Gregory Pratt

Uh, let's not pretend that no Bear players are on steroids.

Happy happy my troubled friend

I'm looking forward to seeing him.

Doctor Doctor http://officeoftheindependentblogger.com/2.../doctor-doctor/ Benoit's doctor has been linked to other wrestlers and even athletes, but there are no names at this time. Is this news big enough to spark a frenzy into doctors who abuse their prescription privileges and destroy lives? It is for me, but I doubt the media cares and would bet that it turns into a firestorm for the WWE if any other wrestlers from the company have seen that doctor. Personally, I believe that WWE should have somewhere from three to five doctors that it'll allow the wrestlers to see. I know that it's a strict rule and some will complain about their privacy but it would allow the WWE to prevent steroid use in the organization and would bring credibility to their Wellness Program if they are mandating that the doctors be respectable, known doctors to avoid steroid and pill abuse. That is, if the WWE is truly interested in curbing steroid and pill abuse in the company. Are they? I don't know. We'll see by their actions in the coming weeks. Like I've said before, I'm not defending WWE from charges that their Wellness Program should be stricter or that they should do more to oversee their wrestlers' mental and physical health. I'm defending them from charges that wrestling itself "creates monsters" and drives people to murder like I would defend matrimony from charges that marriage creates monsters and drives people to murder; I'm arguing that steroids and wrestling didn't cause this, but drugs, doctors, and a rapidly unhinged man with marital problems tag-teamed to cause this. To more media-centered news: the Ultimate Warrior appeared on Fox, and while I know that some will ridicule him, I must say I'm impressed by the fact that he kept a level-head, didn't attempt to destroy the WWE and raised some solid points. First he argued that steroid use is good and "abuse" is bad; Hannity countered that any use is abuse if it isn't medical; Warrior said, "Roid rage for me is a pie in the sky theory that's thought of by people who have no business discussing the frame of mind of an elite physical athlete." Fair enough, I figure, and I appreciate that he isn't backing away from his prior use and defense of steroids. I also think his next point about how prescription drugs are more to blame than "roid rage" is fairer still. Most important in his speech was his declaration that "[t]he [WWE] drug test is a ruse. It's an artiface specifically designed for the sensationalized, high-profile tragedies when people come forward and they make reasonable allegations that the talent is using drugs. It's this simple for me. For me to believe that the drug tests on the live bodies are legit, I have to believe all the autopsies on the dead bodies are lies." He also declared that "Wrestlers take steroids so they can look healthy on the outside, but they do everything else that makes them rotten on the inside. The autopsies that reveal they have enlarged hearts and enlarged organs other organs that have been affected by the steroids, that's the reason why - because they don't live healthy lives overall." I'm not sure about what he says about steroids -- but Bryan Gumbel agrees with him. All I know is he made the points about prescription drugs that should be made and he didn't make a complete fool of himself, the wrestling industry or attempt to set fire to wrestling. For that he deserves some praise, as he cut to the chase and didn't sensationalize. Now if only he'd change his name back to Jim Hedwig, he'd be all right. This MSNBC interview of Marc Mero and Steve Blackman is much better than anything that's been on Fox or CNN. I criticized Johnny B. Badd Marc Mero recently -- or, more accurately, I criticized his inclusion on talk shows, but after watching this video, he was very fair and, I think, accurate than many other wrestlers and definitely than the reporters themselves. He and Steve Blackman (who was also nice to see) provided great insight into the seedy world of reckless doctors (that doctor they had on replied to the question "This is not such a good thing for the medical community is it?" "Uh, certainly not. The question is were thes e prescriptions given with good reason and, uh, to what patients." If I were interviewing him, I'd have said, "What kind of sleazy dodge is that? It's clear that Benoit's doctor was corrupt and a mark on the profession, and you won't criticize him?") including doctors that come to the shows and give out steroids to all the boys. I didn't like it when the wrestling writer said that Benoit didn't "get over" as a wrestler because of his size, and he might've been "transferring" a "size" complex, but the reason he didn't "get over" in the industry was because of bad promoting by WWE and his generally poor mic skills. Benoit's murder-suicide had nothing to do with wrestling, and I wish someone had pointed that out a bit more forcefully, but I enjoyed the interview all the same. Blackman and Mero brought a great amount of information, and Dan Adams was a fair interview.

Steff, Northside, I wrote about this yesterday. I'm not sure how true it is. I don't necessarily disbelieve it but I don't necessarily do. I'm waiting and seeing, as I said yesterday: THIS article is very interesting, too: http://thetrack.bostonherald.com/moreTrack...mat=&page=1 Apparently, Benoit's neighbor discovered their bodies and was very close to Nancy. She has now fled to Boston to avoid the media and is very shaken up having lost her dear neighbor whose house she had keys to. She says that she believes Daniel had Fragile X, so who knows? It's such a terrible story.

Somebody please PM me about Warrior's appearance tonight. My latest article: Causes for Concern [soprry about the HTML] I believe that the police officers in Georgia should be disappointed in themselves for releasing this irresponsible and demonstrably improbable bit of speculation. First of all, the article points out what I would: the move would be impossible to do on a child by a grown man, but the second point I'd hammer upon is that the boy was asphixiated and the Crippler Crossface can't possibly asphixiate you. If it's true that Benoit used a chokehold of any sort on his son, it's misleading to call it a variation of the Crossface. You just can't do it, and if he simply choked him and pinned him down with a knee, that's not a wrestling move, and it's misleading to talk about it as a wrestling move. Theoretically, I could sneak up on someone on the street, twist their arm and choke them with my bicep from behind and someone could say, "He's using a wrestling hold." But I wouldn't be, and neither did Benoit. The policemen should be ashamed of themselves for speculating that he used the Crippler Crossface, although I will say that I'm not sure policemen have made such claims as it's only been reported in print by the Sun of England and then parroted through the blogosphere. It is, at least, bad reporting, and the bloggers who have spread the claim should be ashamed. It's a horrible killing as it is. Let's not pretend that Benoit put him into the Crippler Crossface, too. If you want to have an investigation, investigate his doctor and the pharmaceutical industry, instead of interrogating wrestlers over whether or not wrestling makes a man into a monster. I've always believed America to be overmedicated and medication in excess to be dangerous. I don't think I'd ever take a Prozak or a Benedryl or a Viagra pill. Further, doctors who overprescribe their patients violate their oath and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law -- which should reach further, in my view. Doctors like him alarm me far more than any professional wrestler and pills like those he, and they, prescribe cause far more monsters than Vince McMahon does. I don't understand why Fox and CNN and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the Asheville Review don't all go after the pharmaceutical industry instead of wrestling -- or, at least, alongside it. It's just as seedy, twice as dangerous and reaches more people. Not only that, it'd create waves as big as "Wrestler Kills Family: Ultimate Warrior Agrees It's a Bad Thing, Hates McMahon." But I guess they don't want anybody to know about their drug problem, which is America's drug problem, which is the reliance on "harmless" stimulants and relaxants. (And before I'm accused of hypocrisy, I'd like to say that I don't believe in painkillers or relaxants or stimulants. If I want stimulation, I turn on my music, call a friend or drink a Coke. If I want to go to sleep, I insomniac around until I go to bed. The last time I took a painkiller it was a one-time deal when I tore my left knee apart and the doctor's insisted on it before the X-Rays. In hindsight, I'm glad they did because the pain was brutal even with the pill, but I never used the ones they gave me to take home. None of this is to say that I look down on wrestlers and stuntmen and football players and circus clowns who have to take pills for their pain. It's the doctors who over-prescribe and the parents who over-medicate their children and the system that encourages it and ignores it that bothers me.) I have a couple more notes. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems odd that a seven year old would just be passing Kindergarten but I have nothing else to add. It's sad and tragic whether or not he was suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or in full health, but we'll see what else is said about it in coming days and weeks. This article about Benoit's neighbor who was friends with his wife and discovered their bodies and has run off to Boston where she used to work as a publicist because she's in pain over the loss of her friend Nancy and her boy Daniel and is uncomfortable with all the media jackals around says that Daniel Benoit suffered from Fragile X. Who knows? In more media news, Hulk Hogan has publicly called out Nancy Benoit as a "Satan worshiper." Hogan is the last man in the world who should be talking about wrestlers believing their own publicity, for one thing. He also sounds like an idiot saying that Benoit is a peaceful man and Nancy was a Satan worshiper. I will concede that I agree wholeheartedly that it was all a domestic dispute gone terribly, terribly wrong, but I can't say I'm happy with what Hogan said or the frenzy it's caused. Lastly, these are Lance Storm's thoughts on Benoit. I'm glad he took his time in writing them to learn all the facts, and I'm sad that he, like we, had to go through this, especially since he was close to Benoit. I'm also happy that someone else in wrestling -- someone far more influential than me or Keller -- is calling for something to be done about the problems faced by wrestlers.

I think fathom makes the greatest point. Since when do we go after big free agents? The biggest of my lifetime have been Belle and Konerko. Ow. And the biggest one of all never came because they wanted to talk to Alex Rodriguez "alone." Heh.

I don't know who decided that we should always, or ALMOST always hire someone only if they've played in the organization before, but that s*** has to stop, soon, because generally, we haven't been a particularly GREAT organization.

Hey guys, I need a favor. If each night, someone could check out WrestleCrap or some other site and see who was where on the news re: Benoit and drop me a note with a recap, let me know. I haven't got much Internet access now because of a move and so I need some help recapping as I don't have cable either.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jul 1, 2007 -> 09:59 AM) Good luck signing any free agents if you're not going to give NTC. Between this policy and the Boras bulls***, it really makes you wonder how we'll ever get our talent level back up in today's market. I hope KW doesn't think he can build up from the farm system, as that could take like 5 years. It would also take good scouts and coaches. KW's becoming an embarrassment and I might be his biggest admirer here.

I don't like that idea. I think it changes the game too much.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/2...n-bomb-defused/ There's plenty more to be found. Google News, the newspapers, TV -- all of it has been running it. Seems the worst has been foiled, but it's disturbing, and it troubles me. I hate to watch any part of the world burn, any people die. This is what I wrote on my blog: It's really all I can think of right now. I'm all for imprisonment. I can understand war. Right now, though, I'm just thinking about people. The people who are dying, the people who are killing, and it's a huge bummer.

I've added two paragraphs to the beginning: John Meehan of 411mania has posted a comprehensive timeline of all the things that have happened in this story and what they mean to the wrestling community, coupled with rebuttals and support of every claim made by critics of wrestling and reporters in the wake of Chris Benoit's actions last weekend. It's very much worth a read (that means "read it, Dear Reader"), and I'd like to say thank you to Meehan for posting it. After that, I'd like to direct your attention to this article about Benoit and drugs, specifically "GHB," which is often used as a date-rape drug. There's evidence to suggest that that was a drug he was using and that it caused him, as it's caused others, to go insane. I've long believed that prescription drugs, mental illness and a lack of harmony with his wife were the causes of Benoit's actions. It's a much more sensible reaction than "Oh, it's the steroids!" and "Oh, it's wrestling! because if it were the steroids, all of Major League Baseball and professional football would be filled with wife-killers and if it were "wrestling, more wrestlers would be murdering.

Sneak preview I guess. Again. Johnny B. Fair Before I discuss the mainstream media's handling of Chris Benoit further I'd like to take a moment to challenge the charges made by Scott Williams of the Wrestling Observer. This wrestling fan, for one, is criticizing and defending which is what I believe to be the proper and necessary response. When the mainstream media uses the testimony of the Ultimate Warrior and Chyna on the air it deserves to be criticized for presenting a misleading and incredibly tainted version of speculation, let alone events, and when the press does a number on what actually happened by hypothesizing nonsense about Nancy Benoit's ex-husband murdering the them all, well, it deserves to be criticized. It deserves to be criticized for running amok with Steroids! as the headline when the truth is far from it, as many believe, myself and the wrestlers who knew him and the police department investigating included. Similarly, anyone that would claim that wrestling "creates the monster," as Nancy Grace did and Williams is doing, deserve to be criticized and vehemently so. I simply can not accept any claim of "Wrestling creates the monster!" or "The wrestling business encourages this behavior!" as that's demonstrably untrue (how many other wrestlers have gone off on double homicides?). Anyone who would argue that wrestling creates more monsters than the post office or working at Dairy Queen or writing on a political website for a living has an agenda, and anybody who would argue that wrestlers themselves are inherently more dangerous than most just because of the work they do is dishonest as well. I'm just disappointed that someone who covered wrestling for a living would fall for such gobbledygook, because I'm only defending wrestling from those who would claim that it creates double murderers and child killers and monsters as a matter of routine and use the Ultimate Warrior and Chyna to paint a picture of steroids as if every professional wrestler is a homicide waiting to happen. I am defending the business from nonsense. I am not defending it from the claims that it should be forced to change the way wrestlers schedule, especially in the WWE. I am not giving the drug policy ("The Wellness Program") a ringing endorsement, as I definitely believe it should be tightened. That said, let's not lose our mind and start calling for an end to professional wrestling or perpetuate the partyline about wrestling creating monsters. Bruce Hart, who was Bret Hart's father and Benoit's trainer in the famed Hart Dungeon, made some interesting comments on Friday that I missed until now. First, let's look at the introduction to the article, and now let me say, "Nowhere in the article does Hart call Benoit a 'delusional juice freak.'" He goes on to talk about Benoit's mental health, and he says that Benoit appeared troubled every time he saw him in recent years, then he criticizes the WWE for not being able to see that something was wrong with Chris. All of these points are interesting, and I think the last one is valid (an employer must be able to tell when its employee is ill; to WWE's credit, they've said numerous times that Benoit's been a different man lately: to their detriment, they didn't ask him to see a counselor or do enough to help him, but it is also important to know that two of his best friends in the business had died within the last two years). But beyond all that, I think the author of the article deserves to be fired for the introduction, as do the editors who allowed (and, I'm sure, encouraged) it, as it's completely dishonest but drags in the reader. Let me ask you something, Dear Reader. Do you think editors and producers all over called a conference and said, "The man and his family are dead, right? So nothing matters now besides ratings, right? And bringing down the wrestling industry?" because it sure seems like that's what happened to me. I'd like to briefly discuss the mainstream media's coverage of the Benoit murder now and focus a little on cable, since I've spent a few hundred words talking about print sources already. Here is a YouTube page that has video of many of the wrestling segments on cable news. First, I'll say that I'm disturbed by the inclusion of Johnny B. Badd Mark Mero to the list of wrestlers who've been interviewed as Mero didn't know Benoit particularly well, hasn't held a steady, serious job in the wrestling industry in ages -- but other than that, he's a great source! Actually, I think he might be a little better than the Ultimate Warrior, and he's a lot better than Geraldo Rivera, but that doesn't excuse him or the media from turning this tragedy into a circus, and in so doing creating a second tragedy. I only wish Johnny P. could B. Fair and Accurate, but that's far too much to ask when there's money to be made, right?

QUOTE(BearSox @ Jun 30, 2007 -> 09:10 PM) Is that another wrestler? If so, which one is it? I can't quite make it out. Dawn Marie Psaltis

I'll change it daily for awhile, probably, before I return to the I Remember Montreal avatar.

I offered Zambrano + Morris for Verlander and Halladay but he didn't want it (I thought THAT was a steal) and he said, "Throw in Peavy and Wagner. I'll throw in Hoffman" and I hung up the phone.

QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Jun 30, 2007 -> 07:50 PM) Our organization sucks at life. It's good at winning games.

QUOTE(Chet Lemon @ Jun 30, 2007 -> 10:44 AM) It is true that Rehnquist was not a judicial activist. He upheld Miranda in Dickerson when he wrote the opinion. I am sure he personally despised the Miranda decision, but knew personal displeasure was not adequate to amend Constitutional Law. Uh, you're citing one case as proof that his court didn't overturn precedents all the time?

Danks is one of maybe five reasons other than "We're Sox fans!" to watch the White Sox

Do you do both? Either? I think someone's about to deal me Verlander for Zambrano (he'll definitely do Halladay for Z) I covet Halladay but I don't trust his health going into the playoffs in September. I think Zambrano's likely to wind up with a lower win total and higher ERA than Verlander because of his slower fastball (compared to himself) and the fact that Verlander's better on a better team. What says you?

Haha. Gregg is available. My closers are fine, but I've added Fuentes because he's good and I think he'll recover.

What you you do in my shoes, guys. Bench Fuentes tonight or take the risk that he blows it again? I think I want to have faith in my players.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Jun 30, 2007 -> 02:27 PM) Well I'd hope there is more to this than just the no trade clause, cause if that was really the only sticking point then I have a huge problem with Mr. Williams. and Reinsdorf

Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Ted Williams, too.