Somebody call Deputy U.S. Marshal Gerard. You know how I know Dr. Richard Kimble was guilty of killing his wife? No innocent man would have throw the first pitch into the ground on Jackie Robinson Day at Dodger Stadium. That throw has wife killer written all over it.

I was walking up the West Side Highway a week or two ago on my way to Lincoln Center to pick up some opera tickets. I was consumed with my thoughts and blasting some Tevin Campbell on the iPhone when I came across this ad near the USS Intrepid museum.**

You know it’s bad when Manhattan Mini Storage goes from making fun of George W. Bush and Paris Hilton to mocking the Mets. Consider this picture a reminder to fans out there who still harbor some delusional thought that this season will be anything but disastrous for the city’s second team. Accept your fate before the season starts and you’ll find that it’ll be much easier to deal with 162 games filled with ineptitude and failure.

I’m an Orioles fan. I’ve been used to losing for years. In the years immediately after 1997, I used to get my hopes up only to have them crushed and realize they were who I (and everyone else) thought they were. Now winning streaks don’t get me excited and losing streaks I expect like the sun rising in the morning or Jim Tressel lying his corrupt ass off. I try not to pay attention but I always get sucked back in around the start of spring training. Every season I come up with a reason that sounds rational at the time. This year? It’s the Buck Showalter plan. Let him build up the team, fire his ass and the O’s will win a World Series two years after he leaves. Never question the plan.

Who can forget the Mets choking down the home stretch a few years ago? It was actually quite impressive. Their fans were suicidal and neutrals like myself could only laugh and watch in amazement.

Chin up, Mets fans. At least you won’t have to deal with hilarious pictures like the one above this season. Consider live games an opportunity to work on your tan, get drunk and find someone new to hate since Oliver Perez has left the building. Go early and often, kids. Who knows how long it will be until foreclosure proceedings start on Citi Field thanks to the Madoffs.

** All of that is true. Fuck. I’m that guy. I’ve become what I… Jesus, I have some thinking to do. I should go.

This isn’t much of a story however it’s the kind of thing you expect to happen in a soup kitchen and not the Yankees clubhouse. It’s also an excuse to use a picture of Pedro throwing Don Zimmer.

New York Yankees Hall of Famer Yogi Berra was taken to a Clearwater, Fla., hospital today after falling in the team’s clubhouse at Bright House Field.

Berra, 85, stumbled and fell backward after catching his shoe in the carpet as he went for a cup of soup. As a precaution, he was taken to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, the Yankees said. He reportedly was alert and had spoke to his wife.

The cup of soup was probably the last thing left on the table. The Yankees starting rotation must have gotten there first. Berra wasn’t the only Yankee affected by the incident. A-Rod reportedly threw a temper tantrum because Cameron Diaz wasn’t there to feed him and he missed out on the buffet as well.

By now, many are familiar with the story of Miguel Cabrera’s DUI arrest last month. The Detroit Tigers slugger was pulled over after police saw his car on the side of the road in Ft. Pierce, Florida near the Tigers’ spring training facility. He asked the cops if they knew who he was and continued to take swigs from a whiskey bottle while being arrested.

The Florida State’s Attorney’s office released their evidence against Cabrera on Wednesday and let’s just say it’s not pretty. The Smoking Gun reports that prior to his arrest, he was in a bar after closing. He was asked to leave by the manager and refused.

[Bar manager Fletcher] Nail said that Cabrera “leaned down close to my face” and said, “I will kill you.” Nail added that the ballplayer looked around the bar and added, “I know all of you, and I will kill all of you and blow this place up.” Another witness, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission agent, told investigators that Cabrera threatened him and Nail “by saying he had a gun in his bag for us.”

Cabrera left while cussing at Nail and a bar patron. Police found him on the side of the road. When they approached him, he threatened to kill an imaginary passenger and refused to cooperate.

After giving a Florida cop the middle finger, baseball star Miguel Cabrera shouted at police, “Fucking shoot me, kill me” when ordered to drop to his knees so that officers could handcuff him, according to a sheriff’s report.

The 27-year-old athlete, busted last month in Fort Pierce for drunk driving, also stated, “Fuck you. Do you know who I am? I’m Miguel Cabrera, I play for the Detroit Tigers, you don’t know my family.”

This incident is the most recent in a long line of incidents involving Cabrera and alcohol. In 2009, GM Dave Dombrowski had to pick him up from the police station the morning before a game after police were called to his house. He was found with scratches on his face and blew a .26. Since then, he’s been in rehab and also threatened restaurant patrons by claiming he had a gun.

Cabrera has exhibited an extremely disturbing pattern of behavior since he’s been in the majors and especially with the Tigers. One has to wonder if this is why the Marlins dumped him (besides being incredibly cheap). He’s one of the best players in baseball but with all due respect to Charlie Sheen, he’s slowly destroying himself.

The Tigers put Dontrelle Willis on the DL twice in 2009 so he could deal with his anxiety issues yet they can’t step up and make Cabrera sort himself out? Teams often ignore off the field problems as long as the player concerned continues to put up numbers and perform. He may continue to produce on the field but that shouldn’t be the limit of their concern.

The additional information released yesterday should encourage the team’s hierarchy to intervene and make him get the help he needs. It’s long overdue. They’re also better off doing it now than in July and August when it happens again. So far it’s business as usual.

There’s probably somewhere in the neighborhood of one million different jokes that I can make here about A-Rod’s balls, but no, I am going above the low brow humor that I normally use and just giving it to you straight. You can soon purchase Alex Rodriguez’s 500th home run ball which he hit in old Yankee Stadium on Aug. 4, 2007.

So, you too can be a part of history and pay a ton of money for a ball, hit by a guy, who admitted he once used performance enhancing drugs to help hit balls.  Awesome.  Ask Todd McFarlane how buying home run balls has worked for him lately?  Yea, he’s the wisenheimer who bought Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball for 3 million dollars. BRILLIANT!

 From The Globe and Mail