Something stinks in Cleveland, and it ain’t the Richie Sambora wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“A theater of the absurd.” This is how Rep. Tom Lantos described Thursday’s “steroid hearings” on Capital Hill. The description is apt. Viewers, as CSPAN and ESPN joined forces, witnessed hearings as pointless as they were, admittedly, riveting.

I admit that I have been a baseball fan longer than I have been consciously anything else – a Dodger fan from the South Bronx since the Summer of 1951.

For baseball diehards, the name Joe McCarthy has always meant the New York Yankee manager of the 1930s. Now a very different Joe McCarthy stalks the National Pastime.

Three billion dollars. This was the offer put on the table by a coterie of Boston based businessmen to buy the entire National Hockey League puck, stick, and barrel.

Temple University basketball coach John Chaney is this week's sports antichrist, following the broken arm heard 'round the world.

There's nothing left but the autopsy and it doesn't take William Peterson - or even David Caruso - to decipher who killed the National Hockey League.

I believe the Super Bowl should be the most exciting game of the year. The entire production should enter your veins like uncut adrenaline.

Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was done rooting for them, the Washington Wizards pulled me back in.

After catching a difficult pass to seal the victory for the Minnesota Vikings last Sunday, star wide receiver Rany Moss "mooned" the Green Bay crowd. Now morality and hypocrisy in the NFL are once again dancing cheek to cheek.

2004 should be remembered as a year when the hermetically sealed divide between sports and society frayed for the first time in a generation.

Known as the "the minister of defense" on the football field, Green Bay Packers defensive lineman Reggie White led a dynamic, if contradictory, life outside of the sport.

Brawls at sporting events are bigger stories for the corporate media than atrocities in Iraq or stadium schemes that rip off local taxpayers.

Soccer phenom Mia Hamm's recent retirement went unnoticed by most of the sports world.

Some genetically engineered chickens are coming home to roost for Major League Baseball. Grand Jury testimony from the Bay Area Lab Company (BALCO) investigation has been leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the clucking has begun. We now know that former MVP and Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi admitted under oath to using all kinds of steroids.

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It’s now the hottest commercial since Clara Peller looked beseechingly upon the world and asked us for the location of "the beef." Thanks to Budweiser, the buzz is all about "Leon." "Leon" is Bud’s big joke parody of the modern professional athlete. "Leon" won’t do interviews unless his special dimple is on display. "Leon" is far more concerned about looking "pretty" than playing well.

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I don’t think we’ll be hearing the "NBA Action is Faaaantstic" slogan revived anytime soon. The aftermath of the most violent player/fan brawl in US sports history has met with the hand wringing we usually associate with Janet Jackson’s right breast. The fight between several members of the Indiana Pacers and a garrison of Detroit Pistons fans veered wildly from the frightening to the ridiculous.

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Maurice Clarett didn't know what hit him. This past week, the former Ohio State running back came clean to ESPN The Magazine to reveal all that's rotten in one of the NCAA's premier programs. Clarett dropped dime on the perks of big time College Football, making Ohio State sound like an amusement park operated by Tony Soprano.

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