Before being sentenced to prison on Monday, Michael Vick attempted his last hail mary for the next few years. Michael wrote a letter to Judge Henry Hudson with hopes of garnering some leniency from the court. As we all know now, it didn’t work, but it was a nice try.. Right down to recruiting Hank Aaron, George Foreman, Warrick Dunn, his mom, and some children to write letters.

Letters in support of Michael Vick released to public. Courtesy of The Daily Press

Michael Vick, Hank Aaron, George Foreman letters PDF
Warrick Dunn letter PDF
Vick’s mom and fans letters PDF

Tags: Michael Vick, Atlanta Falcons, NFL, Sports, Dogfighting, Warrick Dunn

When Barry Bonds was chasing Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs, Mr. Aaron kept his distance. Many people alleged that they knew what was going through Hank’s mind at the time. It was some variation of “Hank is making his stand against Barry Bonds and Barry’s steroid use”. According to Hammerin’ Hank, that wasn’t the case at all.

“(When) I was chasing the (home run) record, it was all about a man of color. Now when Barry was chasing the record, it was all about steroids, and I really didn’t want to be involved in that. It wasn’t because I had any animosity toward Barry breaking the record.”

I’m sure the people that want Hank to be against Barry Bonds will spin this some way, but it sounds pretty clear to me. Henry Aaron will talk baseball, just not steroids.

Aaron OK with Bonds, just not steroids questions. Courtesy of USA Today

More Barry Bonds:

Barry’s Gon Knock It Out

Barry Bonds Not Always A Douchebag

Poll: Racial Polls Are Dumb

Tags: Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Steroids, Home Runs, Controversy

In the PC era, teams have to drop nicknames that refer to lethal projectiles, but players can still don the names of deadly weapons. Here are some of my favorites.

Pete Maravich: Pistol Pete. His name was Pistol and he wore 44. He was packin’ every time he stepped on the court.

Steve McNair: Mac 9. If McNair has another couple of games like Monday night’s mess, he’s gonna be downgraded to a pellet gun.

Andrei Kirilenko: AK 47. The gun won’t cry if you don’t use it for a while.

Chuck Person: The Rifleman. Woulda been sweet if he had played for the Bullets.

Ron Jaworski: The Polish Rifle. He watches NFL game film through a high-powered scope.

Eric Piatkowski: The Polish Rifle. I say Jaws and Piatkowski have a Polish battle to the death… Last man standing is The PR.

Molly Bolin: Machine Gun Molly. Don’t know much about her but women’s basketball has devolved in the looks department.

Here’s a few that can be added to the list..

Steve Francis: The Rocket Launcher. Stevie’s gonna need to keep it pon lock as the 3rd or 4th option in Houston.

Hank Aaron: 44 Magnum. Go ahead, break my record.

Jayson Williams: Shotgun.

Bob Gibson: The .45. MJ got a little consideration here, but MJ’s 45 wasn’t reliable.

Kim Kardashian: The Bushmaster. The weapon you want if you need to lay down a lot of men.

Barry Bonds: Barry doing this:

Is like going from a .25 (24)

to a Desert Eagle.

Poor NBA ratings.. blame ABC. Courtesy of Sports Media Watch

Sammy joins Hank, Barry, Babe, and Willie at #600. So what?! Courtesy of Larry Brown Sports

Ice-T talks about the “N” word and why Cam’ron is an idiot. Courtesy of SOHH

The NBA should draft one player per day. Courtesy of MJD at AOL’s Fanhouse

Cheerleaders+Ninjas+”Strip-Off”= Summer Blockbuster. Courtesy of The Serious Tip

You might want to avoid these jerseys. Courtesy of Sportable

Hip Hop’s 25 greatest movies. Courtesy of XXL

U.S. sports are in really bad shape when we’re losing to Pakistan in street hockey. Courtesy of Shake Down Sports

Paperboy writing ditty ridin’ dirty. Courtesy of A Hot Mess

Coral from the Real World is now a practicing lesbian. Courtesy of Outlook Magazine (VIA USA TODAY)

DIGG IT  *  DEL.ICIO.US  *  REDDIT  *  BALL HYPE

The new media flavor of the week is the “race based” poll or study. Just last week the traditional and non-traditional media were buzzing over alleged racial bias amongst NBA referees and now this:

• More than half of baseball fans are rooting against Barry Bonds as he tries to break Hank Aaron’s major league home run record of 755, according to an ESPN/ABC News poll.
• The survey found that 52 percent of fans hope Bonds doesn’t break the record, while 37 percent of fans want him to surpass Aaron’s mark, set in 1974.
• In addition, 73 percent of fans think Bonds used steroids, despite Bonds’ repeated denials. Bonds has never tested positive for steroids.
• However, race plays a unique role. Black fans in the survey are more than twice as likely to want Bonds to break Aaron’s record (74 percent to 28 percent), and 37 percent of black fans think Bonds used steroids, compared to 76 percent of white fans.

There are parts of the polls that I agree with and then some parts that I don’t understand. The first thing I want to know is why do these polls interview a couple of hundred people and then tell us “this is what Americans think”? Every black person I know thinks Bonds used some sort of performance enhancer. I definitely think he used something. One of my partnas is a huge SF Giants fan and he’s black, and he’ll tell you that Barry used something. As more and more news comes out about the steroid era, it looks like damn near everybody used a PED of some sort.

I could waste the next hour of your time going into what I view as hypocrisy and bias towards Barry Bonds, but I want to question the media’s motivation behind running these stories.. Is this 1907 or 2007? Is our country a melting pot or a race war waiting to happen?

Whenever I see one of these “black people think ___” polls I always ask my brothas “did any of you get to vote on this?” and the answer is always no. I don’t know one person that has ever been polled for these purposes.. Do you? And why are we always breaking things down along black and white lines? There’s no brown and yellow people with opinions? Does the future of our country hinge on what blacks and whites think about different subjects? All of this crap is stupid.

The only thing these polls prove is that our race relations in this country are in a bad state. It’s just like when it’s election time. You always hear “so and so is going after the black vote” or “candidate x needs to secure the Latino vote”. If we’re all Americans, shouldn’t it just be the democrat or republican vote?

These polls present more problems than they solve and the conducters of the surveys should be ashamed of themselves. I mean, take the Bonds poll for instance.. Blacks care whether black man A has the homerun record over black man B? If things are really racially based wouldn’t blacks be content either way? But, you can sell more newspapersget more hits on a website if you run out a racially divisive poll. I can’t wait until next week so I can find out how Native Americans feel about the NBA age limit.

American’s conflicted about Bonds’ home run chase. Courtesy of ESPN.com

DIGG IT  *  DEL.ICIO.US  *  REDDIT  *  BALL HYPE