New York.

People always ask me, why the hell are you a New York Yankees fan? They guess front-runner or that I'm a prick or that I'm just stupid. They are all wrong. I kindly explain and hope things will lighten up.

When I was 9 or 10, I started going to New York to experience the city that is unlike any other on earth. My dad works in NYC and he would take me to the Big Apple for weekend getaways. We'd crash at a Manhattan hotel, walk through Times Square, and go see Yankees games. He had incredible seats in the first row behind the 'Y' in 'New York Yankees'. It was a sports boy's dream.

New York is a monster of a place. It is indescribable until you experience it first hand. From the lights of Times Square, to the deli's and cozy Italian restaurants, to Frank Sinatra; New York is the most unique city on earth.

Spending time with your father, boy to man, experiencing life in New York, is a timeless moment. Walking the storied streets, striding side-to-side with your father, learning about life; New York bonds you and you cherish it forever. Life becomes exciting. It becomes everything you dream of.

I last went to New York City in 2006 with my dad and my roommate and best friend. Saying my roommate fell in love with the city might be an overstatement but he definitely isn't a hater. Not anymore. It's not possible once you go there. Unless you are from Jersey or Philly...that's another story.

Either way, the city reaches out for you.

The big dreams, the big stage, the big streets, the big lights, it grabs you. It's inspiring and you can't help but get into it.

My return to New York was extremely special for me back in 2006. The time before that, the last time I'd been to NYC, it was late August. Of 2001. I still have my ticket stub from when I stood on top of the World Trade Center Towers. I looked over the sprawling layout of marvelous city. I stared in awe and took in everything I could. I went up there every time I went to New York. Two weeks after I got home, two planes were flown into those buildings and they forever disappeared and forever changed our world.

September 11th, for all I'd come to know and love about New York, ripped me in half. I didn't live there, but I felt like somebody killed my family in my front yard. I ached, I cried, I raged. I missed it.

New York had grabbed me and was never going to let me go. There was no point to fight it. We were meant to be.

You can ask me who my favorite sports teams are and who I cheer for the most. I'll always answer New York Yankees first. Then I'll follow with the Miami Hurricanes, the Chicago Bears, the Blackhawks/Bulls, Sox, Cubs. I've been to more Yankees games than Sox/Cubs games combined.

When the Yankees won championship 27 last night, I know people around the USA groaned. They cursed, they talked about buying championships, etc, etc. I'm ok with that, no matter how much it pisses me off. More of NYC to myself. New York needed that. They got close in 2001 after 9/11 but fell short. It tore our hearts open a little bit more.

New York needed to heal. The Yankees always had the ability to do that.

At 9 years old, my life changed for the better. I was introduced to New York and Yankee baseball.

Last night, at 24, my life continued to get better and better. Things felt right again.

New York is a part of my heart. Because of that, the Yankees became a part of my soul.

I'm incredibly grateful for that. Congratulations Yankees. Let's Hear It For New York.

Sunday Night Thoughts

I'm sitting here waiting for the Yankees game to start and it's supremely painful.

Listening to Eric Karros and Mark Grace talk is like making love with a porcupine. Grace is a bum and has a 5 o'clock shadow and looks like he just chain-smoked 14 cigarettes. Karros looks like a retard. He has huge hair and looks like it's being pushed up three feet off his head toward the sky. His tie and shirt are ridiculous and he looks like he weighs 134 lbs. In other words, he looks like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia.

The Yankees are my remaing hope for a salvageable weekend. The Miami Hurricanes blew their game against Clemson yesterday and the Bears played some of the worst football I've seen in years in a loss to the Bengals. So the Yankees are all I have left.

*Speaking of the Bears, I think it's time the Lovie Smith/Ron Turner experiment ended. Lovie Smith remains an emotionless bastard on the sidelines and continues to look more confused as every game goes on. He's useless as a coach and can never get this team prepared to play important games.

Turner is a special story in his own right. The guy was FIRED as head coach at the University of Illinois. That means you suck. Yet the Bears decided it would be a good idea to have him become their offensive coordinator for the second time in his career. Nothing has changed. He still really blows. He has a quarterback with a howitzer arm. Yet his playbook consists only of fullback screens and three yard ins. It's horrific.

I know firing a coach midway through a season never turns out well but let's just do it. Bring Bill Cowher in for one week, Mike Ditka for another, Mike Shanahan, hell, Joe Gibbs for a week. Just rotate through for the rest of the season. Fuck, let Brian Urlacher coach the team for the rest of the season. We would have just the same, if not better results.

The Chicago sports scene needs a shakeup. This would be a good start.

*The Yankees game has started so now I can be entertained. Listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver is like listening to Jesus make love. They are so intelligent.

Have a splendid evening. Depending on how mine goes, you may hear from me again.

The Only A-Rod Discussion I'll Ever Have

Sorry for a few blank days. I've been traveling and hanging out with John McCain and NBA All-Stars in Phoenix. My computer has the battery power of a 46-year old unplugged Atari system. And I haven't been able to steal any free internet yet to log-on anywhere. 

Those issues aside, I've done a LOT of thinking about Alex Rodriguez. I threw a javelin through my TV screen at home on Tuesday because I couldn't take it anymore. Every time I turned on the TV, I saw A-Rod. Or Peter Gammons melting face. Or Stephen A. Smith's. Or Skip Bayless' worthless mug. It all culminated with me picking up the javelin I had since 7th grade track season and chucking it through the TV screen when Roy Oswalt suggested that all of A-Rod's numbers should be voided because it gives farm-jockey's like him a bad reputation.

I'm not going to say much on the issue. I have a few opinions and then I'm going to move on. There's a lot more worthy stuff to give a crap about in this world than A-Rod and his steroids. 

It's a shame this whole thing came out because it's a total pain in the ass for Major League Baseball. Just when MLB thought it was moving on, this had to happen. Barry Bonds was going to be guilty of being a human trash pile, Roger Clemens was going to be forgotten, and Spring Training was going to start, fresh off of a great MLB Postseason. Then some righteous prick got a hold of some startling information. 

Look, no one that isn't a professional athlete can understand the pressures these guys go through. Not Stuart Scott, not Katie Couric, not Buster Olney, not anyone. When your thrust onto a stage of millions, asked to perform at extremely high levels, and asked to give up your privacy, you can get stressed. I know, these guys choose this path, but it's not like there's a better option. 

Play sports and have your face recognized by millions the world over, just so your family and your kids' kids can be financially set for the next 200 years? That's not a bad proposition is it? Would you do it? You say you would, sure. Everyone that hasn't had to do it would gladly give up their silly desk job to make $8 million a year to play baseball. But it's not that easy.

Just for a second, look at it from A-Rod's perspective. At the age of 25 (what were you doing at 25?), you sign the largest contract in SPORTS HISTORY, for $252 million. And don't fault him for taking that money. Tell me one thing in the world you wouldn't do for $252 million? There's nothing out there. That money GUARANTEES your family security for centuries. 

Add to that A-Rod's propensity for self-image issues and you find yourself in a bad spot. Look around the league, where drug use is rampant, including in your own clubhouse (see Rafael Palmeiro), and tell me that taking steroids doesn't seem like a bad option? Steroids has never killed anyone. It makes you bigger, leaner, and stronger. It's not quite as illegal as it is today, so why not? You have the pressure of the entire sports world sitting on your 25-year old shoulders and a few non-lethal drugs are sitting there to help make the world less stressful. I bet more than one of us would have taken them. 

It's a bad choice. I'm not defending him. He made this choice and now it's cost him everything he's worked so hard to build. A-Rod was a phenomenal player before this ever happened. He was offered a baseball and (starting QB) football scholarship to the University of Miami. He turned that down and was a 1st-Round Pick of the Seattle Mariners at the age of 17.  In his first full season in the bigs he had the highest AL batting average for a right-handed hitter since Joe DiMaggio in 1939. At 23 he was the third MLB player to join the 40-40 club and at 24 he hit another 42 home runs despite missing 30 games. At 25, he joined the Rangers.

Alex has always been image-conscience. Much has been written about A-Rod's "obsession" with Derek Jeter. Looking at Jeter, A-Rod always saw a guy who is so cool, so collected, and so outgoing with the media. A-Rod saw how Jeter still never let it effect his job on the field. A-Rod has never been able to feel that comfortable within himself. That's where the steroids must have helped. 

It's unfortunate Alex never got the kind of prodding I got from my mom on a daily basis. She would always say, "Who cares what other people think about you." No one ever prodded that into A-Rod's head. You would have hoped that the fact that he averaged 40 home runs, a .300+ batting average, and over 100 rbi's a season before the age of 25 might have done it. Instead, Alex felt compelled to go from those averages to 50 home runs and 130 rbi's a season. And look where is today.

Marvin Miller, the respected famous founder of MLB's Player Union, offered this on the A-Rod shenanigans. "Not one but two surgeons general have said that tobacco use is the worst cause of death in the U.S. that can be prevented -- we lose 400,000 people a year to tobacco-related incidents and over time it runs into the millions. Yet not only do we not outlaw tobacco, but the U.S. Congress keeps giving subsidies to the tobacco industry and everybody sits back and smiles. On the other hand, there's not one single documented death from the use of steroids. So that's a hypocritical lie."

As for the media, Miller said, "A kid who wants to be professional athlete reads the sports pages or watches ESPN and is told over and over again, "These are performance-enhancing drugs. Take these and you can be Barry Bonds or A-Rod or Roger Clemens. The media, without evidence, keeps telling young people, 'All you have to do to be a famous athlete with lots of money is take steroids."

Therein lies our problems. A-Rod was an incredible baseball player before he took steroids. He's been an incredible baseball player since he stopped taking steroids. If I started taking steroids, I couldn't begin to do the things that A-Rod did. Barry Bonds was a great baseball player before he started taking steroids. He was a 30HR-50SB guy that turned into a 60HR-7SB guy. Steroids do not make the player. Steroids enhance the player. 

It shocked people to see A-Rod admit the usage because everyone always labeled him the hardest working, most talented baseball player they ever saw. It hurt people's feelings. Baseball doesn't need to go through this black eye again. Take A-Rod's 2001-03 statistics away if you want. Don't label the man as invisible for everything else he's done. He admitted to something that he didn't have to admit to. It was supposed to be a confidential survey that helped baseball face its problems. A-Rod came out, admitted his wrongs and will now try and move on. America has been somewhat kind to those who admit their mistakes. We all make them...just not on this kind of stage.

I don't justify what Alex Rodriguez did. It's disappointing and sad. The pressures these athletes face are something we won't fully comprehend. C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira just had a load of pressure taken off their new Yankee shoulders. As for Alex, he has always despised and hated pressure. He now faces more pressure than he ever has before.