Barry Bonds

Allow me to offer you some friendly advice, Barry. The next time you face a situation where your reputation has been smeared, either shut your mouth if the allegations are true, or sue for libel if the allegations are false.

Please don't try another half-way approach like your lawyers pulled this week against the authors of the recent book that claims you took truckloads of steroids. Your crack legal team somehow convinced you that it would make sense to sue those guys on the grounds that much of their evidence came from sealed grand jury testimony, making it a crime for them to possess it. They didn't dispute that the evidence was correct, just how the authors obtained it.

Bad, bad move. Now, everyone is convinced that you didn't sue for libel because the truth is an absolute defense for those authors. And they're now also saying that you tried to kill the book on a technicality, smearing your reputation even further. And, oh by the way, your lawyers' motion was turned down anyway.

Get some new lawyers, Barry. And this time make sure they understand public relations.

Bud Selig

I don't believe I have honored Bud to date with this award, and that's pretty surprising given his track record. But he finally cracked the Damn Fool list this week, by virtue of a couple of his pet projects.

First, we had the revelations about Barry Bonds, including the little tidbit that Bud met with Barry in 2004 to get his assurances that no embarrassing steroid information would pop up. Um, I'm going to guess that Barry didn't exactly give Bud the straight poop. I'd say I was surprised that Bud bought it, but we are talking about Bud Selig here.

Then, courtesy of the World Baseball Classic, we had a pair of snafus. First came the decision not to televise live what is quickly becoming a set of really interesting, exciting games due to conflicts with college basketball. We told you March was a bad time to play this, Bud.

Next came the embarrassing blown call in the USA-Japan game yesterday, leading some to speculate that the sub-par umpiring crews were chosen in order to fix the games.

All in all, a pretty crappy week for Allan H. "Bud" Selig, though it did net him the Damn Fool award. It was long overdue.

Hall of Fame Voters

I am enraged that Buck O'Neil was not elected to the Hall of Fame. Joe Posnanski has already expressed the outrage of Kansas City much more eloquently than I can, so I will simply echo his sentiments here. Keith Olbermann has also written a couple of nice blog entries that hit home.

Look, there was no enormous outcry demanding that the Hall of Fame double the representation of the Negro Leagues. The committee in question was assembled essentially for the sole purpose of legitimizing a reason to put Buck O'Neil into the Hall. No one could even name the 17 additional inductees until this committee was put together, so there was hardly any groundswell of popular demand for Effa Manley or Andy Cooper. This was an election cobbled together to put Buck O'Neil into the Hall of Fame and they screwed it up.

It's that simple. And it's that sad.

(And I would be saying this even if Buck hadn't called my son "Home Run" when he signed a ball for him last summer.)