It's not every day that a ballpark worker organizes a high-profile electronics theft. After all, most people keep their cell phones under close watch when they're at the ballpark. They know the maintenance folks, the beer delivery people, that guy carrying the Super Ropes -- all budding criminal conspirators with no respect for the law.

One Reds fan learned the hard way, until this weekend, when his perpetrator was caught ... Red-handed. Bum bum bummmm:

A man who works at Great American Ballpark has been charged with stealing a fan's cell phone while he was working. Fifty-three-year-old Paul Pawkey is charged with theft after being arrested early Wednesday morning at the ballpark. It's alleged late last month, he stole the phone and had been making calls on it in the days since. Pawkey allegedly admitted to the theft.

Of course, had I been advising Mr. Pawkey, I would have told him that only in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City does stealing a cell phone and later using it to make calls not hasten one's entry in prison. That's just not very smart.

(HT: Shysterball)

Any number of things could have started it. "Don't you dare say that 'bout my pappy!" "No one needs a no-hitter for the Hall of Fame!" "Steroids were legal in the 80's!" Or maybe Koby Clemens is just a bit of a steakhead.


I would imagine, though, that being Roger Clemens' son probably had something to do with being involved in a bar fight in Salem, Va., this weekend.

Clemens and Ori were charged with disorderly conduct and Goethals with assault and battery. All three were taken to the Roanoke County-Salem Jail before being released on bond, according to a news release from the Salem police.

[...] According to the news release, police were dispatched to a disturbance in the restaurant's parking lot at 2 a.m. on Sunday and, upon their arrival, found approximately 50 people in the lot.

The release does not describe any of the events leading to the arrests. It states only that Clemens and Ori were arrested on the scene and that Goethals was charged "after an employee of the restaurant obtained a warrant for his arrest" from the Roanoke County/Salem magistrate's office.

Naturally, no one is commenting. But it's odd that Clemens didn't have anything to do with the actual disorderly charge, since it seems pretty likely that he would have been one of the ones throwing down. Especially considering the Times note that he's been "catching catcalls from fans and media as his father contends with allegations of cheating on his wife, Debbie, and using performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career."

Considering there's a 90% chance that the fight stemmed from someone verbally assaulting Koby, I'll be interested to hear what Roger has to say about this. And pretty surprised if this is the last time something like this happens.

Via SbB

If I ever have to go to prison, I don't want it to be for a hateful and/or creepy crime. If that makes any sense. Like tax evasion or something would be fine. But writing hateful letters to a group of celebrities belonging to a particular race? Well, that just seems like the type of thing that would make other people angry.

I suppose we'll find out after David Tuason starts serving the three years and 10 months in prison he received for sending hateful letters to prominent citizens.

David Tuason apologized for his behavior in federal court Tuesday, saying he never meant to hurt anybody. He said he sent the threatening letters because a black man "stole" the girlfriend he planned to marry.

Tuason had faced up to 10 years in prison. He pleaded guilty in May to six counts of mailing threatening communications and two counts of threatening interstate communications.

As LB said, "Dude, get a life." (And I also agree that Ana Ivanovic is an entirely different ballgame as well.) Some of the celebs that Tuason sent letters to include the aforementioned Derek Jeter and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

So to recap: this creepy guy got spurned and he immediately decided to anger as many public figures in as an aggressive a manner as he could possibly pull off. Because, after all, our country isn't sensitive to racism at all. So this should end up working out really well for him in the long run.

I, as I'm sure many of you are as well, am a Netflix subscriber. The idea of actually leaving my apartment to go to the local Blockbuster is just too much for me to deal with, so I need my movies delivered to me by mail. I'm a blogger, after all, and it's difficult for us to wear anything other than our underwear and leave mom's basement.

As a Netflix subscriber, I've often wondered why it takes up to a week for a movie I put in the mail to get back to Netflix when their nearest facility is located about fifteen miles away from me. Well, it appears that I may have gotten my answer. My mailman is taking those movies home and watching them himself. It's the only logical explanation.

I mean, they're already stealing baseball cards, why not my movies?

Richard Trofatter Jr., 31, of 1090 Meetinghouse Road, Wells, Maine, pleaded guilty in Portsmouth District Court Tuesday to a class A misdemeanor count of theft of lost or mislaid property. His attorney, James Noucas, told the court his client was recently treated for "obsessive compulsive behavior surrounding baseball cards" and according to a police report, Trofatter described himself as "borderline addicted" to collecting the cards.

Remember Hideki Irabu? Sure you do ... he's the man that George Steinbrenner once called a "fat toad" after a disappointing career in pinstripes. Well, he's back in the news ... no, not because the Yankees have signed him to help the starting rotation, but because he's been arrested after a drinking binge which saw him down 20 mugs of brew before assaulting a bartender:

Irabu, 39, became angered after his credit card was rejected. He then allegedly pushed the bartender against the wall, pulled his hair and smashed at least nine liquor bottles at a bar in Osaka, western Japan, a police official said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

The bartender sustained no injuries. Irabu paid the bill with another credit card.

You know, bar etiquette demands that you at least attempt the second credit card before pulling the bartender's hair and smashing up the place in a fit of drunken rage. I think that's mentioned in the Zagat guide, I'm not sure.

Hey, didn't the Yankees sign Sidney Ponson after a bar incident? Hmmmmmm.

It's hard to know what to make of drug testing results. It's easy to be lulled to sleep by the notion of fewer tests, to think that baseball is now clean of all undo influence thanks to a stricter policy. On the other hand, that seems naive. So who knows, right?

Whether or not fewer minor league drug tests means fewer minor league drug users is inconclusive. But one thing's for certain: Players in Dominican development leagues, many of them teenagers, are using PEDs at a startlingly high rate:

Standing apart from these low numbers are the figures emerging from the Dominican Republic's summer league, a developmental program run by major league teams in which some of the players are 16 and 17. So far, 22 players in that league have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs this year. Testing began in the Dominican Republic in 2004. Because of previous complications stemming from local laws, this is the first season that the Dominican league players have been subject to suspensions, and thus the first season that the number of positive tests has been made public.

Part of the reason these tests don't seem to be lowering the number of users is that players in the Dominican aren't suspended or docked pay for cheating. They merely receive educational information and are subjected to future tests. In Venezuela, by contrast, players are suspended. Failed tests have been far less infrequent.

The stereotype here is one we've heard before, that these are players desperate to earn a major league contract and make it out of the squalor of Latin America, and part of that is true. If so, it's a bit easier to forgive. But if baseball's serious about cleaning itself up, regardless of the difficulty of the task, these leagues will have to get every bit as strict as domestic ones.

That's good enough for me. Oh! Violence violence violence starts with V.

As you may know, humanity is a living Linkin Park chorus now as players are wiping their asses with hand towels, people looking for sports news on the Internet have to do so in the middle of a terrible issue of Maxim, and seemingly every sports rivalry is erupting in brick-to-the-dome quality physical violence. Yankees fans assault Red Sox fans, Red Sox fans abuse Yankees fans, the Dodgers hate the Giants, a Brewers fan draws a pistol during the seventh inning stretch and kills 20,000 Diamondbacks fans, and three Cubs fans kick a White Sox fan in the nose so hard that it destroys his eyeball at a little girl's birthday party.

This is getting ridiculous. I don't know about you, but I'm giving up this cogged blogger lifestyle and devoting my talents to something more deserving, like celebrity gossip livejournal communities. What did Zac Efron and BBV wear to the premiere of Space Chimps??? Click below to find out!

Back in 2004 the San Diego Padres used their first pick in the amateur draft to select shortstop Matt Bush. There was some concern with the pick at the time, because many people felt the Padres would have been better off going after Stephen Drew or Jered Weaver. The Padres were concerned about the bonus it would take to sign either of those guys, though, and instead went with the local product Bush.

They then gave Bush a team record $3.15 million signing bonus. Bush, then only 18 years old, then went out and celebrated his newfound wealth by getting into a fight at a nightclub in Peoria, Arizona. Bush was suspended for the incident but came back after a month off courtesy of the team, and after he plead guilty to disorderly conduct, trespassing, and underage possession of alcohol.

Well, last week Matt was in a bar that was only a block away from where the fight in 2004 took place. Bet you can't guess what happened.

Padres minor leaguer Matt Bush, drafted first overall in 2004, recently was involved in an off-field fight in which he suffered bodily harm, according to persons close to him. It happened near a pub/grill in Peoria, Ariz., across from the Padres' compound.

This story is a few days old, but I didn't hear anything about it until today, so it's new to me. A suburban Chicago man named William Hermes was recently arrested after he sold 1.5 grams of cocaine to an undercover police officer. As is normally the case when police arrest somebody for selling drugs, any money found on the person is assumed to have been made by selling drugs, and the police confiscate it. Which is exactly what they did when they found over $1,400 in Hermes' pocket.

The only way to keep your money if you've been arrested is if you prove to the police that you got it another way, which is what Hermes did. Though it's not exactly a story police are used to hearing in these cases.

"He told the officers he was a baseball card collector and that he had just sold an Ernie Banks rookie card," Day said. "It certainly was the most interesting story I have heard under these circumstances, but we had to check it out."

And it did check out, Day said. Police contacted the card buyer who confirmed the transaction. Police followed that up with a visit to the purchaser, who showed them the card and the receipt provided by Hermes.

"The card deal was legitimate, so we gave him the money back," Day said. "The best thing about it was I got to see the card."

Ahh yes, Ernie Banks and cocaine. The two just go together don't they? After all, wasn't it Banks who once said "It's a beautiful day for a bump! Let's do two!"