Yesterday, after the Tour of California Time Trial was finished, I left the TV on. And soon found myself watching Lance Armstrong power up L’alpe d’Huez in 2001, giving Jan Ulrich the look back. And then another stage from 2002. And Versus may have aired more past stages late into the night, though I finally switched the channel.

It’s as though Versus was trying to prove the point I made in my SI.com column last week: that without Lance there would be no Versus (which was OLN back when Armstrong was giving Jan the look).  When in doubt trot out the Tour de France reruns. I can’t say that I mind – those of us who are huge TdF fans never get tired of watching (awesome French countryside, cool competition, what’s not to like?).

But it also seemed that Versus was choosing its programming based on the context of the last week: Hey, Floyd Landis said he and Lance were transfusion buddies back in the early 2000s. So let’s take a look at Armstrong then.

From that perspective, the reruns were even more interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Floyd Landis, borrowed a page from Mark McGwire and Marion Jones, but took it to a Jose Canseco-type of level. He felt the need to ease his guilty conscience, just like the other lying drug cheats McGwire and Jones. But he decided to strafe his entire sport in the process, like Canseco.

Landis is quickly becoming the creepiest drug cheat in history.  First he came up with the lamest excuse ever after he tested positive at the 2006 Tour de France (shots of Jack Daniels? puh-leeze).

Then he took money (up to a million by some reports) from sympathetic cycling fans for his own legal defense – playing up his nice guy Mennonite background in the process. Way to trample on your family history, Floyd.

Next, in his USADA hearing, it was revealed that his manager tried to blackmail former champion Greg LeMond by threatening to reveal that LeMond was a victim of sexual abuse as a child.

And now, Landis has opened fire on his own sport and every big-name American cyclist in the middle of cycling’s biggest American moment.

Nice timing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another rough day in Giantsville. Didn’t go to the game, but not surprised by the result:

No offense.

And Pablo Sandoval – the guy who was supposed to provide the offensive spark this year -went 0-for-3. He wasn’t the only one. The Giants were bewitched by Padres pitcher Mat Latos, who only gave up one hit – to Eli Whiteside in the sixth.

But the Panda Problem continues to grow.

According to hitting coach Hensley Meulens, Sandoval is “fighting fatigue…He’s played every game.”

Gosh, it’s only mid-May. He’s only 23.  Is it already time for fatigue?

Perhaps. Maybe  we can all agree, that Sandoval needs a day off. But I think he needs to take something else off. The guy is carrying around 30 extra pounds.  You try carrying the equivalent of a three-year old around 24 hours a day and you’d be fighting fatigue, too.

Meulens said the weight i battles part of the exhaustion: Sandoval is still doing extra cardio after games to try to trim down.

Basically, Operation Panda – which got a lot of publicity in the offseason – was a bust. The 23-year old didn’t lose enough weight to sustain the grind of playing. He’s still trying to lose it, though the season is started, and now seems to be caught in a vicious cycle.  He probably has a lot of anxiety about it too – the hitting slump, the cardio workouts, the expecctations.

That doesn’t bode well for the Giants who – a week ago – had the best record in the NL. This week they look like last year’s team: fatigued, impotent at the plate and injury prone.  Mid-May is when we can usually start to take the true measure of a baseball team.

Afraid we may be seeing the real Giants right now.

I suppose there’s a different prism through which to see the Charlie Davies situation. But given my personal spot in life, I can only see it through the prism of the mother of a young adult male. A parent who is constantly trying to get her child to understand the consequences of his occasionally reckless behavior.

My son has never suffered a consequence as big as the one Davies, 23, has been dealt. The bright, rising young star of American soccer was left off the 2010 World Cup roster Tuesday, because he’s not expected to be healthy enough to contribute.  He is still recovering from horrible injuries suffered in a car crash in Washington DC last October. One of those past-curfew, what -the -hell-were-you-thinking mistakes that can change a young person’s life.

Davies didn’t pay the ultimate consequence. A passenger in the car, a young woman named Ashley Roberta, did. She was killed instantly.  And the crash put the ups and downs of professional soccer in perspective. Davies’ mother said, a few days after the crash, that the World Cup drama didn’t seem so important. Her son was just lucky to be alive.

Read the rest of this entry »