Sportsfrog.com

One of my favorite courtroom maneuvers is asking a witness a question knowing it will be objected to and then the judge instructs the jury to make believe they didn’t hear the question to begin with question.

Here in Iowa, the center of the American universe until Thursday evening, Huckabee did something very similar. He said he wouldn’t run a negative ad against Romney and then proceeded to show the media the ad, thereby having parts of the ad run for FREE. Pretty sharp.

So what does this have to do with sports you may be wondering. Well a first time HOF voter wrote a column about his experience being a first time voter. During the course of his column he rang the big ass bell which of course contradicted his previous statements.

So here is my response to Dave Buscema of the Time Herald Record, serving the Hudson Valley and the Catskills (where the corned beef is really, really lean).

So I noted the time at 12:52 p.m. yesterday as I typed a message to a colleague, confidently announcing an end to the chaos, along with the names of the players who would be checked on my first Hall of Fame ballot.

In the end — after I had allowed myself to be lobbied into a vote for Tim Raines before frantically re-opening the case to change my mind — I discovered a thought I will now use as my guide:

If a player’s status somehow came down to my vote, he has to make me feel worse for keeping him out of the Hall than inducting him.

Raines’ name was removed from my ballot at the last possible moment.

When he was in his first full season with the Expos, Raines admitted cocaine use, sought help and is thought to have been drug-free ever since making a mistake when he was a “young, young, young 20,” as he said in one interview. The rest of his career and status as a great teammate and leader was enough to make me consider overlooking the offense because cocaine is an addiction more than a performance enhancer, but three things finally tore at my gut enough to take him off my ballot for now:

1. He admitted sliding headfirst the year he used because he kept coke in his uniform pocket and didn’t want it to fall out — which is an act as disrespectful of the game as you can imagine.

2. As a player whose key Hall of Fame attribute was his speed, I want to examine a little further whether the use of a stimulant could have enhanced his performance whether he used it for that purpose or not.

Ok Dave, if coke enhanced your speed performance you can be sure Marion Jones would have taken it. She took everything else. It is obvious you don’t know shit about drugs. Fortunately I do. There was a time that my urine not only had a street value but would have broken some of Dick Pound’s machines.

How can you “consider” overlooking something and then two paragraphs later make it the basis for your decision? Is Peter King your editor?

Raines is a more murky issue for me than a straight cheater, but going back to the rule I created for myself, at this moment I can live with Raines not having a plaque.

That doesn’t mean I won’t reconsider after more time to ponder and research.

How can you wonder if cocaine can be used as a PED without a single phone call to a doctor or addiction specialist or Michael Ray Richardson? The only thing I ever did faster on coke was talk. I talked faster than the guy in the FedEx commercials. I remember some comic’s joke about coke (back in the days when you could do drug humor).

“My friend said you should try some coke. All it does is enhance your personality…. Really? Well what if you’re already an asshole?”

Remember tip the wait staff and stay away from the veal.