Sports news, commentary and rumors.

Do any of you remember the Seinfeld espisode, The Calzone?  In it Kramer paid back someone Jerry owned money to in Pennies!!  It was very funny.  Anyways it seems that Ken Griffey Jr. pulled the same stunt when he paid back some money he owed Cincinnati Reds teammate Josh Fogg, $1,500.

So when Fogg arrived in the Reds clubhouse Wednesday, he found his locker filled with 150,000 pennies. They were packed up in 60 boxes, each weighing around fifteen pounds and containing $25 worth of pennies.

Neither player would say why Griffey owed Fogg the money. Griffey had threatened to pay it off in pennies, but Fogg didn’t believe him. Rumor has it that it is from a beer chugging bet Fogg lost on their last road trip. “I’m going to take them out to the bullpen and count them,” Fogg said. “I’ve got a lot of time on my hands out there.”

Former major leaguer Chuck Knoblauch carried his toddler son in his arms on his way out after speaking for about 1 1/2 hours Friday with congressional lawyers investigating drugs in baseball.

Accompanied by his wife and a lawyer, Knoblauch did not reveal specifics of what he was asked or what he told staff members from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Knoblauch was among more than 80 baseball players cited in former Senate majority leader George Mitchell’s report on drug use in the sport. Asked after leaving the interview whether there were questions about himself or other baseball players, Knoblauch replied, “I only know about myself.”  His lawyer, Diana Marshall, said: “Everything was fine. He answered all the questions.”

Knoblauch’s closed-door interview was part of the committee’s preparation for a Feb. 13 hearing. That public session is expected to focus on Roger Clemens’ denial of allegations in the Mitchell Report made by Brian McNamee, the pitcher’s former personal trainer. McNamee said he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing substances.

Knoblauch is a former teammate of Clemens’ on the New York Yankees, and McNamee told Mitchell he injected Knoblauch with human growth hormone.

Knoblauch, a four-time All-Star who played for the Twins, Yankees and Royals, ended his major league career in 2002. He agreed Monday to speak to the committee after initially failing to respond to an invitation to testify.   I wonder if folks are really suprised at the high level of steriod and human growth hormone (HGH) use in a sport that awards multi-million dollar contracts to the players with the best stats.

Barry Bonds said the man who bought his 756th home run ball and announced plans to let the public decide its fate is an “idiot.” Fashion designer Marc Ecko had the winning bid Saturday in the online auction for the ball that Bonds hit last month to break Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs. The final selling price was $752,467, well above most predictions.

Ecko, 35, has set up a Web site that lets visitors vote on three options for the ball: give it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, brand it with an asterisk before sending it to Cooperstown or blast it into space on a rocket ship. The asterisk would suggest that Bonds’ record is tainted by alleged steroid use. The Giants slugger has denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.

“All of those options don’t weigh anything,” Bonds told the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday night in Phoenix. “In baseball, that number (756) stands.” Bonds said Ecko could have found a better way to spend three-quarters of a million dollars.

“He’s stupid. He’s an idiot,” Bonds said. “He spent $750,000 on the ball and that’s what he’s doing with it? What he’s doing is stupid.” Ecko did not directly respond to Bonds’ comments Wednesday, but said in a statement he would make Bonds a custom T-shirt that says, “Marc Ecko paid $752,467 for my ball, and all I got was this ’stupid’ T-shirt.”‘ Ecko plans to announce what he will do with No. 756 after voting ends Sept. 25.

Ben Padnos, the California entrepreneur who submitted the $186,750 winning bid on Bonds’ record-tying 755th home run ball, said Tuesday he also plans to have the public vote on what to do with it. I wonder if they can put an asterisk because a ball player is an asshole.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin analyzed every pitch from the 2004 through 2006 major league seasons to explore whether racial discrimination factored into umpires’ decisions to call a pitch a strike or a ball.

Just as discrimination in the labor market can affect disparities in wages, promotion and performance evaluation, the researchers said, possible discrimination by umpires could affect the outcome of games and careers.

During a typical baseball game, umpires call about 75 pitches for each team (they call about 400,000 pitches over the whole season—this figure excludes foul balls), so an umpire’s evaluation heavily influences pitcher productivity and performance.

The researchers found if a pitcher is of the same race or ethnicity as the home plate umpire, more strikes are called and his team’s chance of winning is improved.

The power to evaluate players’ performances disproportionately belonged chiefly to white umpires, while negative calls particularly impacted minority pitchers, Hamermesh said.

But, this behavior diminishes when the umpire’s calls are more closely scrutinized—for example at ballparks with electronic monitoring systems, in full count situation where there are 3 balls or 2 strikes, or at well-attended games.

This is one of those dirty little secrets that really makes you think.

- Barry Bonds slams number 756 to take the number 1 spot.  If he was not such a sour-puss I would make a whole post about this since it is such an amazing accomplishment but he just deserves this little blurb.

-Mike Minter, the Carolina Panthers’ career leader in games started and tackles, blames his achy knees in announcing his retirement Tuesday after 10 seasons with the team.

-Yao Ming marries his long-term girlfriend at a swanky hotel in his hometown of Shanghai. Yao, the Houston Rockets’ star center, tied the knot with Ye Li, a 6-foot-2 player on the Chinese women’s basketball team in a ceremony at the Shangri-La Hotel.

-Dissapointment in the big TO, David Beckham missed his scheduled Major League Soccer debut, failing to dress for the Los Angeles Galaxy’s game at Toronto FC on Sunday night.