Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered thinks people (or at least, Peter Schmuck) aren’t publishing The Truth about Barry Bonds. Some of his points are duly noted—Bonds is not the slow, broken player Schmuck casts him as. But with other points, you get the feeling that Schmuck just got deeply under Sheehan’s skin and then couldn’t get out again—such as when Schmuck claims that Bonds would create “a chronic public relations problem” and Sheehan responds, “Barry Bonds doesn’t create a public relations problem…Barry Bonds has a media relations problem.” That’s pretty weak hair-splitting. And Sheehan’s dismissal of Barry Bonds legal problems looks a bit different now that the indictment as been refiled. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a spirited defense of Barry Bonds (hard to come by these days), it’s worth a read.

Respect Jeter’s Gangster weighs in on the Jobagate fist-pump controversy with some situations in which it may or may not be appropriate for you to pump your fist.

The Padres’ struggles have inspired a debate over at Gaslamp Ball about whether professional ballplayers even need coaches. I say they do. What do you say?

Ever wondered what happened to the old Tiger Stadium? Joe Lapointe has an article in The New York Times and Fabrizio Constantini an eye-opening slide show. (Did you know that they auctioned off one of the dugout urinals last year? I somehow missed that story. And somehow, my life was complete without that particular piece of information.) It’s weird to think that the Tigers have been in Comerica for almost ten years, and that Tiger Stadium has been mouldering scarcely a mile away the entire time. My one beef with the slide show—I like artsy detail shots as much as any amateur shutterbug, but I would have liked a picture of the entire field included, to serve as an establishing shot. And some “before” shots would have been nice to go along with the “afters.”

Bleeding Blue and Teal weighs in on Griffey-to-Seattle trade talk and how such a move might actually make sense.

As draft day approaches, Minor League Ball looks at some high school hitters of interest. If you root for a craptastic team with a high pick, you can start drooling over them now. If you root for a great team with a lot of money, you can start hoping they develop “signability issues.”

Yanksfan Soxfan brings us a blind item from the NY Daily News about a “formerly awesome” pitcher whose shoulder woes are actually due to “years of smoking pot” and “one drug-addled incident in which he had to carry a passed-out date up three flights of stairs.” Guesses in the comments range from the preposterous (Schilling, Pedro) to the “hmmmm…maybe” (Gagne, Zito, Pavano). Got a better guess? Let ‘em know!

If you’ve got cabin fever because it’s a gorgeous May Day and you came into work today like a good doobie instead of calling in sick and going hiking like you really, really wanted to, maybe you should take a look at Slate’s series on baseball in the Dominican Republic (with, of course, an accompanying slide show).

Dan Graziano of the Star Ledger prints some email correspondence with Carlos Delgado’s agent. Neither man comes off looking very good (hint: someone calls someone a retard). Yes, these men are professionals! Do not try this at home!

Razzball takes a look back at Pete Rose’s 1983 season, a year “Pete evaded success like it was the taxman.”

Joe Posnanski brings you Brian Bannister’s crazy day-night splits.

And I said Over The Monster’s picture of Mike Lowell (above) looked like “George Clooney-meets-Humphrey Bogart-meets-UFH.” Paul countered, “He just looks like he’s giving Tek the ol’ stink eye.” What do you think, UmpBumpers?

What else should I be reading? Help me procrastinate better!

Oh my God. It’s Friday! Finally! To give you a sense of where things stand at UmpBump HQ, en route to the office this morning I took a sharp left turn with my cup o’ Joe not properly secured in the cup holder (evidently). Now I have no coffee to drink, and altogether too much coffee soaked into my pants. Never have I needed some TGIF action so badly, and I trust you, loyal readers, feel the same. And here at UmpBump, “action” = “links.”

Rumors and Rants presents the ten worst contracts in baseball today. Guess who Number 1 is?

We didn’t talk about the John Bale story (pitcher on DL frustrated with how rehab is going, punches door with pitching hand, breaks hand) here on UmpBump because we were satisfied with the level of snark at Can’t Stop the Bleeding. Obviously, he didn’t have the Crash Davis tutorial on not hitting doors with your pitching hand. (I can’t keep giving you these free lessons!)

Rob Parker of the Detroit News says “like him or not, the Tigers need Bonds.” I disagree, given that the Tigers are actually third in the AL in runs scored and in the top five in every important offensive category. The problem for Detroit is that they’ve allowed the most runs of any AL Team—yes, even more than the Rangers. I fail to see how signing Barry Bonds is going to change that. But I guess we have to have thirty different versions of the article, “Team X needs to sign Barry Bonds,” no matter how silly some of those are.

Speaking of Bonds, he helped start this recent trend of using maple bats, which can be dangerous when they shatter (see photo). I’m an ash bat purist, so I was glad to see Jeff Passan’s article calling for the end of maple bats at Yahoo! Sports. (Hat tip to ShysterBall.)

Brawl! Since bench-clearing brawls are officially one of the reasons baseball is awesome, Babes Love Baseball has the video (in slo mo!) of Richie Sexson going after Kason Gabbard for throwing a high pitch. When I saw Sexson fling the helmet at Gabbard, and Gabbard promptly curl up in the fetal position on the pitcher’s mound, I knew I was watching an instant classic. The rest of the brawl is just gravy.

Ladies… has the goods on Carlos Gomez in the wake of his hitting-for-the-cycle performance. How you doin’?

Bill Plaschke tries to clarify whether Vin Scully is retiring or not. I came away with a new determination to watch all the Dodgers games this year on MLB.TV, just in case.

And Pinstripe Alley and River Ave Blues would both like to know why all the fuss about Joba’s fist pump. Seriously, a fist-pump controversy? That seems a bit much, even to this Boston fan. Try getting yourselves a shortstop on pace for 45 errors on the season, then tell me about controversy. I would love to hear the ululating in New York if Julio Lugo played for the Yankees. (Mostly because that would mean Julio Lugo was playing for the Yankees.)

And to wrap it up, Soxaholix presents: Youkalicious!

Know something I should be reading? Let me know!

I do try to control my raging Boston homer impulses here on UmpBump, but there’s only so much a girl can do. I’ve just got all these BoSox-centered thoughts rattling around in the old bean, and I’ve got let some of them out! But if you stick it out for a few paragraphs, there will be some assorted MLB-wide random thoughts towards the end.

Curt Schilling may be an opinionated guy, but he’s not afraid to admit when he’s wrong. He played catch yesterday, after what he described as his longest period without throwing a ball since he was five years old. And he admitted that the course of rehab recommended by the Red Sox doctors—which he fought tooth and nail—is working. And the weight bonus has been dropped from his contract. Bartolo Colon is pitching for Pawtucket on Saturday. And yesterday, Boston’s other old man, knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, threw 8 innings of shut-out ball in Detroit. Good times for Boston’s venerable hurlers.

Gordon Edes (still at the Boston Globe, at least for the time being) had a quick observation about Julio Lugo:

Julio Lugo began the day ranked at the bottom of all defensive categories for big-league shortstops. He had the most errors (9), the lowest fielding percentage (.919), was last in assists per nine innings (2.36), and last in range factor (3.49). The rest of the Sox infield? Mike Lowell, Sean Casey, and Dustin Pedroia have one error apiece, Kevin Youkilis none. Most of Lugo’s errors have come on routine plays, an indictment of his fundamental skills more than his athleticism…

This jibes with what I’ve been observing. Lugo gets to the ball and then bobbles it, or lets it go under his glove, or even snags it and then throws it away. It just seems like he’s not focused, as if he’s thinking too many steps ahead instead—he looks like he’s taking his eye off the ball when it’s coming to him and then getting rid of it before he gets his feet under him. Basic stuff. Lugo has called himself an aggressive shortstop and has admitted that sometimes, his enthusiasm results in mistakes. I wish he’d get a little more Zen-master-like focus.

Anyway, compare Edes’ observation, above, with this sentence from Nick Cafardo, the man who took over the Sunday Notes column from him:

Is there a shortstop alive with more range than the Angels’ Erick Aybar (please, no “range factor” stats)?

Ugh. For the record, Erick Aybar is leading MLB shortstops in range factor this season. He’s 13th in fielding percentage. Or, if you’re Nick Cafardo, in “‘fielding percentage’ stats.” Cafardo also interviewed Johnny Damon, who sounds like a bit of an ass:

You’re 34 years old with more than 2,100 hits. Do you ever think about playing a long time and getting 3,000 hits and possibly making it to the Hall of Fame?

JD: “I’m starting to think about it. I never thought about it because it’s a team game and there are so many pitches I took to try to work the pitch count to make it easier on people like [David] Ortiz, Mike Sweeney, and Manny [Ramírez]. I mean, what if I just swung and got the hits and all the times I played when I shouldn’t have to make sure other guys stay fresh? If you think about that over seven or eight years, how many would I have had? I’m starting to think about it more.”

Apparently, Johnny Damon could have had a lot more hits by now, if he hadn’t been trying to selflessly help the team. (Whaaa?)

At a recent game in the Fens, we were sitting right behind the Boston bullpen. We watched Hideki Okajima rub the parrot for good luck before the game. We watched Julian Tavarez flirting with the girls seated next to us. Billy the bullpen cop saw an adorable little boy walk up to the metal fencing and peek down into the pen; Billy got Jonathan Papelbon to walk over to the fence and say hi. The little boy’s eyes widened to the size of catchers’ mitts. We saw the guys trying to throw pumpkin seeds into a plastic cup. (Only one seed went in, by my count, but some unseen hand was throwing those seeds with a lot of great, biting movement on ‘em. It would really dive in against a righthanded hitter, with good downward break as well. Wonder who that was?)

Boston’s now enjoying a 4-game lead for first place in the AL East. The Rays are 4 back, the struggling Yanks and the Jays a game behind them, and the Orioles are back in the cellar where they belong.

Other MLB randomness:

Have you ever noticed how Placido Polanco has a head like a midget? It’s a midget-shaped head on a regular-sized body. Strange.

Barry Zito will return to the starting rotation without making any appearances out of the bullpen. This seems less like a return to sanity on the part of San Francisco management than like they utterly and completely lack for any sort of plan, at all. But then, we knew that.

The players’ association is investigating suspicions of collusion regarding unsigned veterans like Kenny Lofton and Barry Bonds. But old is old and indicted is indicted, no?

MLB looked into the blow-up doll incident in the White Sox clubhouse and decided it was a “team issue.” GM Ken Williams has been assured by Ozzie Guillen that it won’t happen again. Yet the skipper has told the press he sees nothing offensive, immature, or otherwise pathetic with having lewdly positioned blow-up dolls in the clubhouse because it’s a clubhouse, and what happens in the clubhouse should stay in the clubhouse because it’s the clubhouse, goddammit, and if grown men want to play with dolls in their clubhouse than that’s their clubhouse-given right! Clubhouse. (Note to self: rename office cubicle “the clubhouse;” purchase opium; hire harem boys; acquire a quantity of mead, one of those roasted pigs with the apple stuck in its mouth, and a cake; send Outlook invites for Friday afternoon orgy.) Now, it should be noted that there was, at one point, a naked blow-up doll in my freshman year dorm room. I have no idea how it got there, but one day I woke up and saw it, lo and behold, perched atop my roommate’s wardrobe. And a couple of months later, it vanished. I offer this anecdote just by way of saying, random and tasteless blow-up dolls could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Baseball Prospectus Stat of the Day:

Top 5 2008 NL On Base Leaders, by PECOTA Projected OBP

Player, Team, OBP

Albert Pujols, SLN, .427
Barry Bonds, SFN, .419
Todd Helton, COL, .415
Chipper Jones, ATL, .410
Nick Johnson, WAS, .402

Oh well.

The Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball will be released tomorrow and is expected to name at least 50 major league players, and perhaps as many as 80. But this morning, I’ve been thinking about a different scandal.

As part of Hall of Fame week on UmpBump, we posted a poll asking you to vote for players who ought to be in the Hall, but aren’t. The results surprised me. As of this writing, Shoeless Joe Jackson in the lead with 57% of the vote. I, like most baseball fans, know the outline of the story of the Chicago Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, but not the details. The one bit I remember most clearly is the story of the little boy who looked up at Shoeless Joe and pleaded, “Say it ain’t so.” Joe, as you might remember, is supposed to have replied, “It’s so, kid.”

So I started reading up on the scandal this morning, trying to string together half-remembered scraps of gossip from nearly 100 years ago. I came across an excellent repository at the the website of the Chicago Historical Society. The following paragraph especially caught my eye:

Throughout the Series, Hugh Fullerton, a sports writer for the Chicago Herald and Examiner, had been paying close attention to the rumors of a fix. He hinted about the selling of the Series in his newspaper columns and urged club owners to do something about gamblers’ involvement in baseball. Most people didn’t believe fixing the World Series was possible. Club owners, who knew better, were afraid the public would turn their backs on baseball if they admitted any wrongdoing, and refused to acknowledge a problem. (Emphasis added.)

Switch the dates and a couple of names, and the above paragraph could be about our own Steroid Era. And the similarities don’t end with club owners turning a blind eye out of fear.

1. Gambling was a problem in baseball for years and yet no one did anything. Rumors of thrown games went back to the 1800s and the earliest days of the game. Similarly, abuse of steroids, amphetamines, and HGH were a problem for years before any action was taken.

2. Fans of the game were initially skeptical about gambling’s impact on baseball. Even today some still maintain that you cannot really put in a fix on a baseball game because it’s such a game of inches and averages. How can one player—or even one manager, in the case of Pete Rose—really guarantee a loss? Likewise, even now, there are some fans who insist that steroids do not have much of an impact on baseball because, after all, you still have to hit the ball.

3. It took a major crisis for baseball to expunge gambling from the game. Interest in the 1919 World Series—the first after World War I—ran so high, the league made it a best-of-nine series instead of a best-of-seven. When it became clear that the Series had been fixed—and when next season, thrown games continued to be an issue—baseball finally took action, putting several players from the 1919 White Sox on trial. That’s strikingly like the Steroids Era. Executives at every level knew there was a problem, but it took a major crisis—a threat to one of baseball’s most storied records, the career home-run record—for real action to be taken. And again, the issue is being sorted out in court with the indictment of Barry Bonds.

4. Shoeless Joe and his fellow “Black Sox” were scapegoats for a problem that was bigger than themselves. Joe Jackson was born dirt poor and went to work in a textile mill at the age of 13. At a time when most players made between $6,000 and $15,000 a year, he was offered $20,000 just to throw a few games. And the Black Sox were far from the only players to give in to temptation. Yet Joe and his compatriots were caught and banned from baseball (even though they were never convicted by a judge). Today, players like Bonds, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, and Mark McGwire have become lightning rods for their steroid use, even when we know that players at all levels used steroids and even though neither Bonds nor McGwire ever failed a drug test. And while players these days are highly paid, thanks to the strongest workers’ union in America, many star baseball players are still born into poverty, have huge extended families to take care of, and have an almost overwhelming financial incentive to cheat.

5. Even now, fans are ambivalent about the presence of gambling in the game. Many are content with Hall of Fame bans for gamblers and juicers alike. But as is clear from our poll, many feel that admitted gamblers like Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose should be eligible for the Hall, despite their lifetime bans from baseball. Many feel that these players should be forgiven—Shoeless Joe was, without a doubt, the best hitter of his era and set a record for rookie batting average when he hit .408 in his first full season in the majors. Pete Rose is one of the best hitters of any era, maintaining a .304 average over 24 seasons and amassing a record 4,256 career hits. Similarly, many fans want Barry Bonds and his 756 career home runs in the Hall of Fame. And many want Mark McGwire and his then-single-season record 70 home runs in Cooperstown.

What do I think? I think Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was a jerk—a jerk and a tightwad who promised his players bonuses and then reneged on his end of the bargain. According to the Chicago Historical Society:

Comiskey frequently made promises to his players that he had no intention of keeping. He once promised his team a big bonus if they won the pennant. When they did win, the bonus turned out to be a case of cheap champagne. Comiskey even charged his players for laundering their uniforms. In protest, for several weeks the players wore the same increasingly dirty uniforms. Comiskey removed the uniforms from their lockers and fined the players.

[…]

Comiskey had once promised [Sox pitcher Eddie] Cicotte that if he won thirty games, he would receive a $10,000 bonus. When Cicotte won twenty-nine games, Comiskey benched him with the excuse that Cicotte should rest up for the pennant games…Cicotte’s personal request, regarding the fix, was $10,000 up front.

I think it’s a travesty that Comiskey is in the Hall of Fame and Shoeless Joe isn’t. But two wrongs don’t make a right. Apologists can portray Shoeless Joe as an underpaid, naive, reluctant conspirator, who was acquitted a judge and hit .385 in the Series. However, Joe admitted to taking money to fix World Series games and admitted to throwing those games. And for that, he is and always should be banned from Cooperstown.

UmpBumpers, what do you think about the lifetime bans of Jackson and Rose? And should those named in the Mitchell Report suffer a similar fate?

Barry Bonds: “I won’t go (to the Hall of Fame, if you put an asterisk on my home run ball). I won’t be part of it,” Bonds said. “You can call me, but I won’t be there.”

Society: Yeah, umm, Barry — about that. I wouldn’t, you know, sit by the phone or anything.

I think now this is going to get interesting. Now that teams can make offers to free agents from other teams, we’re going to see some fun things happen.

Here are some of the more interesting plot points:

1. Mike Lowell is still unsigned. The Yankees still need a 3B. The Yankees still have more money than God.

2. Mark Prior will become a free agent if the Chicago Cubs don’t tender him a contract. Who’s gonna roll the dice on Prior?

3. Andruw Jones had a terrible season. But Scott Boras still thinks he’s worth $7.2 billion a year. Is he right?

4. Barry Bonds says he still wants to play. Logic says he’ll be a DH. But where? And will the impending Mitchell report scare teams away?

5. A-hole.

6. The Nationals have been mentioned as possible destinations for Andruw Jones and Aaron Rowand. Clearly, somebody went and convinced Washington that it’s a real team. But will anybody want to play for the ex-Expos?

7. Kosuke Fukodome is gonna need a nickname. Kofu anyone?

Here’s a round-up of recent baseball tidbits. Sigh. It must be November.

In case you missed it, Red Sox catcher (and captain) Jason Varitek did one better than handing out candy this Halloween: he gave out autographs. After the Variteks’ Halloween party broke up (the guest list included the Mirabellis and the Lowells), Tek took a lawn chair out to the driveway and started signing, at the suggestion of his 7-year-old daughter. The short version:

Christopher Roberts, 10, dressed up as the catcher - a white number 33 Red Sox jersey, baseball pants, and red colored socks pulled up past his calves - only to find himself standing face-to-face with his hero.

“He signed my shirt, right on the first three,” Roberts said.

Two police cruisers came to direct traffic and control the crowd, which swelled to some 50 youngsters and parents on a leafy block in the tony village of Waban, in Newton.

“Varitek looked really tired,” said Chris O’Connell, 45, who brought his sons Joshua, (dressed as a Japanese ninja), 9, and Zeke, (Darth Vader), 7, to get autographs. “It was great - for him to be sitting out there after 9 o’clock on Halloween says a lot about the guy.”

At the local commuter station a few blocks from Varitek’s home, the village’s affection for the Sox catcher is articulated on handwritten signs hung on a fence - “Waban Loves V-Tek!” and “Tek is the best” - that he passes on his route to Fenway Park.

“Waban has been good to us and respected our privacy,” Varitek said yesterday in an interview at his home. “It was a good opportunity for me to say thanks.”

At the O’Connell house, Joshua woke up the morning after Halloween in disbelief. He spotted the baseball signed by the catcher of the 2007 World Series champions, but still ran down stairs with a question. “I asked mom if it was a dream,” he said.

And not quite a family man yet, Jonathan Papelbon took to the airwaves, using some colorful language on The Late Show. He also exposed fellow fan favorite David Ortiz….as an avid Bedazzler:

I kept waiting for Letterman to ask him about the Papel-face. Oh well.

Manny Ramirez also went on the Late Show, where he at first seemed almost in thrall of Jay Leno, which was kind of cute. Despite some requests to be traded away from Boston in the past, it sounds like Manny is quite happy to stay there now:

Steve Carrell was the other guest and just seems happily bemused by the whole thing.

And to round out our late-night lineup, we present the video Conan O’Brien interviewing one Bedazzled motherf*cker, David Ortiz, who came bearing gifts:

His advice to you? Go home and get some ass. (Seriously, he said that!)

In other news, Scott Boras continues to furiously backpedal from his mismanagement of A-Rod’s already dubious public image, which he cast into further disrepute by announcing his client’s free agency during Game 4 of the World Series. He now insists that A-Rod didn’t really mean to stand up Hank Aaron. Nonetheless, any warm feelings that half-assed excuse could stir were instantly negated by news leaking out that Boras and A-Rod considered the Yankees’ lucrative $230 million contract to be about $100 million short. The Hardball Times has a full breakdown on the challenges Boras and Rodriguez face en route to securing that massive contract.

In other douchery, Barry Bonds whined about getting scapegoated. If you don’t click on the link, did he make a sound? The AP reports that Bonds won’t attend the Hall of Fame ceremony inducting his record-setting home run ball if the ball is branded with an asterisk, as fans have demanded (an artist bought the ball and set up a website where seamheads could vote on whether the ball should be asterisked or not; the result was overwhelmingly in favor of asterisking). Bonds explained:

““You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history. You can’t do it. “

Those are some strong words. Does this mean we can count on George Bush to invade Barry’s house?

A few last Red-Sox-as-World-Champs notes: Charlie Pierce has an engaging column on the Sox’ win that a) refreshingly demonstrates that the Red Sox are not, in fact, the New Yankees, and b) contains this interesting nugget:

On Sunday, they brought out Papelbon, and that fearsome goofball ended the game by blowing away pinch hitter Seth Smith with some high heat, and by demonstrating some impressive upper-body strength by hoisting the fully armored Jason Varitek off the ground.

(Note to Papelbon: Baseball etiquette requires that the catcher lift the pitcher in such situations.)

This may be true, but at least on the Red Sox, the last time I saw Tek hoist the pitcher, it was when he lofted 120-pounds-soaking-wet rookie Clay Buchholz after his no hitter. Everyone else seems to insist on hoisting Varitek (as Foulke did in 2004, I might add).

And sadly, just as I was coming to rely on Will Leitch’s Fair and Foul blog, it is stolen from me. But not before he points out a few salient items, one of which I was thinking of myself as Leno interviewed Manny: why doesn’t anyone ever ask him about hitting? Maybe that’s not of interest to the typical Late Show viewer, but I would dearly love an opportunity to hear the Maestro break down his art. Maybe some day.

Do you like baseball? Sure, you do! That’s why you’re here.

Do you like ketchup? Who doesn’t? Goes great on hot dogs, hamburgers, and a hot fudge sundae (minus whipped cream, obviously).

Do you have a completely unhealthy and utterly creepy fetish revolving around Matt Murphy, the Mets fan who caught Barry Bonds’ 756th homerun and want a piece of him and his musk around your bedroom for the rest of your life?

Well then do I have something for you!

In phase one of milking the 756th cash-cow, Murphy is auctioning off the Jose Reyes jersey he wore on that fateful, historic, eventful night on eBay. And he hasn’t washed it since so it still has the real ketchup stains - the war wounds, if you will - he incurred going after the ball. And on top of it all, he’s generously offering to autograph it. By hand! As of this writing, the highest bid is $112.50 so get goin’ while the gettin’s good!

Next item up for bid: Matt Murphy’s soiled underpants which were “authenticated” at the moment he realized that 756 was coming at him.

In the 1998 blockbuster classic Armageddon, the audience is forced to make a decision that no one could possibly envy: would you prefer to watch as an asteroid the size of Texas annihilates all signs of life on Earth, or watch Ben Affleck survive. It’s just a no-win situation that leaves you with a queasy feeling all around.

Which brings me to the latest installment of Barry Bonds vs. Curt Schilling. These two, fine examples of human beings have been going at it for quite some time. More recently, Curt appeared on HBO’s Costas Now last month and stated to host Bob Costas (who Bonds called “a midget”) that Bonds’ lack of response to the allegations from his former mistress that he had told her about his steroid use was pretty much an admission of guilt. He said on the show:

“If someone wrote that stuff about me and I didn’t sue their (butt) off, am I not admitting that there’s some legitimacy to it?”

Yes, Curt. That’s a manly way to handle it. Tell your lawyers.

Oh, and it seems that Barry heard you loud and clear.

According to today’s edition of the Bay Area publication The Mercury News, Bonds has actually created a team of lawyers to specifically target Curt Schilling:

“This is directed at Schilling more than anybody,” said criminal defense attorney Michael Rains, who is representing Bonds in a grand jury investigation stemming from the Balco case.

“Schilling said some things that were inappropriate and potentially defamatory. I know it was upsetting to Barry. We talked about the issue and I know he was talking to some civil lawyers to put people on notice that he has someone defending him.”

So I ask you, would you prefer to live in a world where Curt Schilling can yap off on television with no consequences, or one where Barry Bonds is even richer having successfully sued Schilling’s (butt) off?

It’s times like these that I wish Endor was a real planet so I can move there. But then again, I’d be surrounded by Ewoks. And no one wants that.