Quotes from recent articles written by ESPN personality and Fanhouse.com blogger Jay Mariotti, who was arrested on a felony charge Saturday stemming from an undisclosed domestic disturbance.
So Francisco Rodriguez is accused of assaulting the 53-year-old father of his girlfriend by the team’s “family lounge” at Citi Field, banging the man’s skull against a wall, hitting him in the face, putting him in the hospital with scrapes and swelling — yet was back in uniform Friday night with the New York Mets after just two days on the restricted list.
In the world of Bud Selig and the union he allows to rule his domain — the Major League Baseball Players Association — this somehow qualifies as tough justice. How typically pathetic and sad, huh? Never mind that the volatile K-Rod, as Rodriguez is known in his $37-million position as a high-energy relief pitcher, was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on charges of third-degree assault and second-degree harassment. …
Had Rodriguez’s alleged pummeling of an older man happened by an NFL locker room, he could have expected at least a one- or two-game suspension if not longer — in a 16-game season, remember — from commissioner Roger Goodell. … In Goodell’s kingdom, domestic violence is considering among many chilling sins that are handled specifically by the league office, not by the team itself, and has led to numerous suspensions. …
Jay Mariotti, Fanhouse.com, 8/14/2010
Just as it was surreal to see Marion Jones, the disgraced track star, serve prison time for lying under oath about steroids use, it will boggle the mind when [Roger] Clemens is led away in a jumpsuit. … [I]f there’s any justice to be found within the injustice done to baseball, Clemens and [Barry] Bonds will be cellmates. They were among the biggest names who returned baseball to prominence back in the ’90s, after a labor stoppage threatened the sport’s popularity. And they were the ones who ravaged the sport, made us distrust and even hate it.
For that, he deserves to be hauled away in cuffs. Any man who compounds one big lie with 15 others, while under oath, is an affront to humanity. He used to wear No. 22 in Yankee pinstripes. His next number will be much longer.
Jay Mariotti, Fanhouse.com, 8/20/2010
If we can feel sorry for a man who threw away something close to a perfect life, just so he could sleep with bimbos, then this is the time. Eldrick Woods — I no longer see anyone resembling Tiger — is so lost as a golfer and discombobulated as a human being that he now must rely on a captain’s pick to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team, the ultimate acknowledgment of failure in his profession. …
In my mind, this was a step forward in what will be a long, if also impossible, journey toward salvaging his career and life. If Woods never wins another major and is remembered more for his stunning free-fall than his monumental successes, at least he can say he cared deeply about his kids and their formative years after scarring them with his sleazy behavior. I mean, isn’t that what we’ve demanded from him since the scandals of last winter, that he be a better father and person? In the end, isn’t it much more important to help his two children through a wicked divorce and the inevitable social wounds than win his elusive five major titles? …
Falling shy of the record that would have defined him, Eldrick Woods still can be successful in one area. He can be a father. I don’t want to hear how he plans to practice with a swing coach. I want to hear that he can’t practice, that he’s too busy taking care of his children.
It’s the only way he can salvage his soiled, ridiculed name.
Jay Mariotti, Fanhouse.com, 8/11/2010
“It doesn’t really matter, of course, whether Pitino used the entire shot clock or fired prematurely. Sex in a restaurant is sex in a restaurant, a particularly tacky and mindless act in any context, much less that involving a married man who is the most visible face of the University of Louisville. If he’s the custodian of a basketball program that demands players to show discipline and sound judgment in their daily lives, how is Ricky Dicky supposed to be taken seriously when he couldn’t control his sexual appetite at an actual table where people eat and drink in a well-regarded establishment? I mean, that’s just gross behavior. For too many reasons to count — including how he possibly can enter a recruit’s living room and explain his actions to mom and dad — Pitino should realize he has permanently undermined his credibility as an educator and do the right thing.
He should resign his position as coach. …
He is imprisoned for life. For his sake — and humankind’s — he’ll find a job that doesn’t involve teaching kids.
Caught with his pants down, he and his messages are worthless now.
Jay Mariotti, Fanhouse.com, 7/28/2010
