Remember that tired arm I called out Kenny Rogers for? Turns out he had a pretty good reason for it. Rogers had a blood clot in his left shoulder, which caused the fatigue. Rogers had surgery yesterday to remove the clot and fix some arteries. He’ll be out until July, leaving the Tigers without their most honest experienced (best?) pitcher.

“For us, we have to go out without Kenny and just play good baseball,” Tigers first baseman Sean Casey said during ESPN’s Detroit-Yankees telecast Friday. “We’ll get him back at some point and we’re wishing him well. But we can’t feel sorry for ourselves.”

Make no mistake, this is a big loss for Detroit. But they still have a hell of a bullpen, four very good starters, and a very good lineup. The Tigers from years past had the right to bitch and moan about losing a starter as good as Rogers. Not this team. It’s up to Verlander, Bonderman, Robertson, and Maroth to pick up the slack. It’s up to Jim Leyland to find a 5th starter to chew up some innings in Rogers’ absence.

With Opening Day just a few days away, the Tigers faced a real harsh reality about how hard it is to be a consistent winner in Major League Baseball. Last year’s team got every break and never had the injury bug hit their team. They took the league by surprise. But this year, they have to do it all over. That’s going to be even harder because opponents aren’t going to sleep on this team. We’ll find out real soon if this team is ready for be an annual threat int he American League.

Is there a bigger prima donna in professional sports than a starting pitcher? We have Roger Clemens, who is still not “mentally ready” to pitch despite being in the bigs for 21 years. And now we have Kenny Rogers, an 18 year cheater veteran that was put on the DL today. The reason? “Tired arm.”

Rogers’ role as a veteran in this team is to be ready for Opening Day. If that means not pitching for the final week of Spring Training, you do it. Who is able to sit out their job because of tired arm? If you’re a receptionist, you type through those “tired wrists” and get carpal tunnel syndrome. If you’re a construction worker, you work through that “tired body” and lift that massive piece of wood.

What a piece of garbage you are, Kenny Rogers. I know your job of appearing in casino commercials takes a lot of your time but you should still be ready to go for Opening Day. It’s inexcusable that a savvy veteran now has a tired arm after throwing 22 innings in Spring Training. Rogers threw 227 innings last year when it was all said and done, but this is what sends him over the edge?

I know Jim Leyland is fierce in the clubhouse Kenny. But maybe you should have told him you didn’t want to pitch into the 4th inning in your recent start. I’m sure he would have understood. Instead, you found a way to weasel your way out of early April. But all is not lost. That should give him plenty of time to come up with some awful excuse about game two.

Here at Sportable, we’ve made it widely known that catchy phrases such as “Smudgegate” attached to incidents such as the one with Kenny Rogers in the World Series are downright stupid. So when Rogers comes out to the media and defends himself over Smudgegate, I generally take no interest in what he’s saying.

What’s done is done. There’s no reason for this to come up in the media again. The 2006 World Series simply blew. It was uneventful, it was boring, and it was loaded with more errors than a dyslexic writing an essay. The only thing that’s worthwhile about this whole situation is the banter going back and forth between Rogers and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa.

“I can take a tool belt full of whatever and give it to some of the best pitchers in the game, and they’re not going to do the things I did in the postseason,” Rogers said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press. “I did nothing different than any other pitcher.”

Really Kenny? Are you sure that brown substance on your hand was something every pitcher uses? I’m not sold. And on the topic of LaRussa, why in the world is he even involved in this. The Cardinals won the series, so it shouldn’t matter what Rogers did in game two, because the Tigers laid eggs in games one, three, four, and five. Even though my conscience tells me otherwise, I really just want the media to put this whole thing to rest. I don’t care about Smudgegate, and neither should you. And I’d also like to award Tony LaRussa with the most profound statement of the century. “Didn’t look like dirt.” That’s because it wasn’t, Tony.

The talk of Monday afternoon in the sports world has been about Kenny Rogers and the most famous left hand this side of Pee Wee Herman. What exactly was that brown stuff on it? Feces? Dirt? Negative. It was pine tar. And Major League Baseball botched the situation horribly by allowing him to continue pitching in game two. It’s become even more disturbing after pictures of past playoff starts have been looked at. It appears Rogers mysterious “dirt” happened to be on his hand in other playoff games as well.

When the umpire conference took place in 1st inning of last night’s game, something should have come out of it. It took the Cardinals one inning to notice Rogers’ pitches were moving suspicously. After the first inning, LaRussa came out to tell the umpires what players had noticed: Rogers was cheating. What happened after was just a disgrace. Home plate umpire allegedly told Rogers to “Kenny, that dirt thing that you have on your hand, if you’ll just do me a favor and take it off.” That’s it? That’s how you’re going to punish a player who is purposely cheating in the World Series? You’re asking him to do a favor and remove the dirt like it’s an inconvienance? What garbage.

The use of pine tar or any substance to alter the movement of pitches is grounds for ejection and suspension. Especially when the magnitude of the game is this high. But why the hell didn’t LaRussa follow through on the complaints of his own players? And why does Rogers deny ever having the conversation with the home plate umpire? Read the rest of this entry »

Chargers Linebacker Shawne Merriman was suspended by the NFL for four games. I was a huge Merriman fan, and I think almost everyone who saw him play was. The guy never stops competing, and is always giving full effort. There have been never ending stories about his intense workout schedule, so I never assumed that he was on steroids, but evidently he was. It’s crazy to think that this guy who would randomly drop down and do pushups during games of Madden, and be involved in such a ridiculous off season workout would poison his body with steroids.

This sucks for Merriman, but even more so, it sucks for the Chargers. They lose Merriman, and will also be without sack leader Shaun Phillips who is out. Take away their two main pass rush threats and suddenly the vaunted Chargers defense becomes a little easier to play against. My main question about Merriman has become, how long has he taken steroids? Read the rest of this entry »