I took a weekend off. Off not only work, but a weekend without sports. And, sad to report, it was tremendous. Just wonderful.

Sure, I checked the Reds score occasionally, but I didn't see a single minute of sports on TV or live. As much as I enjoy sports, it's nice to get away occasionally. Was I worse off not getting worked up about batting out of order? Nope. I recommend it sometime. Or maybe even once a month.

So....

* That said, there is zero excuse for batting out of order. That falls solely on Dusty Baker. Poor managing. But in the end, did it matter? It's more of a symbol than anything.

* And you thought we'd seen the last of Jim Edmonds, Red killer. The Cubs are thinking about bringing him back to the NL Central. Somewhere Jason LaRue is crying.

* I like the pink bats for Mother's Day, and, well, I'm conflicted about the Royals' powder blue jerseys (the originals are one of my favorites), but the combination made it look like Easter, not Mother's Day.

* I love hockey, but this is just funny.

* Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post looks at managers. Also, Sheinin has this note about young pitchers -- there's certainly lessons there.

* O.J. Mayo has been getting extra benefits? You mean, the basketball culture in the U.S. is corrupt? Really? No. I don't believe it.

* Our old friend Phil Dumatrait is pitching well in Pittsburgh.

* Ken Tremedous of FireJoeMorgan.com is on Mo's show today. He's Mose Schrute on the show.

* One of my favorite Bulldog bloggers sticks up for the Buckeyes.

* Another one of my favorite Bulldog bloggers compares UGA's opponents to 30 Rock characters. Great stuff. The common thread between the two bloggers is that they both wrote for the Red & Black at UGA during my years in Athens.

* Speaking of the Dogs, they wrapped up the SEC baseball title on Sunday.

* Notice when things aren't good on the field, Joe Paterno defenders talk about what's right off the field. But when things aren't going well, Paterno doesn't want to discuss anything but what's on the field?

* Bad news: Early reviews of the new Indiana Jones movie are mixed. And this sentence doesn't quell my fears:

"We're very sensitive to it," says Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox, which had hits with the new Star Wars and Fantastic Four franchises despite some tough blog reviews.

* No Conrad or Heylia on Weeds? Damn.

* But I don't want to end on a bad note. Great tribute to Willie Nelson by Texas Monthly.

It had been on my DVR, so I hadn't gotten around to watching it until now, but I'm really enjoying the PBS' American Experience on Roberto Clemente. Clemente is one of those guys I'm just fascinated by. If you haven't read David Maraniss' biography, you should. It's excellent. He's one guy I wish I could have seen.

* You think the Reds should try this?

* Game 7 is tonight at US Bank Arena for the Cyclones. They've got a better shot at a W than the Reds, that's for sure.

* Yeah, I know there will be more Cubs fans at GABP tonight than Reds fans, but I guess it makes sense. And as Mo Egger said, at least they're spending money. What do you think the ratio's going to be tonight in actual butts in seats and in noise?

* Nice job by my man Mr. Redlegs.

* The Royals' John Bale broke his hand punching a wall. I did the same thing in college. On my left hand, it's like there's know knuckle from my pinky finger because I crushed it. It's not a good idea. Remember what Crash Davis told Nuke LaLoosh -- "never punch a drunk with your pitching hand." Same goes for walls. Anyway, the KC Star's Sam Mellinger looks at other odd sports injuries. One I remember was a Georgia running back, Odell Collins, I believe was his name, who injured his hamstring when he slipped ont he floor doing laundry.

* Looks like the Brewers lost the $10 million gamble with Eric Gagne, who leads the majors with five blown saves. Think they could use Francisco Cordero? Cordero is 4-for-4 in save situations. Of course, it helps that the Brewers actually have had five save situations for Gagne to blow.

* Interesting article in The Hardball Times looking at what the first month of the season really means.

* Yeah, the Bengals have the reputation, but the Bears seem to have bigger crimes when they commit them.

* I'll be interested in following Marcus Dixon with the Cowboys.

* There's nothing like the combination of the passion of college sports fans and the free time of baseball season -- check out these parodies of the anti-meth ads for college football.

* Here's a good blog post on Jason Maxiell.

* Um, who has the best Tim Tebow joke?

In this day and age of easy access to world-wide celebrity (Paris Hilton, Perez Hilton, etc.) and easy-access information, it's amazing that there are fewer and fewer outlets for information.

Sure, you have your Deadspin.com, and RedsReporter.com and countless other places (including TheLotD.com) to find what people think about the news, there are fewer actual sources of said news.

Months ago, my newspaper, The Cincinnati Post folded. With it went competition (if not financial, we held our own editorially, especially Keith Harrell's sports staff) for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Now we've got blogs (CincyNewsAche, Cincinnati Beacon, Buy Cincy and others) and City Beat as a alternative weekly, plus TV news and radio, but so much of that is spun off the Enquirer and a newspaper's traditional role as a leader in a community.

What is the Enquirer doing? Some thought with its monopoly sealed with the closing of the Post, they'd take on some added journalists and strengthen the product. Nope, instead they instituted cuts and any position that is vacated isn't replaced. They've used the fall of the Post as an excuse to give you less and maximize profits.

In sports, travel to almost any other similar city with an NFL and MLB team and look at their sports coverage. Most other papers have a national NFL writer and a beat writer and backup writer covering the NFL team and a similar set-up with the baseball beat. The Enquirer? Mark Curnutte handles the Bengals and the NFL, John Fay does the Reds and MLB. Shannon Russell is batted between the two. All three are fine journalists, but they've been stretched thin by the penny-pinching of Gannett, the company that owns the Cincinnati Enquirer and is the largest newspaper company in America. What does Gannett care about Cincinnati? Nothing.

In May of 2002, the Cincinnati Enquirer was like many other newspapers -- it had two sports columnists, with different abilities, insights and personalities. Since then, the Enquirer has had one voice. An interesting and very capable voice in Paul Daugherty, but one none the less. In Kansas City, the Kansas City Star has two of the very best in the business in Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock. Poz and Whitlock are completely different and write differently, think differently and give out wildly diverging opinions and unearth completely different stories from different worlds. The city of Kansas City and the states of Missouri and Kansas benefit from that. Fans of the Royals, Chiefs, Tigers, Jayhawks and Wildcats benefit. You are being cheated of that. For all his strengths, and there are many, Paul Daugherty is just one person. As one person, he can't write at his best 7 days a week. At best, a columnist can go three-to-four and occasionally five times a week. The Enquirer is a 7-day a week paper that thinks like a daily. That's not because of the people working there, it's the limitations they're given from Northern Virginia where that bastion of journalism, USA Today, is run by Gannett's finest.

For now, though, at least there are other opportunities. You can read from St. Louis the accounts of the Reds from John Fay in the Enquirer or Hal McCoy in the Dayton Daily News.
 If you want to read about the Ohio State Buckeyes, you can read the Columbus Dispatch, the Dayton Daily News or the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. You have different eyes looking in different places, different journalists talking to different people. You have more eyes -- more watchdogs -- watching what is going on and probing what is happening.

Despite readers being able to check in from anywhere on the globe, those days are dying. They're dying in front of your eyes. Just as BP reports a huge profit as gas prices continue to rise, newspaper companies are charging you the same price while cutting their readership. Instead of catering to those who read, the newspaper companies are catering to those who don't read -- cutting story lengths, buying out those with experience and replacing them with younger writers who will work less, getting rid of the people with institutional knowledge gained from years and years on the beat to save a buck, all while still turning a profit. We hear all the time that newspapers are dying -- they're dying from suicide from the top.

And here in Ohio, things are getting worse. Here's what Enquirer Deputy Managing Editor Julie Engebrecht sent out a couple of weeks ago to the people at the Enquirer.

Some of you might have noticed bylines from other Ohio newspapers – Columbus Dispatch, Cleveland Plain Dealer – appearing on our Local pages lately.

Some of your bylines are appearing in those papers, too. We've had a lot of breaking news lately – from Maupin, last week's Colerain fire, etc. The Plain Dealer used Jon Craig's version of Bush's visit to Dayton.

Here's how that's happening:

Last November, the editors from the top 8 papers in the state began meeting to discuss common concerns/issues. One major item that came up was that AP wasn't transmitting stories or photos from around the state we might want to use in our papers, or when they were being sent, we wanted more.

To facilitate this, the Plain Dealer set up a password-protected FTP web site where we could drop stories we wanted to share or trade. Two weeks ago, the papers began a more formal system. By 4:30 each day (more or less … I see tomorrow's Enquirer sports budget is already up), Josh Picher and I (or our designees) each post a sports and news budget of stories we think other Ohio newspapers might be interested in and we're willing to share, along with contact information for the day. When relevant, I've included business and features stories on my budget. Each budget is typically about 3 to 5 stories each long. Once a promised story has been edited, sports, local or business editors will post that story on the FTP site. We are able to send an automatic e-mail when we have breaking news; we will soon have the ability to upload photos.

At the moment, those participating most in the collaborative are Dispatch, Plain Dealer, Akron, Toledo and us. In general, Columbus is interested in our breaking news and Reds coverage, while we're looking for some additional coverage of state government and Ohio State coverage from them. In both cases, not much extra work with great benefits for our readers.

Attached are the "rules" of the cooperative:

* Papers can use the stories provided they are fully credited to the originating paper, the byline is included, as well as the appropriate dateline.
* The spirit of the cooperative is to allow other papers to use the stories and not rely on them as "tip sheets" for competing newspapers to match.
* Online, any newspaper using content from another will direct the reader to the originating paper's website so that the paper gets the benefit of the page view. Searchable databases will be handled in the same manner.
* If a paper wants to localize a story generated by another paper, a sidebar or insert is the preferred approach instead of recasting it with the local lead.
* Any paper can withhold content that is sensitive.
Please let Tom, Hollis, Josh or me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

-- Julie

I know many of you will think of this as a good thing. You'll get better coverage of Ohio State football from the Columbus Dispatch than you will the occasional AP piece in the Enquirer. While that's true, it's short-sighted. Instead, it means there will be less competition on beats. It won't be too long (but I hope it is) until Hal McCoy hangs 'em up and retires from the Dayton Daily News. Sending anyone on the road for 81 road games is expensive, and I'd bet a road trip's receipts that the Dayton Daily News will go ahead and decide it can just put the Enquirer's stories from road games up on their web site. And then, well, if they're in the middle of a busy weekend, they'll just take the Enquirer's report from a home game. And pretty soon, press boxes are empty.

Sure, the knee-jerk reaction to that by many fans is 'great.' Seriously, I get that. You hate us. We know it., you've told us. But you also count on reporters from the Enqurier and Dayton Daily News and Cincinnati Post and other places to be your eyes and ears. How does someone blog about Ryan Freel not getting enough playing time and how he feels about it? They read what Freel tells John Fay. There are only so many people who have the access, and without access, where is someone going to get the raw materials? There are some places, like Atlanta, where the traveling party is two writers. One from the local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and one from Major League Baseball's own MLB.com. So you have one set of eyes that isn't paid by MLB watching the team and relaying information to fans back home. This is sad.

With the McDonaldization of news products like is happening in Ohio now, everyone in the state will be reading the same thing, it will become homogeneous and stale. There will always be places to turn for opinions, but fewer places to turn for fact. In Ohio, we'll have our own Ohio Today, with the lack of the individual perspectives. And just like the McDonald's of food, we know it's not good for us, but we'll keep going there because it's easy.

Last night was some of the most interesting television I've seen in a while, and it had nothing to do with the Reds or Johnny Cueto.

I didn't see all of it, so I've already hit the DVR to record it tonight, but on Bob Costas NOW on HBO, Costas held a Town Hall-type meeting on Sports Media. I missed the beginning, because of the Reds, Mario Kart Wii and ignorance, but did catch the end of it. It's replaying today at 6:30 p.m. I'll be rewatching the parts I saw plus the other parts.

It was an interesting discussion, and one I'd love to have with you, the consumer, on the changing roles of sports media. It also had segments on the relationship between media memebers and athletes, race and the media and athletes, blogs and traditional media and other topics. Check it out if you have interest, and I'll start a discussion in my forum.

Anyway, it was really interesting discussion and featured folks like Buzz Bissinger (Friday Night Lights author and bitter little guy -- I'm embarassed that he 'represented' me and much of my viewpoint), Will Leitch (Deadspin), Jason Whitlock (KC Star), Mike Wilbon (Washington Post, PTI -- and yes, I used that order on purpose), Dan Patrick (late of ESPN), Mitch Albom (sappy books in airports everywhere), Selena Roberts (Sports Illustrated, late of the NY Times and one of the absolute best in the biz), Braylon Edwards (Cleveland Browns, and poor 'other' guy while Bissinger is oldmanning on Leitch) and others.

Please, if you have any interest in the topic, watch. Unfortuantely, it was only 90 minutes for five very large topics -- Sports Talk Radio, the Internet and Impact of Bloggers, Sports Television, Athletes and the Media: a Complicated Marriage and A Conversation about Race.

In all, it was really well-done, except for Bissinger coming off looking like a cranky old man (and even though I agreed with the basis of some of the things he said, he made Leitch look much better, because Leitch handled it much better and was smart about his arguments and, well, Buzz just doesn't get it).

Seriously, over on the forum, or if I write more about this, I'll share my Bissinger story. And that said, his book is one of my all-time favorites, but he just seems like a self-important little prick.

I’m usually a leader in good soldier points at my work place (well, at my former workplace, I’ve not been around long enough here to even get on the tally board, and, well, I don’t have the expertise to really get there here, but that’s neither here nor there), however, I may not make it here.

My boss, the wonderful Dave “Yid” Armbruster wants me to be writing about most of the major sporting events going on. I understand that and love that. It’s great. But, well, there’s gonna be some friction over this one. I’m not going to write about what Yid will undoubtedly be watching this weekend -- The Masters.

It’s not as much that I hate golf as much as I hate Golf Guy.

Golf Guy’s as bad as fantasy football guy -- you know, the one who thinks you actually care about his team and thinks he actually accomplished something by winning his fantasy league. Well, that’s no different than guy who shot a 77 at the local track this weekend. That guy may care about how he picked the Broncos’ defense up on waivers right before three defensive touchdowns, but you don’t care about that or his par save on 12.

And a bad as Golf Guy is (in his pastel shirt) on a normal Saturday, he’s even worse this week. Oh, Masters week. I lived in Georgia, and it’s even worse there, where everyone who ever has stepped foot on the grass of Augusta National wears either a Maters’ hat or shirt. It’s some odd law that if you go there, you’ve got to buy the hat or the polo shirt to prove it. My friend Josh wore the same 1998 Masters’ hat as long as I’ve known him. I love Josh, but, well, the thing started to stink in 2000 and I’m guessing he’s still wearing it this week.

Augusta, by the way, is a stinkhole. The town’s idea of fine dining is Hooters. They have a nuclear power plant there because if it exploded, the only thing it would destroy would be golf guy and Hooters. Neither of which would be missed. The only thing that would survive the nuclear meltdown would be the incessant gnats. Jasper Johns grew up around Augusta and said, “in the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn’t know what that meant.” Its most famous citizen is an ex-con and convicted wife-beater (but musical genius) James Brown.

I’ve been to Augusta; I have a hard time believing it can contain the most beautiful place on Earth as you and I are told repeatedly by Golf Guy. But hey, it looks nice on TV (and really, really nice in HD.) But there’s a reason they didn’t show you all the holes on TV until 15 years ago, because really, only half the holes look like your usual golf course anywhere else, because above all else, this is still Disgusta. Now, you can show the lemmings a donkey patch and they’d revere it because they’re told this is some sort of nirvana.

Augusta is a nasty little town, but the acres that are occupied by Augusta National are the richest of the country’s rich. The old saying about the greens fees at Augusta is that if you have to ask how much they are, you can’t afford them. This is the elite of the upper class in this country, and yet they bunker in this one part of the town and let the rest go to pot, fiddling all the while.

Even worse than the draconian rules on the course (fans aren’t allowed free will or cell phones) is the complete control that the club enforces on the TV partners that are ever so graced to televise the event so much so that CBS gives up any semblance of journalistic integrity just to bow to the alter of the Masters. These aren’t “fans” they’re “patrons”; it’s not “the rough” it’s the “second cut”; it isn’t “horse dung” it’s “fantasy grass food.” CBS pays millions of dollars to broadcast this load of sentimental pap, and yet they’re told to smile while they sign the check and follow the rules and state that it never rains, it’s just “blessed by God’s mist.”

And then you have the lead sycophant, Jim Nantz, who has 50 Tiger Woods winning catch phrases ready, just aching to pounce on the perfect time to unleash his newest pun. A week after we vomited from hearing his rehearsed “Rock Chalk Championship” ruining an entertaining NCAA Championship, he’ll wear out prowl, hunt and tales puns as Tiger Woods dominates the event and wins it once again.

And once Tiger does win it, what does he get? Oh, that’s right, the polyester green jacket that may have looked nice back in the day of black and white TV or in a 70s second-hand smoke haze, but looks more like something found at a garage sale in 2008.

But Golf Guy, oh, Golf Guy will recant the majesty and the beauty of his tee shot on 13 on the third day and blah, blah, blah, puke.

Oh, Tiger’s the greatest athlete blah, blah, blah. And this isn’t Tiger hating, it’s golf hating. The guy’s the best, that’s fine. But seriously, he’s going to flip out because someone took his picture as he tried to hit a white ball that’s not even moving, much less not coming at him at 96 mph or curving in midair? Please.

And when was the last time you heard of a golf injury? Never. If there’s no chance of injury, it’s not a sport. If you must drink to make it enjoyable -- not a sport. If you ride around in a cart -- not a sport. If more than 70 percent of your time is spent lining up a shot instead of shooting -- not a sport. If the other 25 percent is waiting for the guy in front to spend his 70 percent of the time lining up a shot -- not a sport. If John Daly ever was one of the best in your activity -- not a sport. If performance enhancement means Viagra and a driver the size of a Subaru instead of HGH -- not a sport.

Yes, I’ve played and I’m not any good. I don’t care. You know what, you may be good, but there’s 100 people a week who play at your local course who are better than you. So shut up. It’s a cute little hobby, it’s not a sport.

Yep, I don’t get it, I’m still too young. Golf is the only “sport” driven at the opposite end of the age spectrum. Every other “sport” (or leisure activity) is driven by young people, golf is what you do when you don’t understand the kids’ music and want to fit in with your Dockers and sweater vest.

Doc told me I didn’t get it because my generation is ruining the only pure thing in “sports.” Well, it’s not our fault we don’t buy into the sexist, racist hegemony that rules Augusta National and every aspiring elitist junior investment banker frat boy intent on returning to the status quo of the good ol’ days. Meanwhile, Paul Daugherty and his brainwashed followers sit on their steps and tell anyone under 40 to get out of their yard. That’s fine: we don’t want in your yard.