A funny thing happened on the way to the World Series last night. Chien Ming Wang and the undermanned, underhyped, undertalented made the Red Sox, otherwise known as the finest team to ever take the field, look a little ridiculous. Or the Red Sox hitters made themselves look ridiculous a long time before Wang took the hill and he just kept getting them out. What a shame that was.

Perhaps a little bit more shocking was the fact that the Yankees managed to get hits against Clay Buchholz. Didn't any one bother to inform these so-called Bronx Bombers that Buchholz threw a no hitter last season even before he was officially a rookie? Who gave them the right to beat the Red Sox at Fenway with the future of the Red Sox rotation facing them? It's simply outrageous. This sort of aggression won't stand.

A cynical theory could be advanced to suggest that the vastly superior Red Sox are simply lulling the manifestly inferior Yankees into a false sense of security. And one could say the whole of Major League Baseball, what with David Ortiz off to what can only charitably called a slow start this season.

An even more cynical theory could be advanced to suggest that maybe the Red Sox who are desperate to increase their fan base in the Pacific Rim didn't want to humiliate Chien Ming Wang, the darling of Taiwanese fans, because they may need to squeeze every cent out of that region. While it is improbable, it bears consideration. What with the subprime catastrophe and the dangerously large portions of American financial services companies being purchased by foreign sovereign wealth firms, the "tough yuppie" (and if you think that that term is an oxymoron, ask a Red Sox fan and he'll tell you, or at the very least whip a piece of pizza off the back of your head when you turn your back) is facing tough times. And we all know that this legendary "tough yuppie" is the backbone of Red Sox Nation.

A still more cynical theory could be advanced to show that the Red Sox who are starting off more slowly than their teammates this season are the guys who reinvented their careers since signing with the Red Sox. Now that George Mitchell's "report" has been exposed to the light of day and a member of the Red Sox board of directors is no longer serving as MLB's watchdog for illicit performance enhancing substances, it seems slightly coincidental that the thriving's run out for some of the players who feasted on opposing pitchers while under Mitchell's protection. But then I never was one for buying coincidences...

As for Mike Mussina outdueling Josh Beckett and not in that good Las Vegas way, but in the bad, let's see who can allow more runs today way... I'm not letting that worry me too much, either. Mussina entered whatever phase comes after the twilight of a pitcher's career before John Kerry invented Manny Ortez as a favorite current Red Sox player.

Now that the post Super Bowl euphoria is passing, it's time to get back to serious business. I didn't take the time to comment when the Red Sox added Sean Casey to the team in the not too distant past for three reasons. First, the NFL playoffs were much more important at the time. Second, I really don't know what to make of it. And third, I'm not too worried about what he can bring to the table.

Casey is, in theory, an interesting addition to the 2008 Red Sox lineup. He's a left handed bat, who can serve to spell Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis at stretches during the season. I am not anticipating that he would play third, but with him in the lineup it would free Youkilis to play third and Lowell to rest, or DH according to the whim of Francona.

That said, he's not tremedously young anymore. Casey won't be a character problem, since he's been very well liked by teammates, fans and the media everywhere he's played. But he's slow, even by the standards of these Red Sox who are (with the exception of Ellsbury and others) a particularly slow team, both mentally and physically. Also, I don't see him getting enough at bats to make a big impact on the team's fortunes. But who knows who might get hurt.

In other news, Brian McNamee took the stand in Congress today. His battle with Roger Clemens has taken an interesting turn. And one must wonder how it will impact the more important battle being waged between myself and theKobraKommander for the hearts and minds of my readers. This is, indeed, a strange turn.

Brian McNamee turned evidence including syringes, gauze pads and vials over to the IRS Special Investigator allegedly providing the substance behind the earlier accusation that he had injected Roger Clemens with steroids, HGH and everything but the kitchen sink. At first blush, this looks very bad for Clemens, who testified in his own deposition on Tuesday that he had never taken performance enhancing substances.

If Clemens is proved to have perjured himself, it is, ironically, the only way he can fairly and legally be punished for what he is alleged to have done in the Mitchell Report. As baseball had no comprehensive policy banning performance enhancing substances prior to 2004, all of the allegations against Clemens would be moot otherwise, since one cannont be punished under a law written ex post facto.

As a defender of Clemens from the first appearance of the Mitchell Report, I am not tremendously worried about the material that has been handed over to the government investigators. This comment provided by the doping expert ESPN consulted for their story eases my mind somewhat:

Doping expert Don Catlin said steroids could still be detected in a sample that old.

"But if you don't find it, it doesn't mean it wasn't there before," said Catlin, who added there are sure to be chain of custody issues.

He said HGH would be much less stable.

Any reasonably competent lawyer should be able to get around that, provided that there is anything around which to get in this story. Granted, there isn't a great deal of detail in Catlin's comment, but it doesn't seem strong enough to damn Clemens, either. Time, however, will tell.

So, we're counting down to kickoff, and the inevitability of 18-0. It's not an inevitability that I particularly enjoy, but one that I have come to accept. I am tired of convincing myself that there are any one of a number of vulnerabilities on this Patriot team that any one of a number of opponents could exploit in any one of a number of ways.

It doesn't matter how slow and decrepit the Patriot linebacking unit is. It doesn't matter how dirty Rodney Harrison plays this week. It doesn't even matter that I don't think Laurence Maroney is a legitimate big time tailback in today's NFL. All that really matters is that Quentin Jammer, Antonio Cromartie, Marlon McCree, Clinton Hart and Eric Weddle have a better chance of being elected Pope than they do of containing Moss and Welker this week. And even if they could contain those two, what of Ben Watson, Stallworth and Kevin Faulk (who has been coming up big in situations where I didn't want him to come up big since he was at LSU under Gerry DiNardo's reign of terror)?

Yes, the Chargers managed to lead the NFL in takeaways this season. They also managed to beat Indianapolis twice this season, even winning in the RCA Dome last week. But they also suffered humiliating losses to the Patriots and the very, very, very average Minnesota Vikings this season. Playing on the road and in the cold in New England against the undefeated team that every one loves to hate, it's just not happening. I only hope LaDanian Tomlinson manages to be as entertaining with this year's round of postgame whining as he was last year.

Since this blog is supposed to be about the Red Sox, I would be remiss if I didn't pass along Mike Lowell's statesman-like response to potential testing for HGH in baseball. Mike Lowell is willing to take the test, provided that it's 100% accurate, but he's out if the test is only 99% accurate. I can't help but wonder if there's any room for negotiation there, since it seems very unlikely that any test for any substance will ever be 100% accurate.

Lowell also brought up the double standard issue. Baseball players, writers, coaches and so forth have been quick to point out the fact that Shawne Merriman was suspended for four games and still went to the Pro Bowl last year, and Rodney Harrison missed the first four games of this season for being implicated in an HGH scandal. But it is baseball that is in the cross hairs.

It's simple, as Lowell himself conceded in that article. Baseball looked the other way for a long time, refusing any kind of testing. The NFL, on the other hand, has had a ban on steroids for years. It might not be perfect, but at least football players have been suspended for violating the NFL ban on performance enhancers for years.

Mark McGwire admitted he took andro in 1998, when it was not banned according to the rules of Major League Baseball. It was, however, a banned substance in the NFL at the time. Roger Clemens is alleged to have taken steroids in years when none of the substances Brian McNamee and George Mitchell accuse him of taking were even banned in baseball. Baseball didn't even start testing or developing any kind of comprehensive policy until Congress got on their case.

I don't think there is a double standard here. Rodney Harrison and Shawne Merriman lost a quarter of the season and four game checks. Four games doesn't seem like much at first, but when you do the math it is the equivalent of 40 and a half baseball games. Considering the NFL developed and implemented this policy on their own, long before baseball got religion thanks to a Congressional hearing, I think it's more than reasonable.

I do think Merriman shouldn't have gone to the Pro Bowl, but I wasn't one of the people who voted for him. I think out of common decency, he should have declined the invite, but that's his business. It is, or at least it was, a free country. If people are dumb enough to vote to send a cheater to the Pro Bowl, that's their misfortune.

In other news, in my ongoing effort to make this blog more interactive, here's another gem of a comment from an anonymous reader. In a recent post I happened to bid the Seattle Seahawks a less than fond farewell from the 2007 season. As a part of it, I ripped Seahawk fans for ripping off traditions from Texas A & M and suggested they should play a song to commemorate every early exit from the playoffs the way A & M plays Taps across campus when an alumnus (or alumna) dies in the line of duty serving in the Armed Services.

I suggested "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" as Seattle stole the nickname Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz (Not very funny, but then I just might have overindulged with respect to beer at the time). Reader KobraKommander (in one of his rare instances of bringing things to the table) improved the suggestion with one of his own, offering "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," which is pretty funny.

To make a very long, and pretty unnecessary story short, the anonymous commenter suggested "I'm an @#$hole" by Denis Leary. I bring it up because this is a bit ambiguous. I assume the commenter meant that I, the blogger, am the @#$hole. But it is open to the suggestion that the commenter himself could be the @#$hole. Or any Seahawk fans who might play that to bid their team adieu from the playoffs could be the @#$hole. And let's face it, the odds are that if you live in Seattle or root for the Seahawks, you probably are an @#$hole.

So, the BCS National Championship Game was played tonight, and still all any one can talk about is this Roger Clemens story. To respond to the lone gunman's comment on last night's post. It is an interesting point that Clemens could have been injected by a team doctor or trainer if he weren't receiving an illicit substance. However, I would counter that by wondering aloud what sort of nitwit pays someone to do something illegal with a check?

I disagree with the notion that Clemens put himself in the position where he has to prove himself innocent. When he stayed silent, every moron with a press pass wrote, talked and shouted that Clemens had to answer these charges. Had he not gone on 60 Minutes, would that somehow have gone away, or would the CHB and Jay Mariotti and Bill Simmons have screamed more bloody murder?

And if I'm not mistaken, Brian McNamee was an employee of the Toronto Blue Jays when he met Roger Clemens and injected him with whatever he was injected in 1998. It was only later that he served as Roger's personal trainer.

Then, there is the CHB's dismal insult to his readers' intelligence masquerading as a column in this morning's Globe. The press conference this evening where Clemens played the tape of his phone conversation with McNamee should have been stage managed better. If you read Jay Mariotti's "thoughts" on the situation, you might get the impression that Clemens ducked the question McNamee posed frequently "what do you want me to do?" I thought Clemens was crystal clear in his answer "I want someone to tell the truth."

Perhaps one can assume that Clemens meant the Pope or Mike Huckabee or Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Tank Johnson, but I was convinced that Clemens was telling McNamee to come clean. Perhaps there are those people out there who would have been more explicit in language and in tone, perhaps responding to McNamee's curses with similarly strident language. I wonder, though.

The worst thing Clemens could have done was been harsh with McNamee. He would have written a even less favorable story against himself for the legion of press drones out there. After all, McNamee introduced the topic of his dying ten year old child. The media would have burnt Clemens at the stake if he'd spoken harshly to the father of a dying kid. So I had no problem with that particular answer.

I'm not sure what taping that conversation gets Clemens in the long run. It makes him look a lot like Richard Nixon. Now, I'm as big a fan of Nixon as the next guy, but he did have a few issues with paranoia. And embroiled in a he said he said scandal like this, looking like Nixon probably isn't the way to go.

I don't see a problem with Clemens comments that Andy Pettitte's case is a separate issue. Why does it necessarily follow that because Pettitte admitted that received HGH injections from McNamee on two occasions in 2002 then Roger Clemens must have also been injected by McNamee? The transitive property only applies in algebra class, and it is not admissible in court as evidence, as far as I can tell.

This section of Shaughnessy's analysis of the Clemens interview bothered me most of all:

Asked what McNamee gained by lying, the best Clemens could do was, "Evidently not going to jail."

In fact, "not going to jail" was McNamee's reason for telling the truth (McNamee cooperated with Mitchell as part of a deal to avoid federal prosecution). McNamee faces going to jail only if he lied to Mitchell. Wallace then asked Clemens why McNamee would go to jail and the Rocket responded, "Well, I think he's been buying and movin' steroids."

Wallace then failed to ask a follow-up.

Not going to Federal prison, or any kind of correctional facility is pretty high on just about every sane person's list of priorities. Or maybe the CHB hasn't seen OZ. Perhaps the Massachusetts Department of Corrections could let him take a look at their facilities in Concord or Cedar Junction to educate him on what life in prison even in these enlightened times is like. Let's just say there's a good reason the Red Cross won't take blood donations from people who've spent more than 72 consecutive hours behind bars in the past year.

Maybe the CHB has seen the Untouchables or perhaps On the Waterfront a time or two too many. Not every person who oversees investigations into various crimes, misdemeanors and other such violations of the public trust is an altruist. Say McNamee stretched or bent the truth a time or two but provided the information to put some people behind bars and earned a few headlines for the occasional ambitious civil servant, might that not influence that ambitious civil servant to help McNamee out in return? That's how the justice system works in this country.

And closing his little piece of drivel with this cute little epigram: "And we've heard too many lies from those who came before and wound up guilty as charged" did very little to calm me down. What bearing does any other person accused in the previous round of Congressional hearings or in the Mitchell Report have on this case? It doesn't matter one bit for Roger's case whether Mark McGwire or Rafael Palmeiro lied or told the truth. For that matter, it doesn't have any impact on this case if Mark McGwire dressed in a damn tutu and stood outside an elementary school punching every seventh child in the face or jumped on Oprah's couch like Tom Cruise. Good work with the responsible, honest journalism. I bet Grantland Rice is real proud.

Quite a bit has happened since I last posted. I know, I really meant to update more frequently, but I had to go on a bit of a bender what with Illinois taking the beating it did at the hands of the hated USC Trojans and all. So there is much to talk about in this post. If I were the sort of blogger that succeeds at blogging, I'd have posted tonight's material in three or segments and most of it a long time ago.

First, I really thought Illinois could have won that game. I don't think USC was that much more talented than Illinois. Unfortunately, the Trojans were much more experienced and every single break of the game and bounce of the ball went their way. That bounding backward pass was a hell of a play by McKnight, but when does that ever turn from disaster into a 60 yard gain? And once it became a passing game, Williams just couldn't bring them back. That said, I thought Mendenhall was the best back on the field that day and I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well Vonte Davis tackled. I assumed he was just a speed cover corner, but he made some Darrell Green-esque tackles, and not just when he ran down McKnight on that nightmare play.

As for yesterday's games, so what if Seattle won? I still think they're massively overrated. Against any other team, those two gift INTs Hasselbeck threw to Landry would have sent the pride of the Emerald City and the 12th Person home crying. Which reminds me, did Seattle rip off their nickname from the town at the end of the damn Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz, or what?

I was very impressed with Mike Tomlin, even though the Steelers won't be joining us until mini-camps open. I like the fact that he allowed his defense to fight to the bitter end and not pull that lame stunt that Holmgren pulled allowing Denver to score a TD at the end of Super Bowl XXXII to save time on the clock for a potential tying drive, which just fell short anyway.

I believe that the NFL is (or should be) the last bastion of the old ways of doing things. No one ever gave a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed, according to General Patton. Playing for the tie or playing to set up a comeback may work out, but a man with pride ought to be happier taking a shot at winning as opposed to planning to be scored on, pushed around or some other such humiliating eventuality.

As for today's games, I didn't really like any of the four teams playing. Tampa would have been the closest to a team I could have rooted for, what with that amazing shade of dark grey in their helmets (not to get all Bravo Network up in here, but that is a damn cool looking color, so cool that it defies syntactic and grammatical correctness) and a very good defense (I thought Gaines Adams was overrated, I was wrong). But they have Jeff Garcia, whom no true TO fan can stand and they are the last bastion of Barber-ism in the NFL.

For the most part, I thought that Ronde Barber's comments were overblown. But there was more than a bit of me that thought he was nearly as out of line as his brother had been when he released his silly little autobiography this summer. Tampa shouldn't have been terribly worried about the Giants, but for the fact that Tampa themselves managed to prove very little this year.

The second game was close, and it was interesting to watch. But it struck me as a lot of wasted effort. Neither team could have won in the next round, I didn't think. I thought the closeness of the score was more indicative of two half-decent but overrated defenses playing against two shaky, suspect offenses. Maybe Vince Young could have given the aging linebackers of the Patriots fits with his mobility, but then again he could have given Samuel, Harrison, Hobbs and co. several gift INTs too. So better, in the long run, that San Diego advanced.

The real story of the day was the long awaited Roger Clemens interview. I believed him. Red Sox fans probably won't, but that's life. Yeah, Clemens blinked more than I'd have liked. But who can say how the CBS crew lit the interview area? And more importantly, could you sit there, across from Mike Wallace and look him in his wrinkly, pruny face and not blink? A lesser person than Clemens might have seen Wallace for that extended period of time and decided to forgo the joys of senectitude (advancing advanced old age, for Red Sox fans) for euthanasia.

Why I believe Clemens is, I think a fairly simple explanation. McNamee accepted a deal to provide Federal prosecutors with information in exchange for not going to jail for his involvement in a steroid ring. There are those who can believe that a man who accepts the government's beneficence with a rejuvenated sense of right and wrong and will provide the prosecutors with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I, however, believe that any character slimy enough to accept a plea deal to save his own skin has lost sight of the value placed on truth, justice and what once might have been described as the American way.

I can see the logic in statements that put Barry Bonds' alleged use of performance enhancers down to his envy over the accolades heaped on McGwire and Sosa and a desire to break big records. I don't really believe them, but I can see how these factors might have come into play. I just don't see it for Clemens. He'd already won four Cy Youngs before McNamee claimed to have injected him for the first time in 1998.

It is true as Red Sox fans love to point out that Roger did say he wanted to play closer to his home in Texas when he left Boston in 1996 only to sign with Toronto. So he was, in that instance, slightly less than honest. But going for the money the way he did is something that we all would have done given the opportunity. Steroids is a whole different animal. Clemens was a Hall of Famer when he left Boston, he didn't need to reach any more milestones, he didn't need to do more. He was already the best pitcher of his era.

And the thing about McNamee's story is that it rings false to me. I realize, as my reader the KobraKommander pointed out when the Mitchell Report first dropped, McNamee has certain physical evidence in the form of bank records and cancelled checks to show that he received payments from Roger Clemens. Alas, these documents don't show injections of performance enhancing drugs in the Rocket's handwriting in the checks' memo spaces. So it's a he said, he said situation.

What really bothers me about the story is that McNamee has admitted under oath (or at least I assume he has as he testified against his associates) to some form of involvement in a steroid distribution ring. And yet in the yarn he spun for the Mitchell Commission, McNamee stated that the steroids he injected into Roger Clemens were purchased and brought to the scene of the injection by Clemens himself. It doesn't make sense to me. And as Roger challenged in the interview tonight, let the unnamed and unknown purveyors of steroids who sold to Clemens come forward to damn him.

This sad, sordid story has reminded me of one of my favorite films. It's called Quiz Show, about the corrupt game show 21 in the late 1950s. Congress, in one of its nobler efforts to protect us from phantoms and demons, launched a lengthy and expensive investigation into the TV game shows on the allegation that the shows were rigged, which they were.

The two biggest winners in the show were Herbert Stempel, an unattractive know-it-all of a loser, and Charles Van Doren, a young, handsome, clean cut member of a prominent American intellectual family. Both had received the answers, both had profited from the rigged show, but Van Doren ended up with a future in TV and Stempel went right back to being the ugly tool whom no one liked. So Stempel made a stink, testified before Congress and brought the show and Van Doren down with him.

Before the analogy spins even further out of control, in this little farce, Curt Schilling (or America's conscience as he styles himself) is Stempel and Roger Clemens is Charles Van Doren. Where the analogy breaks down is that Van Doren was guilty and Clemens isn't. But all of America, for the sake of catharsis, needs Schilling to come out in one of his ten million press conferences and say something on the lines of "Look, I admit I am insanely jealous of what Roger Clemens has accomplished in his career. I'm sorry, but I am a terrible person and massively overrated. As a penance, I'm retiring quietly, oh and by the way, I faked the bloody sock." Alas, it will never be.

Three more thoughts on the Clemens interview. First, Roger made a hell of a point when he asked Mike Wallace how exactly a person proves their innocence. Outside of the fact that one isn't required to do so in a law court, no one has ever adequately answered that one. Second, what would it prove to hook Clemens up to a polygraph? They measure physiological responses, so one would assume a superbly conditioned gentleman like Clemens would stand a good shot of beating it if he were lying.

And finally, was it ironic that Clemens' interview should follow a story featuring noted killer Johnny Mattarano? For whatever sins he may have to answer to Saint Peter and the Lord, Mattarano is, himself, a victim of a rat in the service of the US Department of Justice (namely James "Whitey" Bulger). And here I am, a guy who just doesn't want to believe in coincidences.

By the way, I didn't have time to do it tonight, and I was too intoxicated last night (and the night before), but I was at the Cs game on Friday and I watched them play Detroit last night. So I have some thoughts to relate about the game experience and the future of the team. I probably won't get to them until Tuesday, though, with the BCS title game tomorrow.

But before I wrap up, I have one more thing to say. I generally try to avoid politics in this space, but I need to say something about Mike Huckabee. I think he should be required to campaign with a midget, a broom and a big banner proclaiming him to be the friend of the little man. Whenever I see him at a campaign event, I can't help but think of Homer Stokes, the reform candidate for governor in O Brother Where Art Thou. But that's just me.

Oh, and as a postscript, I have this to say to Chuck Norris. You sucked as an actor and you suck as a political activist. Here's the realest of the the real Chuck Norris facts for you, 90% of Americans want you to drop dead, they're just too polite to say it.

I had intended to post about the inconveniences of holiday travel and a bit on the Celtics-Pistons game this evening. And then I checked email and looked at some of today's headlines. From that brief venture, I have come away with the conviction that Curt Schilling does indeed intend to seek elective office after he retires from professional sports. And thankfully, according to what ought to be the first law of democracy in practice, whatever benighted muckers elect him to represent them will get exactly what they deserve.

Schilling was recently quoted calling on Roger Clemens to give back the Cy Youngs he won since 1997 if Roger cannot clear his name in the wake of the Mitchell Commission report. I don't know if they taught Curt this one little point in any of the courses he's taken on the way to becoming the self-proclaimed voice of truth, justice and the American way, but a person is held to be innocent until proven guilty under due process of the law.

This isn't an American concept. This concept predates the founding of the United States by over 570 years. It predates the first permanent European settlement in North America by some 370 years. It comes from the Magna Carta, which (to put it in terms the average Red Sox fan can understand) is basically the OG of documents establishing the legal tradition for the English speaking world.

I will admit that I have been otherwise occupied over the last several days. Apparently, I must I have missed the proclamation which handed over ultimate authority over matters of common and constitutional law to a cat who looks like Humpty Dumpty and is one trip to the DL away from being a has-been.

So far, the chain of evidence against Clemens seems to include a former trainer who is, himself, under federal indictment and the admission of Andy Pettitte that he used HGH on two occasions. Now, I'm not a legal scholar, but it seems to me that extrapolating any illicit use of banned performance enhancing substances on Clemens' part must then rely on hearsay and conjecture. If I'm not mistaken, it can be devilishly tricky to build a case in a court of law on hearsay and conjecture, what with the fact that that sort of evidence is (at least de jure) in admissible in a court of law in this country.

Provided, of course, that the rule of law still rules in this country, there is no way a responsible court can punish Clemens. If no responsible court can punish Clemens, then there is no reason on the face of God's green earth to take the Cy Youngs back from Clemens outside of the fact that Curt Schilling has opened his mouth and spoken with the voice of God.

If Curt Schilling had an IQ sufficient to chart on any sort of reasonable test, perhaps he'd have realized by now that he does more damage to his image each time he flaps his gums on this sort of thing. Something tells me that John McCain might not be to thrilled that one of his foremost celebrity supporters just can't stop being a total douche for the benefit of the media. Perhaps Schilling should do us all a favor and abandon public life in favor of playing more Everquest.

Hell, he's already half a LARPer at this point. He might as well go all out and dress like an Orc and run around with the world's biggest tools and argue over who hit whom with what in some sort of hideous live action version of Dungeons and Dragons. The only reason I'm not demanding that he do so instantly is that it would make the CHB a very happy man, and that's not good for America.

I also find myself once again defending Terrell Owens. I think it's a good thing that TO suggested that Jessica Simpson give Texas Stadium a wide berth for the time being. Now I might be a very cynical person and a terrible human being, but I have the nasty suspicion that Jessica Simpson just might be in this budding relationship with Tony Romo to see and be seen more than out of any altruistic romantic motivations. But that's just me.

Consider this: what has Jessica Simpson done lately? Ostensibly, she is a singer and an actress. The only problem - she hasn't been in a film or released an album in a while. Of course, I could very well be wrong there. I didn't see Dukes of Hazzard or Employee of the Month, so I haven't been following her film career. I also pay very little attention to the ways and means of contemporary pop music, so she could have released 50 albums in the last year, for all I know.

What I do know is this: sooner or later, some kind observer usually finds his or her way clear to tell me when some momentous development in the entertainment industry breaks. Lately (as in since about 2004) none of these bulletins that have reached me under my rock have involved Jessica Simpson. Preening in a pink #9 jersey in a luxury box in Texas Stadium seems to be the only way she can get herself in the media, short of downing bottle after bottle of pills or turning herself into a train wreck.

As for the other side of this sordid little problem, there are those who can say that Tony Romo ought to be above this sort of distraction. It shouldn't matter how many of his celebrity girlfriends are in the stands at any given moment. But I say this, Tony Romo has really only been a celebrity for about 13 months now. It's still something he's trying to learn to live with.

Sure, Tom Brady didn't have the same type of problem with the confluence of his personal and professional life. But, at the same time, he wasn't as big as star as fast as Tony Romo has been. Dallas is still America's Team, and the Patriots didn't really get that kind of media exposure until they were well on their way to a second Super Bowl title. Plus Brady played at Michigan, as opposed to Eastern Illinois University.

Furthermore, Romo might not be a regular Alfred Einstein, but he is somewhat brighter than Brady. Where Tom Brady has barely enough grey matter to master the playbook and game plans of the Patriots, Romo is just bright enough to let the media distract him. And it's not exactly as though TO forbade her to enter the grounds of Texas Stadium. He just pointed out that she could be a distraction and wished that she wouldn't come to the games.

If any other player on any other team in the league had said this, it would have been a mildly amusing flap that would have died down within about 12 minutes. However, TO dared to be relatively quiet and blend in with his teammates as much as he possibly can this season. And for that, the media had to punish him. After all, TO's job isn't to excel on the football field, nor is it even to catch passes for the Cowboys. Rather, TO's solemn duty is to provide countless path of least resistance stories to the legion of media drones who don't want to break a sweat when they cover the NFL. And if that means mountains must be made of molehills, then mountains shall be made.

Consider this piece, suggesting that TO is responsible for the Cowboys' problems. First of all, how many teams would trade problems with the Cowboys any day? They are 12-2. They may have identical records with the Green Bay Packers, but they beat the Packers soundly, not three weeks ago. They have the inside track for home field throughout the NFC playoffs until someone takes it away from them. And yet they must be on the verge of collapse, at least until the media needs yet another new angle this season.

I'm getting kind of tired of prefacing each of my increasingly rare posts with an apology. But it gets kind of old after a while, sitting here in front of the computer trying to invent reasons why a given team has a chance to beat the Patriots. And should I indulge in speculation on what team will give up which prospects and position players to get Johann Santana away from Minnesota? It's just not all that interesting to me at the moment.

I suppose I could take a sort of grim satisfaction from the fact that the Patriots have become everything which they were not supposed to be two years or so ago when every talking head and his brother insisted on holding them up as the model of virtue and excellence in professional sports. But even that gets old after a while.

I must confess, I was disappointed to see the way the Patriots reacted to Anthony Smith's "guarantee." It was disgusting to see Tom Brady go out of his way to get in his face after the first TD pass. Brady is, regrettably, a Hall of Fame quarterback on a record setting pace. Anthony Smith is a second year nobody whom the media exploited to generate more interest in a non-story.

There was a time when Brady was supposed to be a paragon of how to succeed with class and dignity. There is very little that smacks of class and dignity in going out of your way to put down a guy who barely even ran his mouth. Could you see Joe Montana or Terry Bradshaw doing that? Hell, Bradshaw never seemed to go out of his way to talk trash to Hollywood Henderson, who said considerably more insulting things about Bradshaw than any one has ever said about Brady.

Now the Patriots are playing the Jets again. Thankfully the media has an easy angle courtesy of the whole taping signals scandal to justify hours of coverage devoted to a very mediocre game. Conventional wisdom tells us that the Jets have no chance to win this game. Unfortunately, I can see no reason to disagree everybody and his brother for a change.

In other news, George Mitchell has finally delivered his report on steroids in Major League Baseball after 20 months of what surely was a exhaustive and ethically conducted investigation. In a blaze of vindication for those who have dragged Roger Clemens' name through the mud on this issue for the last two years or so, his name is at the top of the list of high-profile players who are named.

If you had told me earlier that losing to an unknown despite running not only as an incumbent but the sitting Senate Majority Leader to boot would end up not being the most embarassing professional failure of George Mitchell's career, I wouldn't have believed it. And then he had to go and release this report.

If sources like discredited and terminated former Yankees strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee are at all typical of the informers who are expected to provide the Mitchell Report with its substance, then I am willing to bet guys like Clemens, Tejada and Pettitte will have little to fear from these proceedings.

This report which tells us many things we already knew (like MLB dragged its collective feet on the steroids issue) amid its hearsay and innuendo about respected players and choice nuggets about players who have already been caught cheating like Giambi, will likely go down in the annals of justice with hard-hitting and epoch shaping events like the Red Scare, the Army-McCarthy hearings and the Salem Witch Trials.

Curiously, outside of Eric Gagne, no one of consequence from the Boston Red Sox was named in this document. Thankfully, and perhaps conveniently, Brendan Donnelly was not offered a contract today. Interesting....

What to think of this World Series? I find myself wondering whether it would be as painful to watch the Red Sox in the World Series if the FOX Network weren't carrying the games. I've mentioned a time or two that I can't abide Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, nor do I know a single person (and I know some contrarian SOBs) who thinks they add any value to the viewing experience.

Maybe it's me, and if I were a Red Sox fan I'd think differently. Maybe the Red Sox relief pitchers forming some sort of one-third assed percussion ensemble routine as their team rallies is really clever and cute and wonderful. I don't know, but it drives me crazy, and I could do without seeing it. But as bad as that was, the good people at FOX had to go and mic the bullpen, so now one can hear it. It was worse than I imagined it to have been when I could only see it.

Now I'm not particularly musical, and the audio doesn't come in well enough for a person of my tonal sensibilities to tell, but I find myself wondering whether Eric Gagne is off beat when the bullpen does its thing. I think we need some intrepid soul to investigate this phenomenon.

In somewhat related matters, I have, in the few times I've mentioned him in this space, been less than kind to Ken Rosenthal, baseball guru of FOX Sports. Of course if he wrote more pieces like this one, calling to our attention the fact that the leader of the independent commission investigating the abuse of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball is a board member with the Boston Red Sox, I might be inclined to praise him.

First, I don't want to question the legitimacy of the Mitchell Commission. As far as I'm concerned, it's a total fraud, more in the line of an Easter Egg hunt than a witch hunt. Just think for a second how many superstars we firmly believe were using some sort of illicit substance to gain competitive advantage. And has any of the players suspended by the league been a household name? Hell, I bet some of them have close relatives who don't even know they were in the league.

Where an observer like Rosenthal errs is in assuming that because George Mitchell was, many years ago, Majority Leader of the US Senate that he is somehow above the fray and of such eminence that he can clean up the steroid culture instantly. Americans are always of two minds concerning elected officials. When they're in office and responsible for taxes and spending, they can't be trusted, but once they retire for a decade or so, they virtues which no one suspected they have suddenly become apparent.

Of course, we now have the added virtue that Mitchell was a Democrat and thanks to this administration, the Democrats now own integrity and honesty and general, overall moral excellence. Or at least they believe they do, and slightly less than half the nation agrees. That's why Mitchell can be trusted, but no one is mourning the retirement of Bill Frist and there are no ceremonial figurehead posts waiting for Trent Lott. But just wait until the Democrats get the White House and get a chance to create their own controversies, then people will miss Frist and Lott.

Most of the controversy surrounding Mitchell's position came out of the leaked story that Paul Byrd has taken HGH, particularly because of the timing, right before he was to start Game 7 of the ALCS. There are also some coincidences that are difficult to shrug off when one looks at them in this Mitchell mess. Mike Lowell comes to mind.

If you look at his career arc, Mike Lowell's stats dipped significantly from 2004-2005 when the heat was really on baseball. Congress was holding hearings, the media was investigating BALCO and it was the topic of the day. Now that these things have been shunted aside by the NFL and NBA grappling with player conduct issues, the NBA staggering from the Donaghy scandal and the NHL trying to come back from labor nightmares, who remembers that Mike Lowell is back from the statistical dead?

People have made much of the impact Dave Madagan has had on the batting technique of Mike Lowell and how that has turned him around at the plate. I might be overly suspicious by nature, but I'm not sure I buy it. I'm old enough to remember Dave Madagan baseball player, before he became Dave Madagan hitting guru to the mediocre. Madagan wasn't much of a hitter, in fact he was very, very, very, average. Perhaps it's a case of those who can't teach, but I'm not much on old sayings right now.