Dear Kenny Rogers,

You are an idiot. This is not news, really, because you have been an idiot for a long time (almost as long as you've been a mediocre pitcher with occasional runs of greatness). You are a man who once attacked a cameraman for having the audacity to film you walking during batting practice. To call such an act senseless is to understate to a degree I'm not exactly comfortable with. I have been convinced, on occasion, that you were born without brain synapses. You may want to have this checked out.

However, there is a difference from simply being an idiot -- which you clearly are -- and thinking everyone who follows baseball is similarly unendowed with brain cells. And I have no choice but to believe that you must think just that, after your pathetic explanation for what was so clearly pine tar on your left hand during Game 2. That is the only possible justification I can gather for the, "It was some dirt" line you foisted on the sports media, and thusly the ESPN-watching world, after another retardedly lucky, scoreless, and pine-tar-aided (if only for an inning) outing against the Cardinals.

My anger is not reserved for your red ass alone, Kenny Rogers. While pissing last night at a sports bar -- and activity I'm increasingly becoming a fan of, as it routinely exposes me to the daily sports pages, which I would not likely read otherwise -- I read an AP recap on the game that referred to the substance on your hand as "dirt" the entire way through. Unfortunately, the quotation marks in this case are only being used by me; the writer did not use quotes -- a nifty way, I've found, of indicating either irony or the author's doubt about the correctness of the term -- which forces the reader to conclude that this "journalist" did some "reporting" at some point in the "story" that would bear out Rogers' "explanation" and justify the non-use of quotation marks when referring to the "dirt." And, perhaps, this likely earnest fellow (his byline was on the page not hung over my pisser ... and, who the fuck am I kidding? The term "earnest" and "AP writer" can't possibly related) for some reason actually believed Rogers lame explanation, or somehow believed that the criteria for presenting information in sports recaps was somehow the same as the judicial burden of proof. If that's what he actually thinks, he should be fired, because there is nothing in the AP Sports Style Guide that refers to the presumption of innocence, or the outright regugitation of horseshit excuses that often come out of athletes' mouths.

Mind you, our erstwhile AP scribe is not alone in his guilt. Many of the reports have referred to the substance as dirt. This is in-fucking-sane. If you have seen or played in more than five baseball games in your life, you know what pine tar looks like. Stop condescending to me and state the obvious, Karl Ravech: "Boy, viewers, I have got to say that looks a hell of a lot like pine tar! And that does not look like dirt, not even a little." And then kick it over to Steve Phillips, who will tell us that he once signed a pitcher from the Dominican who used pine tar on his hands. Steve will fail to mention he signed said Dominican kid $10 million more than any other team was willing to offer. And then they'll send it to everyone's favorite androgynous sports journalist Tim Kurkjian, who will offer us another homoerotic anecdote regarding the relationship between Leyland and LaRussa, which is notable both for it's alliteration and it's ability to give me the creeps the more I hear about it.

But, first and foremost, fuck you Kenny Rogers.