A couple of things to note:

1. Milton Bradley is an exceptional writer; certainly much better than, say, Todd Jones.

2. I realized in reading this that I was definitely one of the people who wrote off his career last year during that freak accident.

3. Milton Bradley, in spite of seeming like a raging asshole type of guy, is actually quite likeable.

What have I done now?

Ah, but there was a little drama earlier. Gregor Blanco dropped down a nifty bunt in the top of the 7th inning to try and break up the perfect game. Save a great play by Blake Dewitt (I mean a truly big time defensive play, the sort of play that keeps a guy like Andy Laroche on the bench for another few weeks), you’d be hearing a lot more about Gregor Blanco today.

When I first saw it, I was outraged, but I attribute this mostly to my undying (and, quizzically, still blossoming) love for Hiroki Kuroda. Given a day, I’m not so sure it’s a bitch move. I do know that you won’t see veterans pulling stuff like that. It’s always the young guys who are trying to make something like that happen.

I guess at the end of the day, I sort of feel like if you are going to get a no-hitter or a perfect game dropped on you, then you just have to sort of wear it. It happens to everyone. But, in my opinion, it’s worse to have a perfect game dropped on you than to have a one-hitter where you ruined some guys lifelong dream by dropping a bunt down the line when you were down by three runs.

As you surely have heard by now, Shawn Chacon attacked Houston Astros GM Ed Wade after they had a verbal altercation in the Astros dining room. Chacon has been cut by the Astros following the incident, and is going to have some trouble finding a job in MLB, I think.

Which is wrong.

I’m not saying Chacon was right to attack Ed Wade. He was not. And I’m not saying Chacon was not guilty in letting this argument get out of control, because he probably has a lot of guilt. But from everything that has been reported about this situation, Shawn Chacon was very calm until Ed Wade continued to incite him. From what has been reported, Shawn Chacon also basically told Ed Wade a couple of times to stop berating him, before he took physical action.

It’s not surprising to me that Chacon got cut; after all, he did attack his employer. It is surprising to me that the Major League Baseball Player’s Association is not all over this matter. This is a workplace matter, and the fact remains that, although Shawn Chacon is clearly in the wrong for attacking someone (violence never being the answer and all that jazz) there is a huge and important precedent here, which is that baseball players are human beings and deserve to be treated as such, and also deserve to be given a little leeway when they behave like human beings.

I was thrilled to see that umpire Brian Runge was suspended for his actions toward Jerry Manuel–he picked a fight, he sought out the conflict, and he deserves to be punished. And MLB acted swiftly and fairly and said the rules go both ways.

The MLBPA should be making an example out of this situation with Chacon in the same way, because had Ed Wade not confronted Chacon, and had he not really gotten in his face, he wouldn’t have ended up being attacked.

Chacon deserves to be cut, not only for his actions, but also because he sucks at baseball. But baseball players also deserve to know that the organization that represents them is going to step up on their behalf when something bad happens, even if it is (partially) their fault.

I am not really interested in the WNBA. I think it’s a little bit amusing, because there are not a lot of fans, but there are a few, and they had some major freakouts based on some SeriousSportsNewsNetwork.com stories we had about the WNBA, about what haters we were, etc. The second reason is that one of our first stories in the Chicago Sports Review was a profile of a then high-school-aged Candace Parker, so I’ve watched with interest the development of her career.

You know what she did at Tennessee; back-to-back titles. You probably have already heard what she did the other day, nearly putting up a triple double and scoring 34 points, notching twelve rebounds and eight assists. The game was actually moderately entertaining.

I don’t think it’s going to be enough to make the WNBA a success. I think that after watching men’s basketball all the time, there is just not enough excitement in the women’s game. I think it’s crisper–more passing, more players have to participate, no Chris Paul doing everything, etc.–but overall I think it’s one of those things where it’s a totally different product than the NBA proper. And I don’t think it will ever have the mainstream appeal of the NBA.

That being said, Candace Parker is something special. She’s awesome to watch, and from what I can tell, she’s a good person and nice enough and all that jazz. So it will be interesting to see what happens. I’ll be rooting for her, at least.

Smoltz is 41 and is the 16th pitcher ever to accomplish the feat, which is absolutely astounding. Less people have struck out 3000 batters in their career than have gotten 3000 hits or hit 500 homers.

But that’s not what’s really incredible about this feat. What is amazing is what you see if you look at the career strikeout list and see where we stand as of right now:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SO_p_career.shtml

There are basically three guys pitching right now that have a realistic shot at getting to 3000 Ks (four, if you count Tom Glavine, who seems to be drinking from the fountain of youth so he may get there by age 70.) Those three guys are Javier Vazquez (1842 Ks, 31 years old, 80th place), Johan Santana (1409 Ks, 29 years old, 195th place), and C.C. Sabathia (1156 Ks, 27 years old, 308th place). The rest of the people on the list are too far away, too old, too injured, or some combination of the three.

It’s worth taking a look at. When one of your three best hopes to see a milestone would still require the guy to put up 10 straight years of 185 strikeouts, you’ve got to rest pretty easy if your name is Nolan Ryan.

The reaction shared by D.K. and many others – that ESPN is annoying and that their approach is obnoxious and borders on the unethical — is a perfectly reasonable reaction in this case. I think when this baby gets buried in the annals of sports history, it’ll be immortalized as one of those moments when we learned a little bit more about an organization than we knew before, and decided we didn’t like what we saw.

I am going to take a different view, though. To me, when I look back on Miguel Tejada’s birth certificate unveiling, I’m going to look back on it as a positive story. There were two things that have come out in the aftermath that I thought were really quite compelling; inspiring, even.

The first was a series of comments that Tejada made, in which he stated that he feels like there’s a load off of his shoulders.

“It’s something that happened the first time I signed my contract,” Tejada said. “I had no intention of doing anything wrong. And now I feel like I’m 25 years old, maybe younger. I feel my legs are stronger than I used to be feeling. I feel great. I have a lot of energy.”

To me, this was very compelling. Who among us hasn’t finally gotten something off our chest and out of our mind, and seen the subsequent positive impact on our lives? The fact that Tejada is straight mashing right now probably doesn’t hurt. But here’s a guy who seems to have been carrying around an internal secret for 16 — no, wait, 14 — years, and now it’s off his chest, and we all freak out and then we go on with our lives, and Miguel Tejada gets to go back and continue playing baseball without having to deal with this anymore. So that’s one thing.

The other thing, and I think that this is even more compelling, is the stand-up way in which Ed Wade, the GM of the Houston Astros, handled the whole deal. Wade pretty quickly tried to quell the impending furor; basically stating that he had been informed by Miggy T about his situation and that they were going to correct the misinformation that they’d been putting out publicly. Then he said “the fact of the matter is he’s playing like he was 25,” and tried to leave it there.

How refreshing is that?

Keep in mind, this is just a few months after the Red Sox nearly sued Curt Schilling over a disagreement about the way that they each were interpreting Schilling’s contract. Not a week goes by in this day in sports when we don’t have some sort of major conflict between a team and a player. And, most of the time, these conflicts are extremely justified, since there is tons of money at stake. Then you take a look at what the Astros are doing, and they basically are saying, “Listen, who really cares how old Miguel Tejada is?”

Definitely not me.