, & NHL games. All 4 sports seem to have their game time lengths right around the same mark. Major League Baseball even tried to shorten the length of their games by setting a time length goal of 2 hours and 45 minutes in 2004. Of course this goal has rarely been reached, but if the game has a lot of runs and is exciting then why would you want it to end? As for the little pauses, they have specific meaning. Walking up to the plate and hitting a 90 MPH fastball isn’t easy. So it might take stepping out of the box and going through a routine to get your mind right. It also might take a pitcher who is struggling a few minutes to calm down and understand that maybe he is over throwing everything. They also discuss defensive positioning and future batters in those mound visits. Baseball isn’t like all the other sports where they have time outs to discuss how to attack a particular player or how to handle a specific situation. If there is a man on third and Pujols is up, you probably pitch to him differently than if the bases were empty. When would you discuss this exactly? The score of the game dictates a lot as well. There has also been studies done that show if you remove a lot of the little nuances and pauses, the game only speeds up by about 15 minutes. So overall the pauses are needed and really don’t affect the game in the long run.

Jamarcus Russell is easily the biggest bust in NFL history. Jamarcus Russell was drafted #1 overall in the 2007 NFL draft and never lived up to his potential. Every year we would hear about him coming to camp over weight and not ready to play. He is one of a few NFL QBs that had his completion percentage go down every year. It started off at 54.5% and finished at 48.8% in 2009. In his 3 year career he won a grand total of 9 games. He never finished a season with a passer rating higher than 78 and he sits at a 65.2 right now in his career. In a game where winning means everything and interceptions mean doom, Russell has definitely come up as a bust. If the Raiders were to take Russell’s salary and spread it out over just his wins, they would be paying $6 mill a win. If we paid Payton Manning that much he would be the richest man in all of sports by far. I understand his career isn’t over and that he still may resurrect it, but if he continues to come into camp not ready to play then he will surely be labeled the biggest bust of all time. Sure there have been others that might come close, but none of them were paid $68 million over 6 years with $31.5 million guaranteed. He is also the quickest realeased QB to be drafted #1 overall and has the worst record of any QB drafted #1 overall. He is easily the biggest bust of all time if his career were to end now.

First off Russell’s career isn’t over yet. There have also been quite a few QBs that have been just as bad and then there are some other positional players. Ryan Leaf was drafted #2 overall in the same year Payton Manning was drafted. Everyone was calling Leaf the golden child and Payton the future bust. Well we see how that turned out. As for comparisions to Russell, well Leaf finished his career with a 50.0 passing rating and never topped 58.0. Russell is higher than that for his career and they played the same amount of years. For those disputing the last statement, Leaf didn’t do anything in 1999 so you can’t count that as a 4th year for him. When we look at wins, Leaf also only won 6 in those 3 years which is behind the 9 of Russell. Let’s also not forget the mental breakdown and his off the field problems that have happened recently. There is also Tim Couch, who was taken #2 overall by the Cleveland Browns. If we want to look at non QBs then Tony Mandarich has been labeled by many to be the biggest bust of all time. Especially after ESPN aired the spot on steriods and how he was using them. Overall though, I would still probably give it to Ryan Leaf. Not only was he a bust on the field, but he was a huge bust off the field.

I think this one is simple. Pete Rose is the MLB all time leader in hits (4,256), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), and outs (10,328). He did all of this while being a switch hitter as well which alone is not an easy thing to master. He also won 3 World Series rings, 3 batting titles, one MVP, 2 Gold Gloves, Rookie of the Year, and made 17 All-Star appearances for 5 different positions (2B, LF, RF, 3B, & 1B). No one else has made an appearance that many times for that many positions. He also tied the NL hit streak record with 44 straight hits in 1978. How many other players can say they accomplished so much? Pete Rose was easily one of the greatest baseball players of all time and to keep him out of Cooperstown is ridiculous. Sure he made mistakes, but we all make mistakes and betting on the sport is not as big as others. We allow people who have cheated (Alex Rodriguez) to come back to the game. We allow people who have committed major crimes to come back to the game. But Pete Rose does some gambling and he is banned? Nothing about this seems right. The Hall Of Fame isn’t about the person outside the game. It is about the player and how he made his mark on the game. With his great stats and achievements alone, Pete Rose deserves to be in the Hall Of Fame.

Pete Rose may be one of the best baseball players of all time, but he bet on baseball. Not only did he bet on the sport, but he was betting on his own team. This can lead to people thinking he was rigging games so that he could make a profit. If we are going to keep the Black Sox and Shoeless Joe Jackson out for gambling and rigging games, then we have to keep Pete Rose out. The Commissioner of MLB (Bud Selig) has already said this was an unforgiving act and that Pete Rose will never be allowed back into the sport. Keep in mind that it also wasn’t Selig that originally banned Rose, but the Commissioner before him Bart Giamatti. There was a full blown investigation into what Rose did and although they couldn’t prove he bet against the Reds, there is a strong speculation. In a sport where the Commissioner is the judge, he is allowed to speculate and make this type of decision. Pete Rose has even admitted to cheating and gone in front of the commissioner numerous times and he still is banned. Doing something like steroids, which weren’t even tested for at the time, is different than gambling on the sport. It was already proven that if you got caught gambling you would be banned for life and he still took that chance. It would also be a little different if outside of all this Pete Rose was an angel and no other issues came up. On April 20th, 1990 Pete Rose plead guilty to tax invasion, which doesn’t help his character. So unless someone can convince the commissioner otherwise, Pete Rose won’t be entering the Hall Of Fame.

Well the Olympics are upon us now and we get to see Team USA go out and compete in a bunch of different sports. One sport that seems to get a lot of discussion on if it should even be in the Olympics is curling. I think you can make just as much of an argument for curling being a sport as you can high diving. Now I know I raised some eye brows with that comment, but think about the physical use of the body in each sport. To dive off a high board it doesn’t take a lot of strength, it takes a lot of skill and know how to control your body. Sure there is a lot of flexibility required for some dives as well, but if you see how these throwers for curling sit when they toss the stone, they have to be flexible as well. Plus I noticed there wasn’t 1 truly overweight competitor so far on any of the curling teams. You try sweeping a broom back and forth as fast as they do and see if you don’t stay fit. Plus as they move down the ice they are not allowed to touch any of the other stones that have already been played. That alone takes a lot of skill and coordination. Sure it might be a skillful sport and doesn’t use a lot of physical prowess, but it is still a sport. I mean if we can call golf a sport and have people like John Daily playing it, then we have to call curling a sport.

Curling is about as much of a sport as NASCAR. This game is just a large version of shuffle board and it happens to be played on ice. Sure it takes some skill and hand eye coordination, but so do video games and chess. We don’t call either of them sports. The only reason none of the competitors in the Olympics are truly overweight is because no country wants to be represented by some hefty guy who passes out as he quickly sweeps his broom. Sure sweeping the broom might be physical, but not all of the team members do this. Plus it’s not like they sweep the broom the whole time, it is for short bursts. Jumping off of the high dive actually does take some strength. In order to spin your body fast enough to do enough twirls or flips to get a good score you have to have quite a bit of strength. Even ribbon gymnastics has more strength and physical ability required than curling. Curling has been the topic of discussion every 4 years when the Olympic Committee talks about sports to remove and sports to add. Curling has so close to being removed numerous times because it isn’t a sport. I’m amazed it has the following it does, because it is slow and boring. There is just no way to call this game a sport.

On February 1st, 2010 Kobe Bryant passed Jerry West as the Lakers’ all time leading scorer. Then on the following day, Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated wrote an article calling Kobe the greatest Laker of all time. I will have to agree with him. Kobe will turn 32 years old this summer and he has already passed scoring greats like Kareem and Magic, not to mention the face of the sport Jerry West. Kobe has won 4 championships in his young career and could possibly win a 5th this year and tie Magic for the most in franchise history. Kobe has also climbed to 14th in the all time scoring list for the league and should clear 12th by the end of the year. Kobe is young enough to break the 35,000 point mark and possibly be the all time leading scorer. We are talking about a player who scored 81 points a couple of years ago, a feet Jordan never accomplished. Plus think of this, if Jordan was never around we would be talking about Kobe as possibly the greatest player to play the game. Kobe Bryant is a player who Jerry West himself watched a workout before trading for him after the draft and was in awe of his abilities. Jerry watched Kobe touch the back of the board and schooled Michael Cooper like a rookie. Because of all of this, I have to say he is the greatest Laker of all time.

Few sports writers would consider Kobe the greatest Laker of all time. Quite a few have a hard time putting him in the top five. Is it because his career isn’t over yet? Maybe. Fact of the matter is that not only is Jerry West the greatest Laker of all time, but he is also the face of the NBA. His silhouette is on every NBA jersey and every broadcast. Plus we have to look at Magic, who has 5 championships and his assists and rebound totals are far higher than Kobe’s. I know they played different positions, but the lead Magic has on those 2 stats is far higher than the lead Kobe has on Magic in scoring. I also think that when you consider a franchise player, you have to look at more than just the court. Sure Kobe has some funny commercials with Lebron right now, but what has he done in the community and main stream? We have always heard about the research Magic has done for aids and cancer. Also don’t forget Magic has never been in trouble with the law, which goes a long way with the public. Let’s not forget a few others we could put up there: Kareem, Elgin Baylor, and James Worthy. Kobe at best is maybe 3rd among these players.

So we all saw Peyton Manning get benched in the 3rd quarter against the Jets, and the Colts fumbled away the win and the perfect season. The problem I have with this is the players play to win. What would be more memorable than having the possibly the best quarterback of all time have the best season of all time? And what better way for Jim Caldwell to start of his coaching career than to be the first coach to go 19 – 0? Sure his excuse will be that we he didn’t want to risk injury for his star players and to give some of his bench players a chance to play. But players come to a game hoping to win, not to sit the bench. Every player on that sideline wanted to win that game and wanted to be playing. If you are worried about Peyton or Wayne getting hurt then I would be more worried about the following scenarios. They could get hurt tripping over their dog at home (Brian Griese), sneezing and throwing out their back (Sammy Sosa), or Tripping over a box and falling down the stairs (Ron Artest). I didn’t even mention that the Colts’ back up quarterback Jim Sorgi is out for the season without playing a single snap this year. Peyton Manning has never missed a start in his NFL career and I don’t think he is going to miss one now. Plus the coach had of heard the boos that were happening as Painter fumbled a touchdown and then threw an interception. After Peyton Manning was pulled the Colts looked like a high school football team and it was disgraceful. If I remember correctly, the last time they had a season start off like this, they pulled players in the last few games and then went on to lose in the first round of the playoffs. If that happens again this year that would serve them right. You should come into every game looking to win and play as hard as possible every game. Sure you play to win the Superbowl but you also play to stay consistent and win every week.

Pulling Peyton and Wayne was actually a good idea. Caldwell let them play long enough to get into rhythm and then pulled them before they got hurt. Plus when Peyton was pulled the Colts had a 5 point lead and most of their defense was still playing. The fact they gave up a kick return for a touchdown and then the defense stunk wasn’t Peyton Manning or Reggie Wayne’s fault. They don’t play in either of those line ups. Sure Painter fumbled the ball and that turned into a touchdown. But the Colts have already locked up home field advantage all the way through the play offs. This game basically meant nothing except for Peyton Manning to get his 50,000 yards. If Peyton, Clark, Wayne, or any other big name player had gotten seriously injured then we would all be saying that they should have been pulled earlier in the game. Sure you come in wanting to win every game and when they were pulled they were ahead and winning. But the last thing you want to do is go into the playoffs with Painter leading the way. We saw what he could do. If your team was to lose their starting quarterback, wide receiver, and possibly some starting defensive players you would go from playing like the Colts to playing like the St Louis Rams really quick. Sure players can get hurt anywhere, but they have a far better chance getting hurt on the field. And although some of the injuries referenced in the “yes” argument are good, they are rare compared to what happens on the field. It is a far better decision to let your players get some reps in so they stay warm and then pull them so you don’t risk any injury.

This article was suggested due to some bad calls this season, especially for pass interference. There have been some pass plays that had obvious pass interference, whether offensive or defensive, that was easily missed but should have been called. With as competitive as the game is now, a single call like this could win or lose the game. We also have plenty of games where the coaches do not use their challenges at all. I think if the coaches want to use their challenges to get a penalty, or dispute one so it goes away, it is their choice. They are the ones risking the time out and possibly the chance to challenge something else later. Let’s say your team is losing by a touchdown and your quarterback gets sacked. Also on that same play a defensive player was off sides but it wasn’t called. Don’t you think it would be fair to let a coach challenge that so the game is called correctly? Isn’t that the whole point behind the challenges? We want the game to be called fair and to be able to fix the human error, but we limit it to just a few types of plays. If we are going to allow challenges the scope of them need to be widened to a lot more than just fumbles and completed passes. Otherwise I have a hard time seeing the point of having the system there.

We have already slowed the game down now by letting coaches challenge certain plays. Do we want to slow the game down more by adding more plays they can dispute? The problem with challenging penalties is that so many of them are subjective. What I might call holding, the referee might say they were just letting them play. A pass interference call is can be hard to call sometimes if both players are fighting for position. How long does someone have to hold on to the facemask before it is considered a penalty? Sure these rules are supposed to be plain and simple. We would like them to be obvious and easy to call. But if that was the case, then this argument would be pretty useless since they shouldn’t be missed if they were easy to call. I don’t know how many times I have been watching a game with a friend who thought a penalty should have been called that I said “no it was a good no call.” Right now the average game takes about 3 hours to play. A lot of times it even goes over that and will run into the start of the next game. If we start adding more things for coaches to dispute we could look at games going over 3 ½ hours. Not to mention that every time there is a challenge the networks break away for commercials. Just what I always wanted in my football games, more commercials and more Jimmy Football. Let’s leave it the what it is and let the referees decide what is a penalty.