soapbox

I don’t know how much more there is to say. It’s a serious problem though when you just get out of rehab and then get arrested for chasing a car with your car while drunk with cocaine in your pocket.

Her mugshot makes it look like a lot of that cocaine might have already been used too.

It kind of makes me wonder if a lot of these people (both celebrity and non-celebrity) should be shipped off to communes in the woods where they just don’t have access to anything really. Let them dry out for a year or two. Of course, you can’t really hold a person back from self destruction.

Baseball’s had some really powerful stories going this week, in spite of the (sorry, Jimmy) malaise surrounding pro sports of late, due to scandals running rampant in football, basketball, and trudging towards infamy.

Too bad the usual sports media is too caught up in these to focus on the more compelling stuff happening all around it. Not only did we get to see Lester’s triumphant return to the mound after beating cancer (see my previous post), but we were shocked and saddened by the tragic death of KC’s AA 3B coach, Mike Coolbaugh.

Some of the thoughts expressed by the other MLB base coaches interviews in that last article echo thoughts I’ve had for years, primarily being: why don’t those guys get helmets?!? Just like the hard-hat-style cap that many catchers use (and that John Olerud wore when playing 1B) would probably have been enough to prevent or reduce the effects of incidents such as this.

Now that I’m on the subject, it seems like coaches could used some of those various armor-plated attachments that many hitters have taken to wearing. Shin guard thingies, elbow pads, something. Those poor guys are like fish in a barrel at a shooting gallery sometimes. As tragic an event as Coolbaugh’s death is, I hope that MLB decides to mandate some protective gear for the coaches in the aftermath, thereby preventing more such tragedies in the future and perhaps giving his family some sense of closure…