By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 8, 2014

I was on the “Sports Brothers” program this morning to discuss the [Trout] awful Pistons, the baseball Winter Meetings, the last dingleberry remnants of the Doug Fister trade, the Michigan coaching search and other things that I can’t remember because I am not used to being up that early.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 8, 2014

If you are interested in underage drinking; injuries resulting from rollover accidents while intoxicated; backstabbing; unkept promises; creepy and disturbing social media interaction between co-workers; potential discrimination; and a depressed high school journalism teacher ….. well ….. you’ll love tonight’s episode of Beverly Hills, 90210.

Actually, Fox isn’t bringing that teenage melodrama back to the small screen for a third time; that paragraph is just a teaser for today’s look at the Detroit Free Press sports section potentially hitting rock bottom under the rudderless direction of sports editor Gene Myers.

If you thought the Freep was at its nadir from a credibility standpoint after Mitch Albom’s fictional Jason Richardson/Mateen Cleaves tale, which ended with Albom’s non-apology and the paper’s publishers basically playing the role of Ohio State President Gordon Gee to Albom’s Jim Tressel …..

“I am just hoping that Mitch doesn’t fire me.”

Well, think again.

If you were under the misguided notion that things couldn’t get ANY worse than Myers allowing former columnist Michael Rosenberg to declare his own fatwah against Rich Rodriguez while trumping up bogus NCAA violations, you were dead wrong.

Replacing Rosenberg with a watered-down in-house version of the Catskills comedy columnist in Jeff Seidel instead of going on a national search? Not even close.

Continuing the employment of a disingenuous troll in Drew Sharp and not even offering an apology when that lazy columnist wrote a factually incorrect article about an historical moment in Detroit sports history? Mere child’s play.

Nope. All of those above transgressions just seem to have been a build up to the paper’s latest controversy — replacing longtime Detroit Tigers beat writer John Lowe with someone who doesn’t seem to have the resume, mental capacity or the writing chops to handle such a high-profile gig.

When the paper announced that Lowe would be replaced with the 27-year-old Anthony Fenech, it wasn’t a huge surprise. The Freep set a precedent when it promoted Seidel from within even though the talentless yuckster had no business writing sports columns for a major daily newspaper.

But with the advent of the Internet, subscription rates at an all-time low and their business model in shambles, the Free Press decided to promote Fenech on the cheap, hoping no one noticed that they were handing this gig to a “kid” who is ill-prepared for such a high-profile responsibility.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the higher-ups at the Freep delegated the vetting process of Fenech to A.B. Culverhouse because not since that powerhouse attorney signed off on John McCain nominating Sarah Palin for the Vice-Presidency have so many red flags gone unnoticed.

The DetroitSportsRag.com has spent the last few weeks doing the research the Free Press should have done before they idiotically promoted this “kid”. From filing Freedom of Information Act requests to interviewing witnesses and culling information from various sources, we have done our due diligence and this is what we have learned …..

June 6, 2008 — The Drunk Driving Accident

On June 6, 2008, Fenech was involved in a two-car injury accident on I-75 near Southfield Road in Lincoln Park.

I am not sure what is more embarrassing, that Fenech was driving a Chrysler PT Cruiser or that he was operating that vehicle with a Blood Alcohol Content of somewhere between .18 and .21 when he crashed that Shriner’s clown car into another vehicle.

The incident report isn’t completely clear but it seems like the PT Cruiser rolled over before coming to a stop on the Southfield Road exit ramp. We attempted to contact Mr. Fenech to get his version of events but he has refused to respond to multiple inquiries.

[I am dubious about someone even being able to  flip over a PT Cruiser. Have you ever SEEN one of those things? They have a lower center of gravity than Barry Sanders. I am not sure Bob Probert in his imbibing prime could’ve pulled off such a maneuver.]

Anyway, here is the full report I obtained under the FOIA:

And this wasn’t even Fenech’s first alcohol-related incident while underage. On September 24, 2005, he was cited for a minor in possession. I filed a FOIA request to obtain the details on that arrest but I have not been able to get my hands on the paperwork because Fenech was a juvenile at the time — a month away from his eighteenth birthday.

[I am still working on receiving all of the information pertaining to the 2005 arrest, but we were not going to hold up this entire story just for that.]

[Update: Below is the record of the Minor in Possession conviction. We are still working on obtaining the underlying documents from that arrest. I have been told by the DSR Legal Team that his sentence to perform two “work days” is more punitive than normal community service. Why the harsher penalty?  Still trying to find out.]

According to several local attorneys I interviewed, Fenech was very fortunate that he wasn’t PT Drunk Cruising in Birmingham or Bloomfield because he almost assuredly would have done jail time based on his BAC, previous citation and underage status.

Fenech also was lucky that this offense occurred before Michigan adopted its “Super Drunk Driving” laws.

According to my sources, it was not the last time that excessive drinking Downriver left Fenech bloodied. The following story makes it harder to just chalk all of this up to youthful indiscretion.

Sometime AFTER the operating while under the influence conviction, Fenech was hanging out at place in Wyandotte called Brooklyn’s Bar and Grill. My eyewitnesses state that Fenech was clearly intoxicated and was hitting on a female patron incessantly.

The only problem with Fenech’s advances was that this woman had either a boyfriend or a husband who was also at Brooklyn’s that night. My sources tell me that Fenech was asked REPEATEDLY to cease and desist from flirting with this guy’s companion.

When he refused to do so, either the woman’s significant other or a friend of his knocked Fenech out with a punch to the face. Two other men dragged Fenech’s nearly lifeless body out of the bar and he was never seen there again.

There was never a police report filed as the gentleman who threw the punch was a regular at Brooklyn’s. And I will let your imagination run wild with the plethora of reasons why Fenech likely didn’t want to involve the cops even though he had been physically assaulted.

This wouldn’t be the last time that Anthony Fenech would make an ass out of himself by making unwanted advances towards the opposite sex, however …….

The Creepy Co-Worker Facebook Messages — 2010

Back in the fall of 2010, Fenech was working at CM Life, the student-run newspaper at Central Michigan University. Based on the various sources I contacted, Fenech had a crush on a co-worker who we will call “Lisa.”

Lisa’s roommate apparently had a blog where she would post some of the stranger things that occurred in a house of six girls. Well, those oddities included some extremely creepy Facebook instant messages that Fenech sent to Lisa.

Here are the texts for your perusal …..

I wanted to hook up with you

when can we make this happen

what if i love you

i tried putting you in a relationship with me

your boyfriend is ugly

i know you feel cool that i creep on you

let me remind you that i was writing for the paper you interned for last year when i was 12

because i am a beast

Who knew that Anthony Fenech was going into “Beast Mode” before Marshawn Lynch? Of course, when the Seahawks running back accomplishes that transformation it means running over defensive players and not sexually harassing co-workers at a school newspaper.

The guy KNEW this girl had a boyfriend and, from what I can gather from my sources, he should have known that these advances were unwanted.

And if those missives were not gross enough, here were some “anonymous” comments left under the blog post which one can only assume are from Fenech himself. Well, at least the nasty ones.

Repeatedly telling a girl you work with that her boyfriend is ugly? And comparing him to the disfigured son of Cher? What the hell?

You might not think this is a huge deal, but I will tell you who DOES think this stuff is grounds for termination. The Denver Post and Awful Announcing. 

Just last week, Adrian Dater was canned after covering the Avalanche for three decades, in part because because he was using Twitter to hit on a Red Wings fan.

And just days after that occurred, hockey writer Steve Lepore was axed by Awful Announcing for his own gross text messages to female followers.

You could very easily make the case that Fenech’s past creepitude was even worse because he knew his target was not interested and was in a relationship.  He also flat-out asked for SEX, not merely some pictures like Lepore and Dater requested.

Or to quote an anonymous member of the DSR Legal Team:

If it’s clear to a co-worker that they have no interest in a physical relationship with you, any unwelcome sexual attention that is severe or pervasive could be the basis for a harassment claim. I would say that clearly applies here. He clearly sexually harassed her as defined by the law.

It is also important to note that an employer is legally responsible for the sexual harassment of their employees, and will be determined to be operating a “hostile work environment”. So, the Free Press is exposing themselves to liability by employing someone who has already turned one publication into, by definition, a hostile work environment.

The Free Press now knows that an employee has sexually harassed a co-worker in the past. And that he has no respect for existing relationships between people. If he does it again, what will their excuse be?

“I want to hook up with you.”

“I am a beast.”

John Lowe’s hat is so offended by this inappropriateness it just got up and left.

Somehow, Gannett thinks it is a good idea to let the gentleman rent a car under their umbrella while probably working 60 to 70 away games a season. His beat also lends itself to having tons of time to kill in his hotel room with a laptop.

Ya gotta believe me.

Or as one of my sources up in CMU said, ” [It’s p]retty well-known around here that he is a creepy weirdo douchebag.”

Oh.

The Facebook messages did stop because Lisa blocked Fenech on that social media platform.

But I still can’t get over Fenech calling himself a “beast.” Because he was supposedly interning for some hickville newspaper when he was 12.

I am sure Anthony Joseph Fenech is quite frequently mistaken for John Mugabi.

The High School Journalism Teacher’s Opinion 

So maybe you are a very forgiving person. Or you really don’t care about underage drinking arrests, getting behind a wheel ossified drunk or sending creepy, unwanted sexts to a co-worker.

What kind of writer is Anthony Fenech?

Well, here is a link to an article that Fenech wrote for the Freep on September 30, 2014.

The entire feature on the family that sponsored Victor Martinez is so confusing that I would advise having some Tylenol nearby when you read it. At least I think it is about his sponsor family. The damn thing is so freaking muddled that I gave up on trying to decipher it.

Here are a few lines from the piece, quoted verbatim. Please tell me what you think of his writing style.

He is the heartbeat of a team hungry for the final course of a four-year meal of maddening missteps and he doesn’t think about it every day because he has a lot of stuff going on, but he thinks about it, and he wants to win a World Series.

But he wasn’t going to do anything at home, his mom said, so keep trying and see what happens and how was he going to tell her, a nurse who double-shifted for years to put maybe $100 a week into a family of four kids, that he was going to quit because the Indians were moving him to a new position?

And that was how he learned English that summer, from Patti Bixler in Warren, Ohio, while he learned the American way and catching and when he wasn’t busy learning, he was busy worrying about C.C. Sabathia’s fastball and he might not have known much English, but he knew enough about Sabathia’s fastball that when he would see him throwing in the bullpen, “I just ran away from him,” he said.

This article was so shockingly bad that we at the DSR decided to send it to a high school journalism teacher. We didn’t tell this advisor that the V-Mart piece was published in the Freep or that it was written by a “professional journalist.”

The teacher was under the impression that this was the work of a high school student. We requested that he edit and grade the feature. I am going to include all of his excellent notes just for shit and giggles.

Just in case you skimmed ALL of those notes, let me give you a Cliff’s Notes summary:

The reader may put this article down because of this lead.

Run on sentence. Consider making it two, possibly three, sentences.

Again, an overloaded sentence.

Why is his name Martinez but mom and brother are Bixler?

Run on/overloaded sentence. This can be three sentences. Should be three.

Why the colon all the sudden?

Here is the high school journalism teacher’s final verdict on Fenech’s writing ability based on this published piece ….

I would say this writer is a good high school level journalist. Too many surface and construction errors.

A good high school-level journalist. Now, look … I didn’t like John Lowe’s antiquated views on Major League Baseball or his passive-aggressive attitude towards sabermetrics and I wasn’t shy about pontificating on it.

But you can’t argue that he was an EXCELLENT WRITER. It would seem he has been replaced by someone easily mistaken for an eleventh grader.

The journalism teacher went on to say that he would give his high school students an 11/15, or 73%, based on his grading rubric for a feature story like the one presented.

“C-” HIGH SCHOOL work splashed across the pages of the Detroit Free Press. 

When we dropped the bomb on the teacher that this wasn’t the work of a pubescent teen but rather that of the current Detroit Tigers beat writer for the Freep, here was the Maury Povich payoff:

DSR: This piece was published exactly as you read it in the Detroit Free Press a few months back. Do you have any reaction to that?

Teacher:  Oh, man. Yes. Was it online or in the newspaper? [Update: It appeared online and in print.]

DSR: I believe both. Definitely online, though.

Suddenly Depressed Teacher: That is too bad. It is the state of the world today, though, and even in the field of journalism, that we don’t have time to pay attention to detail. I know it is a little more informal when it is online, but still, this needs to be a whole lot more cleanly written. I wouldn’t print it as is in my high school newspaper. The editor is to blame for letting this get through as is. Though these days, many people have straight access to posting on the web.

I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.

Hate to go Bart Simpson on ya here, but ……….

I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.
I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.
I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.
I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.
I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.
I. Wouldn’t. Print. It. As. Is. In. My. High. School. Newspaper.

So to summarize this for the jury, this new hire has two alcohol-related convictions, has seriously creeped out a co-worker to the point of harassment that led to social media blocking AND he writes like Rob Parker. And that ain’t a compliment.

Which begs the question …. HOW DID HE GET THIS JOB???!!!!???!?!?!

Does the Freep have so little regard for its remaining readers that they would promote someone so in-over-his-head, morally compromised and unprepared for the extremely important job of covering the city’s beloved baseball team?

I mean, this is a paper that used to hire HARVARD GRADUATES to act as Lowe’s lackey; now, the #1 Tigers beat writer posts this online as a biography:

I have been informed that when Freep sports writer George Sipple left his Michigan State beat writer position and became Lowe’s backup that Sipple was promised by management that he would replace Lowe when he retired.

Sources also have told me that the final call on who would replace Lowe didn’t come from Myers but from someone else. I was told this same story when Seidel replaced Rosenberg.

It would seem that Myers is the sports editor of the Freep in the same way that Tom Clements is the offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers. What does that job title really mean if Mike McCarthy calls all the plays?

As I wrote in my last article about this situation, my sources have informed me that the reason why Sipple didn’t receive the promotion he was allegedly promised is because of an issue with his weight.

It is bizarre that Gannett would be so terrified of the possibility of a strenuous work schedule killing Sipple in some Marriott in Kansas City, but they have no issues with Fenech’s checkered past and how that could bite them in their ass. They can’t even claim ignorance at this point.

And even if they didn’t want to hand the gig over to Sipple, they wouldn’t even have had to leave the building to hire a competent replacement for Lowe.

Tony Paul of the Detroit News is more than ready to take over as a beat writer for this team and it is appalling that Fenech got this opportunity over the  national baseball writer for the “competition.”

And before I finish this article, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: NOTHING I have reported in this story or in my previous Fenech piece came from either George Sipple or Tony Paul.

The natural inclination by many will be to believe that Sipple now has an axe to grind and is feeding me this stuff because he is pissed that he got passed over. That’s patently false. I have tried on two occasions to get Sipple’s take on what went down and he didn’t even bother to respond either time.

And while I am on friendly terms with Paul, I am pretty sure all of this crap makes him feel very uncomfortable because he is friends with Fenech. In fact,  when I asked Paul to join me on a DSR Podcast over the summer to discuss the Tigers, he told me that I should ask Fenech as well.

The truth is, when I first started mocking Fenech on Twitter about his inane posts, the floodgates opened up and people started coming out of the woodwork with stories about the guy — from Mt. Pleasant to the Metro Detroit area. He has made PLENTY of enemies over the years.

Or as DSR contributing editor Justin Spiro so succinctly put it on Twitter over the weekend …..

Who has had more accusers emerge the past month: @anthonyfenech or Bill Cosby?

— Darko (@DarkoStateNews) December 7, 2014

I have had sources coming to ME to provide information about this guy; with the gentle assistance of a Brother Shamus pointing me in the right direction along with some FOIA requests, I have presented an airtight case against this maniac.

Fenech — who is currently in Southern California covering the baseball Winter Meetings for the Freep — has childishly continued his asinine countdown to Tigers’ Opening Day on his Twitter account.

121 #Daysuntilopeningday

— anthony fenech (@anthonyfenech) December 7, 2014

After this mountain of evidence against him is made public, will Fenech even be at Comerica Park to cover it?

Stay classy, [Fenech in] San Diego.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 9, 2014

The DetroitSportsRag can now bring to you exclusive photographs of the interior of Terry Foster’s new Mexican restaurant in Chesterfield Township.

Here are some pictures of the inside of Mariachi Cantina incorporated into the greatest Facebook post ever.

Ummmmmm, could this place be any more stereotypical?

Chief Wahoo is appalled at this imagery. Hell, I am pretty sure Daniel Snyder is trying to petition Foster and his partners to change this racist decor. “Keep out please!” I mean, if the Smokehouse was any barometer, that shouldn’t be an issue with Chuck E. Queso™ (Deano Nicolaides).

@JeffMossDSR guy thinks Cam Newton calling Suh “Donkey Kong” is racist. Doesn’t think THAT is. What a terrible guy

— Mike O (@DmikeoUnchained) December 9, 2014

Yep, the accredited five-tool imbecile has no issue with this incredibly politically incorrect image splashed across the wall of “his” restaurant, but he went off on Cam Newton for calling Ndamukong Suh, “Donkey Kong.”

And how about the grammar from the manager of this doomed establishment? I haven’t seen the English language butchered this badly in written form since Mike Valenti applied for a job at this website.

By the way, can someone explain to me what Foster’s actual interest in this joint is? He went out of his way to advise his fans that he didn’t put any of his OWN money into Foster’s Smokehouse and that he was just lending his name to that abortion of a product.

Well, this place doesn’t even have his freaking name on it!

I am too lazy to write anything else about African-American Matt Prentice’s latest boondoggle so I will let the members of the DSR’s Facebook page take over.

Chad MacFarlane: Is this appropriate for a mural at my new deli in West Bloomfield?

Chad MacFarlane: Server uniforms?

Dave Nykanen: Kitchen equipment?

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 9, 2014

Over the weekend the NFL beat writer glitterati poo-poohed any suggestion that Jim Harbaugh would return to his alma mater as the University of Michigan’s head coach.

From Ian Rapoport to Jason La Confora to Adam Schefter, the national reporters all threw cold water on the idea of Harbaugh returning to the collegiate ranks.

According to sources I have spoken to this afternoon, the folks in Ann Arbor do not believe they are out on Harbaugh and are not prepared to move on to any sort of Plan B.

From what I have been told, U of M has lined up everything that Harbaugh’s people have requested to date including:

1) The money.

2) A say in the hiring of the permanent Athletic Director once Jim Hackett steps aside.

3) Administrative control.

4) Complete autonomy regarding disciplinary actions of players.
There hasn’t been a definitive response from the Harbaugh camp to U of M’s generous offer as of this writing which has led to a disagreement inside the Michigan Athletic Department. There is some internal debate regarding whether or not to give Harbaugh a deadline to make a decision.

Last night at the Michigan Football Bust in Livonia, a meeting took place among the university’s mega donors and the prevailing thought was that the odds of landing Harbaugh were still very good — mainly because of the crap load of money they have earmarked to get their prodigal son to return to A2.

Sources also indicated to me that Hackett has played this perfectly with the [Jack] Harbaugh camp and there is nothing more he could do in his efforts to land Jim.

The big question now is whether or not to issue an ultimatum and how Jim would react to that potential “calling of the clock.”

Stay tuned ……..

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 10, 2014

Usually when I mock Detroit News goofball Lynn Henning in this space it is in regard to one of his asinine baseball takes. Well, Henning seems to be venturing out into moronic football opinions based on this Tweet from last evening:

Gil Brandt gets good information: If he heard David Cutcliffe turned down the Michigan job, bank on it that Cutcliffe turned down U-M.

— Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

I am not going to focus my time on the elderly Brandt’s irresponsible Tweet as Gregg Henson has already taken him to task on his website. The purpose of today’s blog is share some of the back-and-forth discussion between Henning and his poor followers; it is quite remarkable.

@Lynn_Henning U really are a senile idiot

— Brian perham (@phijammer61) December 10, 2014

@Lynn_Henning you seriously believe michigan offered cutcliffe a firm job offer ahead of every other candidate? Like….seriously?

— Ho Ho Johnson (@aaronpj) December 10, 2014

@phijammer61 No. I know Brandt and his expertise. And you don’t even know how to spell. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

@phijammer61 How’d you make it to Twitter with a negative IQ. Who writes this for you — or, excuse me, we know that. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

The last one being a vague reference to me having mind-control over these folks.

@Lynn_Henning @MGoFish why would you even retweet this garbage??? It does nothing but put your information as unreliable — Alexander Hinojosa (@XanderHinojosa) December 10, 2014

@joshsko318 Guarantee you — they talked. And guarantee you, there was veracity to what Brandt reported. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

@ryanschuiling @Lynn_Henning Agent probably leaked that (false) info to Brandt. There’s just no way this makes sense, for many reasons. — Brian J. Manzullo (@BrianManzullo) December 10, 2014

Yep, someone from the Free Press had to jump in to mock poor Lynn ….

@joshsko318 Fine. Then, disprove it.

— Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

We will get to that, ya imbecile ….

@jasonball23 Not discounting or dismissing them for a moment. But no one I’ve ever known has had his finger on the coaching scene like Gil. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

@joshsko318 I didn’t make the claim, Mr. Wizard. Passed on a Tweet from a credible national guy who knows the college coaching lanes. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

@jasonball23 Early December didn’t seem to stop Nebraska or Florida from picking their coaches. Brandt’s reputation is way beyond solid. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

@joshsko318 Disprove it. Brandt has the credibility. Tell him he’s wrong. Report back. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

@joshsko318 Not necessary. He’s smart and informed. You’re not. — Lynn G. Henning (@Lynn_Henning) December 10, 2014

This is how paranoid Henning has become; he goes out on a limb that only the Wallendas would use to defend SOMEONE ELSE’S REPORTING!!! Why? Because Lynn Henning knows better than all of you, that’s why.

Except for one thing ……

Spoke to Duke’s David Cutcliffe. He hasn’t talked to Michigan nor has Duke AD Kevin White. No job offered to turn down. Content at Duke.

— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) December 10, 2014

To be clear, there has been zero contact between Michigan and Duke’s David Cutcliffe. No third party contact, even through search firm

— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) December 10, 2014

Thankfully for @joshsko318, Chris Mortensen was around to douse water on this nonsensical report from Gil Brandt so @joshsko318 didn’t have to disprove a negative or get Ol’ Gil on the horn. And I am the only one who pictures Gil Brandt on a rotary-style phone calling his “sources” looking for information on a topic he knows absolutely nothing about?

What the fuck is WRONG WITH THIS GUY?

Anyway, I have heard some rumors over the last couple of weeks that Henning might be on the verge of retiring or at least stepping down from his Tigers-related beat duties. It is very odd that Tony Paul and Chris McCosky are both in San Diego covering the Winter Meetings while Lynn is off in Georgia defending erroneous Tweets.

The Winter Meetings were a Lynn Henning staple for YEARS, so why isn’t he there?

I have mixed feelings about Henning either stepping down or taking a lesser role. It is the same feeling Harvey Levin probably has every day about the well-being of Lindsey Lohan. I mean, what would TMZ  do if Lohan dropped dead?

Also, if Henning does step away from the Tigers beat and the News replaces him with McCosky and not Paul …… well ……. does ISIS have a recruiting office anywhere near 15 Mile and Orchard Lake Road?

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 11, 2014

On Sunday evening, the DSR’s Second-in-Command, Justin Spiro, and I decided to attend the Detroit Pistons/Oklahoma City Thunder tilt at the Palace.

Why? Well, after the team’s embarrassing loss the night before against the historically awful 76ers — a team that dropped its first 17 games and was playing on the second night of a back-to-back — in overtime while not making a FIELD GOAL during the five minute extra session, we decided we had to watch this third-trimester abortion in person.

We even brought brown paper bags to wear over our heads in case the Thunder opened up a ten-plus point lead at any point. Unfortunately, the Pistons didn’t cooperate and instead kept the game close the entire way. In fact, they didn’t seal their fate until Josh Smith missed a WIDE OPEN three pointer with like two seconds left which would have given the Pistons a victory.

And trust me, Josh Smith bricking a WIDE OPEN trey with the game on the line was worth the $35 tickets we purchased on StubHub.

Anyway, we barely watched any of the game from our seats. Instead, we spent most of our time walking through the concourse asking Pistons fans who the team’s current General Manager was.

Not only that, we pretty much targeted guys with Pistons gear on or ones with cute girlfriends. It was our theory that barely any Detroit basketball fans would know that Jeff Bower was the actual GM and not Stan Van Gundy or Joe Dumars.

(Hell, even I accidentally called him Jeff Bowers for a moment.)

So Pistons fans were actually more clueless than we thought. We must have talked to 75 people and only TWO knew the correct response. AND THEY WERE TOGETHER.

Fuck, we would have taken Jeff Bower, Jeff Bowers or even [Jeff] Bowzer from Sha-Na-Na, for Christ’s sake. Like, maybe 3% of people at the Palace on a Sunday night watching this HORRID exhibition knew the team’s GM. And we really only targeted people who we thought might know.

Here is the video that we took of the answers. Enjoy …..

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 11, 2014

Tigers General Manager Dave Dombrowski has always had a bit of Harvey Dent in him, but I am not sure that dichotomy has ever been on full display in such a short period of time as it was Thursday morning.

There is a long history of Dombrowski doing his best Aaron Eckhart impersonation. Just last offseason, the man dealt Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler yet also acquired three pieces of poop for Doug Fister.

On the one hand, there is the “Good GM” who acquired Fister in the first place from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for the cow in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” On the other hand, you have the “Bad GM” who really has yet to develop anyone of consequence from the farm system in his 14 years in charge of this franchise.

For you older readers of the site, this exec has focused on perfecting a Tommy Lee Jones imitation by acquiring Miguel Cabrera for 5 cents on the dollar, only to provide a massive amount of cash to Dontrelle Willis before that wildcard ever threw a pitch in Detroit.

No doubt that “Divot-Chinned Dave” has kept the organization relevant year-after-year, but he hasn’t accomplished the fairly easy task of assembling a competent bullpen which seems to be the team’s version of the thermal exhaust port every season.

Which brings us to the events that occurred earlier today — the closing day of the baseball Winter Meetings. Within one hour, Dombrowski made the no-brainer trade of Rick Porcello for Yoenis Cespedes and a couple of other minor pieces — which got Tigers fans excited that this meant that Max Scherzer’s return was imminent.

But before we could envision Cespedes banging out 500-foot homers and using his Dave Parker-esque cannon of an arm to throw out runners at home plate, Dombrowski doused the celebration with the Alfredo Simon for Eugenio Suarez and Jonathon Crawford trade.

What the fuck is going on here? Why must we be tormented in this fashion? We couldn’t even fully appreciate the thought of the Tigers putting their best defensive team on the field since Lou and Alan retired before we were delivered the Alfredo Simon shit sandwich fewer than thirty minutes later.

The joy of picturing a middle of the order that included Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez, J.D. Martinez and Cespedes totally evaporated within minutes when Dombrowski announced to the world that the team’s 2015 rotation would pale in comparison to that of the previous season.

As I wrote on Twitter, Alfredo Simon seems to be some amalgamation of Alfredo Figaro and Randall Simon. A dude who isn’t a very good pitcher yet also has serious personality issues.

When you have to wonder if your newest acquisition murdered someone and/or raped a girl (two separate allegations, mind you), it’s probably not a GOOD THING.

And regardless of whether or not he killed a guy in the Dominican Republic during a celebration by firing off a gun or if he raped a girl in Baltimore, the fact remains that he’s not a very good pitcher.

And please spare me the “All Star,” “Wins” and “ERA” arguments. I am not a child or a 400-pound obese midday radio personality. Alfredo Simon is nothing more than a journeyman who probably should be pitching out of the bullpen.

His FIP in 2014 (a predictive stat) was 4.33. That ranked 37 out of 43 among National League starters who qualified. Sorry, between his awful second-half numbers in ’14 (4.52 ERA) and the switch to the American League, this has all the hallmarks of an impending disaster.

And I really don’t care that they traded Suarez and Crawford, but this is the best they could do? (And don’t forget that there is zero guarantee that Jose Iglesias is going to return to full speed — which made Suarez a nice insurance policy.)

The Reds traded away another starting pitcher on Thursday when they sent Mat Latos to the Marlins. And here is the thing: Latos is MUCH better than Simon AND Miami gave up less to get him!!!!!

If you don’t believe me, here is what ESPN baseball writer Keith Law said about the Simon acquisiton:

The Reds got a better return in their other trade of a starting pitcher, sending Alfredo Simon to Detroit for shortstop Eugenio Suarez and right-handed pitcher Jonathon Crawford. Suarez, made superfluous by the return of Jose Iglesias, is an above-average to plus defender at short with good instincts, and has a very good plan at the plate that I think will lead to higher walk rates and batting averages in time. He wasn’t ready for the majors last year, but the Tigers needed him and, to his credit, he was above replacement-level for a shortstop with the bat. He’s a better option at shortstop than Zack Cozart, an outstanding defensive shortstop who can’t hit at all and is about to get more expensive via arbitration.

Crawford was the Tigers’ first pick in the 2013 draft, the Friday night starter for the University of Florida that spring but a near-certain reliever in the majors. As a starter he’ll sit 92-95 with a plus slider, but his arm action is hard for him to repeat and he doesn’t throw enough strikes to profile as a starter yet, nor does he have a good enough changeup. I don’t know of any major league starter with his arm action, and I think his stuff will play up so much in relief that he’ll be more valuable there even if I didn’t have a concern that he’ll get hurt in the rotation. He might just be Aroldis Chapman‘s long-term replacement in the Reds’ bullpen.

Simon rode a fluky first-half performance (.232 BABIP) to an All-Star berth in 2014, but turned back into his old self after that with a 4.52 ERA. He’s primarily a two-seamer/splitter guy who does generate enough ground balls to be more than just a replacement-level guy, but there’s nothing plus here and he’s probably 2-3 wins worse than Rick Porcello even if we assume Simon, who qualified for the ERA title for the first time in 2014, will make 30-plus starts this year. If either of his breaking pitches improved, that would change his outlook, although at age 33 that seems rather unlikely.

Well, how does that evaluation make you feel? Ready to puke in your mouth like I did earlier today?

Here are some of my other quick thoughts on the current Tigers situation after these two deals have been finalized:

• The idea that Ian Kinsler (.307 OBP in ’14) and Cespedes (.301 OBP in ’14) will set the table for Miggy and V-Mart in the batting order is preposterous but it will probably occur thanks to our Mimbo manager. What Brad Ausmus SHOULD do is bat Miggy second, V-Mart third, and JD-Mart at cleanup, followed by Cespedes and Nick Castellanos. The chances of this happening? The likelihood of Scott Boras allowing Scherzer to sign for less than Jon Lester.
• With all of the pitchers entering their walk year (including Fister), it is insane that the best Dombrowski could do is trade for Alfredo Simon; I keep thinking that there must be something else going on; I want to convince myself that we are still in the running for Max, but I just can’t.
• And even if we do get back in on Scherzer you’d have to think that would mean David Price would be dealt. What an entirely avoidable clusterfuck..
•  The Fister trade has caused a cataclysmic domino effect. If you don’t trade Fister, you don’t have to acquire Price; if you don’t trade for Price, you still have Austin Jackson, Willy Adames and Drew Smyly as trade chips; if you still have those guys as trade chips, you don’t have to deal the prospects dealt for Simon (or deal for Simon, period). Which means you could still have Porcello and Fister and fix the bullpen and corner outfield positions with the the above-mentioned departed players plus Suarez and Crawford. FUCK, I HAVE A JOE MIGRAINE.
• It is December 11th and Dombrowski hasn’t really done much of anything to fix the bullpen, unless you think Alex Wilson is some sort of stud.
• Because Price seems to have very little inclination to stay in Detroit long-term, Dombrowski will probably have to consider bringing either Fister or Porcello back next season when the lefty walks away.
• The Tigers are in no better position to win that elusive World Series than they were two months ago. And the nightmare scenario of devolving into the current manifestation of the Philadelphia Phillies — without the money shot of winning a title — creeps closer to reality.
• This could all be be fixed by re-signing Scherzer; trading for one reliable bullpen arm; and moving Simon to the bullpen. That would truly be going all-in. I am not holding my breath.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 15, 2014

It’s been tea leaf reading season for awhile now with regard to the University of Michigan’s search for a new head football coach, but the DetroitSportsRag might have something definitive to report regarding Jim Harbaugh’s interest in the vacancy.

As alluded to earlier today on MGoBlog.com, in recent days, Jim Harbaugh sent a text message to Andy Moeller (an offensive line coach on the Browns and the son of Gary Moeller) stating that it looked like they’d be “getting the band back together” — meaning former Michigan players led by Harbaugh heading back to Ann Arbor in an attempt to resurrect the Michigan football program. There has been speculation that Moeller would be a part of Harbaugh’s staff if he left the NFL for U of M.

Our source is inside the U of M athletic department and is well-connected.  We also confirmed the text message story through a former Michigan football player.

It’s probably not a coincidence that LSU head coach Les Miles basically removed himself from the fray this evening (although indications had been that he was never that a serious consideration in the first place).

Everything is pointing toward Harbaugh getting the gig and Tuesday might be a big day in that effort moving forward.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 16, 2014

Gregg Henson, Art Regner, Sam Webb and I have been reporting all of the latest Jim Harbaugh to Michigan news for weeks now. I believe a lot of the reporting has been similar because we are dealing with some of the same sources.

What has been absent is any real info coming from any of the Detroit sports media members. Where have Mark Snyder, Angelique Chengelis or any of the columnists been on this story?

Why has a flame-throwing blogger and a Pittsburgh radio program director been getting all of the scoops? Well, something seemed to change last night when milquetoast Detroit News columnist Bob Wojnowski Tweeted out the following:

Michigan is dealing with unpredictable candidates, “changes of heart,” etc. But there’s a reason this is entering its third week….

— Bob Wojnowski (@bobwojnowski) December 16, 2014

What possessed Wojo to jump into the fray all of a sudden? Well, my sources have informed me that Michigan radio voice Jim Brandstatter has been telling his media friends that he expects Harbaugh to take the U of M job and it is just a question of the timing of the San Francisco buyout now.

That’s the sea change. This info is now coming from someone whom the Detroit media establishment trusts. That’s why Wojo Tweeted what he did last night. This wasn’t coming from his former boss Henson or from his pal Regner.

Nope, this latest news was coming from Brandstatter. Not that it is any confirmation of Brandstatter offering his well-informed opinion to the media (I received that from a VERY reliable source) but you can check out Brandstatter’s Twitter timeline from last night where Wojo and Brandymancan were yukking it up.

Stay tuned for further developments. Maybe today we will discover Robbie Timmons’ opinion on Harbaugh to Michigan.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 17, 2014

This is really an ugly story but one that shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has been a longtime reader of this website. It’s just more evidence of the lengths to which former Pistons President Joe Dumars went to ensure positive media coverage of his tenure as an executive in Detroit.

I HIGHLY recommend that you read this fantastic New Republic article by Kevin Draper which chronicles the writing style of Yahoo! NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski. Led by DSR contributor Brian Coburn, there has been a prevailing feeling on this website’s message boards that Wojnarowski’s columns have always been just a little too cute by half.

His prose has been just too perfect — in a Manti Te’o sort of fashion — with all of the espionage that you normally would find in an Ian Fleming novel and peppered with a massive amount of unnamed sources. I am not going to get into the entire epic takedown by Draper but I do want to bring attention to one section of this masterpiece that relates to Detroit sports.

Here is that long passage:

But to truly understand how Wojnarowski and his sources operate, there is no better place to look than his relationship with Joe Dumars, who worked as the Detroit Pistons president of basketball operations from 2000 to 2014.

Dumars was very successful for the first half of his executive career, assembling teams that won an NBA Championship and reached six consecutive Eastern Conference Finals. During his final six years in Detroit however—before he “stepped down” instead of being fired—the Pistons were one of the worst teams in the league, largely because of a series of disastrous decisions Dumars made. You would never know about it, though, if you read only Wojnarowski for your Pistons coverage.

With Detroit sliding down the standings, Wojnarowski broke nearly every significant—and insignificant—Pistons story for a half-decade: the Allen Iverson trade, the Amir Johnson trade, drafting Austin Daye, signing Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, hiring John Kuester, trading Aaron Afflalo, signing Chris Wilcox, signing Ben Wallace, drafting Greg Monroe, signing Tracy McGrady, Rip Hamilton arguing with John Kuester, drafting Brandon Knight, hiring Lawrence Frank, re-signing Tayshuan Prince, re-signing Rodney Stuckey, trading Ben Gordon, signing Josh Smith, signing Chauncey Billups, signing Brandon Jennings, signing Josh Harrellson, and firing Mo Cheeks. While Wojnarowski was busy breaking news about the team, he wasn’t busy analyzing it: Between 2008 and 2012, Wojnarowski didn’t write a negative piece about Dumars or the Pistons, despite the fact that they had transformed from a perennial contender to an also-ran. Instead, Wojnarowski penned several sympathetic profiles of Dumars, including ones that covered his completion of his college degree and another wholly about his defensive skills as a player in the 1980s.

By 2012, Wojnarowski could no longer ignore how poorly Dumars was performing, so he wrote a piece on the Pistons’ rebuilding. It included heavy participation from Dumars and unearned optimism like “Slowly, surely, Dumars is regenerating the Pistons again.” In each of the two seasons after the piece ran, the Pistons went 29–53 and missed qualifying for the playoffs by nine games. It also emphasized Dumars’ strong relationship with coach Lawrence Frank, “who has returned accountability to the locker room.” Dumars would fire Frank six months later.

In 2010, the NBA fined Dumars $500,000 for leaking multiple confidential league memos to Wojnarowski, according to multiple sources. This matches the third largest publicly known fine the league has ever handed down. The NBA decided that too many memos were making it into the media, so they conducted a sting operation over several months. They would change a few words or numbers in different team’s copies of otherwise identical memos, so that when the memos leaked they could spot the small differences and trace them back to the leaker. This approach caught Dumars red-handed, as well as an executive from another team who was fined $12,500 for leaking to a draft-focused website. Joe Dumars, the Detroit Pistons, and the NBA all declined to comment on the fine.

Wow!!!!!!!!

Look, this site’s bullshit detector went off every single time that Wojnarowski penned another flattering piece on  Dumars, especially when it became clear that Joe D. had crippled his team with awful management.

Dumars should have been fired the moment Tom Gores took the reigns but it was Joe D.’s reputation in the league that kept him employed with a neophyte owner — a reputation mainly built by Adrian Wojnarowski.

The most insulting fellatio job was the 2012 column in which “Woj” tried to make the case that Dumars’ was successfully retooling the franchise.  He actually had the audacity to write this about the man who gave us Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva:

All these years later, the Pistons are slowly, surely rising again, and it’s still on Dumars’ watch. He once constructed a champion here in a most historic way, and out of the darkness, out of a spectacular struggle, the elements of a contender are surfacing again.

And then when it became clear that Gores was going to finally make a change and get rid of Dumars, Wojnarowski wrote several times that Dumars would have no problem finding a new gig in the NBA. We’re waiting ……

We joked on the site that Wojnarowski must have been getting paid by Dumars to act as his agent. That’s how outrageous this relationship looked to any casual Pistons fan. Fuck, Scott Boras and Jon Heyman look like the Montagues and the Capulets in comparison.

And now we finally know what the quid-pro-quo relationship between the two was built around. Dumars would feed Wojnarowski confidential league memos in exchange for flowery columns sure to either keep the heat off Dumars or to assist him in getting another job.

I mean, the guy was fined $500,000 by the NBA for providing a REPORTER secret league information. And that only occurred AFTER David Stern’s people had to run an ABSCAM-esque operation to entrap Joe in the first place.

Think about that for a second. The NBA had to run a STING OPERATION that included falsifying documents in order to catch a “rat” who was leaking privileged information.

And that MOLE ended up being the dude the league named their SPORTSMANSHIP AWARD after. Like, remember when Lady Byng was caught handing over secret information to Foster Hewitt? Neither do I.

What a farce the NBA has become. How did they not change the name of the Joe Dumars Sportsmanship Award immediately after this incident? And why are we only learning about it now?

But this has been Dumars’ M.O. for years. He once gave Rob Parker a $5,000 “loan” back when Parker was covering the Pistons for the Detroit News as a columnist; the acid tongued Parker NEVER said a bad word about the Pistons GM.

While Parker would rip EVERYONE in town — even going as far as to mock Rod Marinelli’s daughter for not marrying a better defensive coordinator — he defended Dumars until the bitter end, not even levying the slightest criticism over the Darko Debacle.

We know for a fact that he had Wojnarowski and Parker in his back pocket; one can only imagine why beat writers Vince Ellis and Vince Goodwill have always had the former shooting guard’s back as well.

Goodwill’s imbecilic coverage of Dumars’ disastrous end of his tenure was so laughable that we nicknamed him GoodSHILL. Hell, there is now a Goodshill parody account on Twitter that has more followers than the account of the team’s radio pre- and postgame host. But what we found out AFTER Dumars was axed as GM is that Goodwill’s loyalty wasn’t to the Pistons but to JOE DUMARS ONLY.

How else can you explain this insane Tweet from just a couple of weeks ago?

@tylerjamesson Dumars isn’t here. Stop blaming him.

— Vincent Goodwill (@vgoodwill) December 3, 2014

Ummmm, what? Dumars isn’t here? Stop blaming him?!??!?! That would be like blaming Barack Obama for the country’s problems on February 15, 2009.

Yep, George W. Bush isn’t here. Stop blaming him. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

Dumars flew this team into the proverbial mountain over the last six years with mistake after mistake and Stan Van Gundy was supposed to wave a magic wand (no Ron Jeremy jokes) and turn this team into a winner overnight?

Parker took five large. Wojnarowski traded glowing reports for secret memos. One can only imagine what Goodshill’s motivation is in writing shit like that.

What a sad end to such a great legacy. And maybe thanks to Wojnarowski’s Jedi Mind Trick articles, you have to wonder how much further behind the eight-ball this pathetic franchise is in getting back to respectability.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 17, 2014

On tonight’s joint DetroitSportsRag.com/GreggHenson.com simulcast, Henson and I discussed the latest Jim Harbaugh news, attacked WDIV, Bill Simonson and Tom “The Mazzzzzzz” Mazawey and attempted to order Frankenmuth chicken and have it delivered to Luna Pier.

Enjoy.

Click Here To Listen

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 17, 2014

It takes a lot to shock me, but I am completely in awe of the ignorance, idiocy, contradiction and tin-eared behavior that I have witnessed over the last 48 hours. I figured that dealing with the Detroit sports media on this website for the last 12 years prepared me for anything …….

…… but nothing could have readied me for the living embodiment of dumbfuckery that is Bill Simonson. I am sure most of you are wondering who the hell Bill Simonson is. Well, if you live in the Metro Detroit area, you probably have no clue because this douche bag broadcasts outstate to negligible audiences.

Also, he doesn’t go by Bill Simonson; he uses the moniker, “Huge.” I mean, who the fuck refers to themselves as “HUGE?????” Sigmund Freud is breakdancing in his grave over that self-given nickname. And don’t you worry, we will get back to the subject of names very shortly.

Anyway, this moron popped up on my radar a couple of days ago when the DSR started getting some major attention, both locally and nationally, for our Jim Harbaugh scoops. This knucklehead then decided to chime in, even though nobody gives a rat’s ass about his uninformed opinion:

Well, a blogger in Pennsylvania (Gregg Henson, who is a well-connected program director in Pittsburgh with good Michigan sources) and I are the two this dolt is talking about. You know, the two guys who have been dead on regarding the Harbaugh/U of M story since Day One.

But this white trash oaf wasn’t finished taking shots at this website:

Yeah!!! How could some random blogger take credit for breaking the Brandon dismissal news??!!!!! Let’s go to Brian Cook at MGoBlog to discount that ridiculous assertion …….

Oops. Well, yeah, one of the more influential Michigan-related websites reported that the DSR had the Brandon story first but BLOG is right in MGoBlog’s name!!!! Can’t trust these bloggers!!!!

Look, I didn’t start the fight with this irrelevant West Michigan putz but I was surely going to finish it. As per usual, my social media followers started sending me information about this HUGE cockbag in an effort to assist me in this “battle.”

I started doing my research on this pig, contacted my Brother Shamus and started sending feelers out to anyone who has an axe to grind with Simonson, which seems to be just about everyone who has ever encountered this lump — from Joe Rexrode at the Freep to his former media friend Brian VanOchten and his awful hairpiece.

And in a move I specifically telegraphed just to piss off this pig virus Simonson, I even sent a Facebook message to his ex-wife looking for any additional information I could gather.  She has yet to respond.

But before we get to this cretin’s rap sheet of stupidity — seriously, this fuckstick makes Terry Foster look like Dr. deGrasse Tyson — I should begin by telling you that at any moment the West Bloomfield Police might knock at my door and stop me from posting this article.

Why, you may ask? Because Simonson supposedly called the cops on me for mentioning the names of his children on Twitter. No, really. Here is the Tweet I sent out that might land me in prison …..

@mlokuta6@Hugeshow what about Ace?

— Jeff Moss (@JeffMossDSR) December 17, 2014

Yes, this radio host who nicknamed himself “HUGE” actually has kids named Legend and Ace. I am sure there is a wing in some Austrian psych hospital dedicated to this man’s complexes. Well, me mentioning his kids’ names in a Tweet — which didn’t even go out to 99.9% of my audience — sent this lunatic over the edge.

You might have thought that this was an empty threat by a dude with rocks in his head, but he also confirmed his 911 call on Twitter ….

Can you imagine the guffaws from the WBPD if this windbag actually called the cops and reported me for mentioning the name of his kid? How did that phone call go down?

Hi, my name is HUGE and I am a big, dumb oaf who named two of my kids LEGEND and ACE. Yes, this is the emergency number for West Bloomfield Police, right? Ok, yes, can you please go arrest Jeff Moss because he made fun of me for naming my kids LEGEND and ACE?

His children’s names are public knowledge; HUGE disseminated that information. I didn’t go to his kids’ school, sneak into the principal’s office and rifle through their files in order to discover this information.

I mean, do you remember when the NYPD SWAT team broke into Howard Stern’s old K-Rock studio on a tip from Kathie Lee Gifford that the King of All Media was making fun of Cody and Cassidy’s names? Yeah, ME NEITHER.

As to Simonson’s absolutely imbecilic takes and behavior over the years I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I guess I will just start with TODAY. Because after lambasting Henson and me about the Harbaugh rumor mongering when Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport and Jason La Canfora were all stating that Harbaugh was staying in the NFL, the doofus had the audacity to do a complete 180 and Tweet THIS out earlier today:

Can you imagine? This is like finding out that Adam Silver has an African-American goomah whom the NBA commissioner won’t let sit next to Michael Jordan at Charlotte Hornets games — only MAYBE more hypocritical and outrageous!!!!!

But this is the kind of dumb hypocrite we are dealing with here. Remember, this dude is so pissed at me for mentioning his KIDS’ names. Yeah, he is the same imbecile who was once sued in Texas for misreporting that some woman was exposing her breasts and giving lap dances at a party.

That cost him and his radio station over $300,000 in damages …….

My sources indicated to me that this lawsuit and the HUGE damages that were levied against him and Shamrock ended up costing him his job.

Simonson then ended up in Oklahoma where it would appear his racial references in regard to then-Sooners head coach John Blake cost him another gig. Unless you don’t think comparing a blake™ (Michael Bochenek) to BUCKWHEAT is racist.

This is the lunatic who is calling the cops on ME!!!!!! Yep, the moral center of the universe …… Bill Simonson.

After these two escapades, Simonson SOMEHOW landed in the Windy City where, depending on whom you believe, he either did or did not get beaten up by a gang of thugs near the home of the Chicago White Sox.

The police didn’t seem to care much about the situation — maybe they were listeners to his show — and some sources have indicated to me that he might have Morton Downey’d himself.

Eventually, Simonson ended up in West Michigan; I am still not sure how a guy with his history lined up the following sponsors:

By Justin Spiro
spirojus@gmail.com
December 18, 2014

Out of the loop on Detroit sports? The DSR has you covered! Here is the latest edition of, “This Week’s Detroit Sports Radio Topics”!!! These are real sports topics discussed by the city’s finest sports radio hosts the past week.

What has been your favorite TV show of 2014? (Karsch & Anderson, 97.1)

What are the guy codes that every guy should follow? (Karsch & Anderson, 97.1)

What is your most random piece of clothing? (Karsch & Anderson, 97.1)

Did you watch Eaten Alive? Would you ever let an animal eat you for a million dollars? (Karsch & Anderson, 97.1)

The outrage in Ferguson is palpable… what is your take on the riots? (Karsch & Anderson, 97.1)

Which toys have stood the test of time? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Do you believe you have been saved by divine intervention? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

What was the nastiest spill you took in public? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen? (Stoney & Bill, 97.1)

Has a police officer ever roughed you up? (Valenti & Foster, 97.1)

Are you gluten free? (Caputo & Fithian, 97.1)

The Bashara vedict is in… have you ever felt crazy enough to kill your spouse? (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

Is Andy Kaufman still alive? (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

The guys interview Aerosmith’s Joe Perry about his new book! (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

Gary Hoey is in town to play some Christmas jams in Detroit… will you be there? (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

Would you want your girlfriend to get a temporary boob job? (Drew & Marc, 105.1)

These were just a few of the hottest Detroit sports radio topics from the past week! We are grateful for the hardworking broadcasting talent in town, who engage their audience with thoughtful sports discussions each and every day.

(Did we miss any riveting Detroit sports radio topics from the past week? Let us know! spirojus@gmail.com)

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 18, 2014

If you enjoy reading my work you probably should thank Detroit News writer Chris McCosky; years before Deadspin, Awful Announcing and The Big Lead existed I founded this website so I would have a place to rebut the utter nonsense that was disseminated by the Detroit sports media on a daily basis.

And there was no bigger clown in Motown at the time than McCosky, who was covering the Pistons beat for the News. This brainless company man was such an atrocity to journalism that I gave him the nickname “Officer Barbrady.”

The clueless cop on “South Park” was known for repeating the line, “Move along; there is nothing to see here.” That was McCosky’s anti-rallying cry for years as Pistons breaking news would develop and Barbrady would completely deny its existence.

When this website broke the news that Rick Carlisle was going to get fired by the Pistons back in 2003 — a good week before anyone else had the story –McCosky mocked us for days. He was adamant that there was zero chance it would occur.  When the firing did go down, Barbrady refused to admit we had been correct all along. The abject coward even refused to address his bungling of the story on the WDFN airwaves when I challenged him.

Move along; there is nothing to see here.

Almost a year later, just minutes before Joe Dumars acquired Rasheed Wallace from the Atlanta Hawks at the 2004 trade deadline, McCosky was in a DetNews chat room telling his readers that the Pistons were not going to make any big moves. And not just throwing a wet blanket on the ‘Sheed speculation, but mocking anyone who thought otherwise.

Of course, the Pistons obtained Wallace mere moments after this Neanderthal banged those words on his keyboard.

Move along; there is nothing to see here.

McCosky was mocked behind his back by his media brethren for accepting EVERYTHING Dumars told him at face value. Everyone from Matt Dery to Mike Stone would privately tell me that Barbrady was too close to the team and it was damaging whatever reputation he had left.

The guy was a freaking joke. A laughingstock. An embarrassment. Eventually the News decided to play “Beat Writer Swap” and this buffoon switched positions with Ted Kulfan for a year and hysterically botched stories on the Red Wings.

Obviously the News overlords hadn’t seen enough journalistic malpractice for their liking, so McCosky eventually ended up on the Lions beat. It was a match made in heaven — a loser beat writer covering a franchise as inept as he was.

McCosky spent a few years being the punching bag for Dave Birkett, Tom Kowalski (sorry that I gotta do this to your boy, Killer, but he fucking sucks and you knew it), Anwar Richardson and others as those dudes beat him to every story.

It was absolutely hilarious watching McCosky try to play catch-up with the Freep and MLive beat writers and I would often joke that Barbrady’s Twitter feed looked like Killer’s or Birkett’s on a thirty-minute tape delay.

Earlier this year, McCosky was finally replaced on that beat by Josh Katzenstein when Barbrady threw in the towel. Sources told me that he didn’t want to put in the long hours necessary to be a modern-day NFL beat writer and trust me when I tell you that it SHOWED.

At that point, I thought we were basically done with this dumb bastard. Yeah, maybe he would fill in for other beat writers when they needed a rest but it was abundantly clear he didn’t have the drive to do this sort of full-time work any longer. I joked at the time that Katzenstein would forever be idolized on the DSR for being the Charlie Batch to McCosky’s Scott Mitchell.

Oh, how wrong was I? Not only isn’t Chris McCosky done, but in the single biggest journalistic travesty that has occurred in the 12 years of this website’s existence, this bumbling dipshit just landed the job as the beat writer for the Tigers at the News. 

As I first reported on Twitter earlier tonight, McCosky is replacing longtime Tigers beat writer Tom Gage. Ya know, the same Tom Gage who was elected to the BASEBALL HALL OF FAME nine days ago!!!!

“Hey Tommy Boy, congrats on your election to the Hall of Fame! Can I see you in my office for a minute? I am going to replace you with the biggest toolbag on staff.”

Yep, according to my sources, Gage is now going to be handling national baseball news while Barbrady gets  Gage’s previous gig. When I first heard rumblings that a change might be occurring at the paper I just figured that Gage was retiring. Nope, the News demoted the dude just elected into the BASEBALL HALL OF FAME. In related news, Pedro Martinez’s wife just left him for Neifi Perez.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not sad to see Gage put out to pasture, but this is where I am going to lose my shit.  The WORST beat writer in Detroit just got this job over the BEST beat writer in this garbage town.

I mean, this is like finding out that the Coen Brothers are going to be making a new movie and they chose Dustin Diamond over Daniel Day-Lewis for the starring role.

Because that is the difference in talent, knowledge, intelligence, guts, league sources and credibility separating Chris McCosky and Tony Paul — the fucking Grand Canyon chasm between Screech Powers and Daniel Plainview.

It would have been an atrocity of Old Testament proportions had McCosky replaced Gage even without the monstrous kicker of Paul getting fucked over for the second time this offseason.

All I ask is for ONE competent person to follow my favorite sports team on a daily basis. We now have the following instead:

• The Oakland Press‘s Matthew B. Aggressive Mowery — an absolute slap-dick cheerleader for the organization.
• MLive’s Chris Iott — a man with a personality eqivalent to paint drying on a wall and zero testicular fortitude to challenge Tigers management.
• “Medicated” Jason Beck — the team’s MLB beat writer. Need I say more?
• Anthony “The Beast” Fenech — the drunk-driving, co-worker-harassing, PT-Cruising, living-with-his-mother-in-Woodhaven, hitting-on-married-girls-at-Downriver-bars employee of the Freep. 

And now this colossal failure in McCosky who is going to achieve the rare “cycle” of butchering coverage for all four Detroit’s professional sports teams in one lifetime.

Oh, by the way, this is the same Chris McCosky who was once given the opportunity to write columns for the News and decided to make his opinion-piece debut by taking a shot at THIS WEBSITE. For you history buffs, here was my response.

We were THIS close to having a bonafide journalist questioning Brad Ausmus for a majority of the 162-game season; calling Dave Dombrowski out on his bullshit; having more opportunities to break trades (like the David Price deal that Paul was all over); and providing keen insight like predicting the Cespedes/Porcello deal a good ten days before it occurred.

Instead? We got a moron who wrote this after the Tigers’ season ended …..

This is a tragedy on so many levels and I am not sure if I am more pissed off or depressed.  We had a 50/50 chance of having the best beat writer in town land this job and I feel like I lost a coin-flip with Anton Chigurh except those lucky bastards at least got a cattle gun to the temple.

And speaking of depression and death, remember when McCosky wrote about his clinical depression a couple years back after the suicide of Junior Seau?

Th famous passage …….

Not having guts is a common occurrence for this psychopath. Just look at what the coward –who, remember, refused to debate me on the air back in 2004 — had to say about Louis Delmas LONG after Barbrady was done covering the former Lions safety for a living:

Garbage is as garbage does RT @davebirkett: Louis Delmas was not happy to see Detroit reporters after game. Declined interview

— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) November 9, 2014

When this Twitter tough guy — who had every opportunity to call Delmas “garbage” in the Lions’ locker room — was called out for his spineless behavior, this is how he responded …..

The hell I didn’t RT @DarkoStateNews: @davebirkett Weird that you didn’t call him garbage when he played for the Lions, Chris.

— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) November 9, 2014

Yeah, we are sure you called Delmas GARBAGE to the guy’s face. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t because Louis probably would have killed you and Oakland County drivers would no longer have to worry about you making any sudden swerves on two-lane roads.

[DSR contributor Justin Spiro pledged to donate $500 to charity if McCosky could produce evidence of a single Tweet or article referring to Delmas as either “garbage” or ANY synonym of the word. Poor Gyro was blocked immediately after making the offer. The offer remains on the table.]

How classy to call a former subject “garbage” on Twitter. It’s almost as professional as what McCosky pulled off earlier this morning when he posted an article about recent Tigers’ acquisition Shane Greene. In that piece, McCosky quoted Greene’s former teammate, Brandon McCarthy …..

This hack obviously wanted to give the impression that he actually spoke with McCarthy when he most definitely did not. What McCosky SHOULD have done was mention that the quote in question came from a McCarthy TWEET on the day of the trade!!!!!!

Hey Tigers fans @sagreeney has stupid electric stuff and you should feel lucky to get to watch him now. Terrible at fantasy football though.

— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) December 5, 2014

And to make matters worse, this world-class imbecile couldn’t even copy and paste correctly. McCosky quoted McCarthy as saying “he.” The pitcher never said “he.” Nope, he said “@sagreeney.” Of course, the jig would have been up if McCosky would have included @sagreeney in his “quote” since most humans don’t speak in Twitter-ese while on the telephone.

“Where do you want to go to lunch, Bob?”

“I dunno, how about Hashtag Leo’s Coney Island?”

What a disingenuous, lazy bastard.

And before I finish up this article, I want to say this to anyone at the Detroit News who thinks that ANY of this was fed to me by Tony Paul. It wasn’t. HE DID NOT WANT ME TO WRITE THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE HE FIGURED IT WOULD REFLECT POORLY ON HIM.

And being the great guy that I am not, I obviously IGNORED that request. Because here we are.

In fact, his only response to my prodding was, “Chris McCosky is a colleague and I respect the decision.”

There is this misconception that Tony and I are best pals or some shit. We’ve met twice. For about 30 seconds after the Joe Nathan press conference and for maybe another 45 seconds as I was being told to leave Dombrowski’s season-ending presser last month after I claimed I had left my press pass at Yom Kippur dinner.

Hell, the guy even had me blocked on Twitter for a long time. I just greatly respect his work and believe some internal politics cost him a legitimate shot at one of the two-beat writer openings this offseason.

Although, I have no clue who went to bat for a “scab” or a 27-year-old douche bag with a creepy rap sheet longer than this guy ….

Of course, I am still holding out hope that Tony Paul will one day get the job he rightly deserves. There has to be a decent shot that, after a road game at Progressive Field, either Fenech drunkenly smashes his rental head-on into McCosky or Barbrady slips into a funk and purposely crashes his Ford Focus into “The Beast’s” car.  A man has to dream.

Anthony Fenech.
Chris McCosky.
Chris Iott.
Jason Beck.
Lynn Henning.
James Schmehl.

And McCosky is the one who is depressed? Fuck, EACH OF US should be taking a bubble bath with a Black and Decker four-slicer this evening.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 19, 2014

Ok. Here is the latest I have been told by my source and it will have to be quick because I am at the animal hospital with my beagle for his chemotherapy treatment. (See, I am really not a monster!!!) Excuse any grammatical errors. I’m kind of rushing here.

Anyway, last night Jim Harbaugh called one of his former teammates. The conversation did not start well as my source states the San Fran head coach asked, “Would you hate me if I didn’t come?”

Umm, not good. So what are the latest complications in this ongoing saga? This is what I am being told:

1) Ted Spencer was U of M’s Athletic Admissions dude for many years. Spencer left this year and has not been replaced. Harbaugh wants to replace Spencer with someone philosophically in line with Ted.

Harbaugh has concerns that Michigan President Mark Schlissel wants U of M to become more like Brown University. Schlissel’s response is that’s how he wants to operate.

2) I can confirm that Harbaugh’s agent is the one who leaked the contract details to the national NFL media, which is weird since the U of M athletic department kind of leaked the same information two weeks ago. Very strange.

3) Further complicating matters are the Atlanta Falcons, who may be very interested in Jim’s services should they be ready to part ways with Mike Smith. And they have Home Depot money. It’s hard to battle Home Depot money.

4) The only piece of good news my source can provide is that Jack Harbaugh is still extremely desirous of his son’s return to his alma mater. As a matter of fact, if Jim does return you all should probably send a Christmas present to Jack.

That’s the latest on my end. I will await the pitchforks and torches. Please don’t kill the messenger.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 20, 2014

With all of the Michigan Football/Harbaugh-courting gossip dominating this site’s attention for the last couple of weeks, a few items have fallen through the cracks.

So here is a Saturday purge of all my iNotes that have been accumulating while Jim Hackett has been desperately attempting to close the deal.

The Audacity of WDIV-4

As I mentioned on Twitter last Saturday, I stopped watching local news broadcasts many years ago when Channel 7 idiotically phased out the late, great Bill Bonds.

Once the greatest anchorman to ever broadcast on television was replaced by the flavor-of-the-week, random chiseled talking head from Tacoma, Wichita or wherever they came from, I had no reason to watch the insanely sensational, dumbed-down local news.

It is pretty ironic that within a week of Bonds’ passing, the DetroitSportsRag was be mentioned on a Detroit nightly news program by one of the many teleprompter readers who couldn’t dream to fill Bonds’ toupee.

The following is a clip of the Son of Joe Garagiola mocking the DSR on what I believe was the 6pm news ……

“Rumors based on nothing?”

Hey, Steve, ya lazy clown, how about you spend  30 seconds doing some ACTUAL reporting and discover that THIS website had the story about Frank Beckmann being forced out of the U of M football booth before ANYONE else; or that the DSR broke the news to the world that David Brandon was out as Michigan AD and nailed the time of the associated press conference?

“Rumors based on nothing?”

An employee of WDIV actually had the unmitigated gall to take a shot at someone else? I mean, this is a broadcast entity that employs ROB PARKER and you want to go after someone else’s reporting chops?!??!?!?!

Ya know, the same Rob Parker who once reported that Spartan QB Kirk Cousins was in the middle of an MSU brawl when he was ACTUALLY at home taking part in a BIBLE STUDY?

The same Rob Parker who infamously took a $5,000 payment from a subject whom he was covering (Joe Dumars) to pay off a book deal that went south AND was stupid enough to hand the publisher a personal check in the name of “Joe Dumars” to pay off said debt?

The same Rob Parker who got fired at ESPN for calling Robert Griffin III a “cornball brother”?

Rob Parker is a laughingstock of the entire journalistic community and WDIV is the ONLY media outlet that will give him a gig.

And THEY are going to come after my reporting on this story and compare me to a deli-counter worker at Zingerman’s? Fuck you, STEVE.

Channel 4, stick to running those wonderful “Weekend at Bernie’s” clips that Smilovitz produces. I mean, the only thing with less life in it than Bernie Lomax is that tired-ass bit.

Let Us Unwind Your Kid

Garagiola wasn’t the only Z-List local media member to take a potshot at the DSR’s Harbaugh reporting this week. Detroit Sports 105.1-FM producer Tom Mazawey also cowardly questioned our sources without even having the decency to name our site.

I am not going to spend a lot of time addressing this balding, ugly imbecile’s disparaging comments. Instead, I would like to focus on Mazawey’s ultra-creepy and bizarre moonlighting business.

In case you missed the DSR Podcast this week, “The Mazzzzzzzz” is the proprietor of this website:

I am not making this shit up. This isn’t a joke. The producer for both Matt Dery and Drew Lane has a side concierge service where he offers to save you money on your AT & T U-Verse bill; pick up some fruit and vegetables at Trader Joe’s and deliver it to your doorstep; and sell things for you on eBay.

This is not as uncommon as you might think. Gary “Bababooey” Dell’abate just finished cleaning out my garage and shed and is now detailing my car. Next week, Paul Pabst will be scooping up my dog, Chili’s, poop on our front lawn.

I mean, this entire website is just comedy gold but I feel I need to point out a few of the MORE absurd services that Maz offers:

Are you fucking serious with this?

“Hey honey, I’m stuck late at work today. Can you call that creepy-looking dude who screens calls for ‘The Deez’ and have him pick up Bobby and Michelle from school?”

This website has GOTTA be monitored by “Law and Order: SVU” and Chris Hansen, right?

“We can help them finish their homework, feed ‘em a snack, and help them unwind, whatever you want for your child.”

Yes, what I want for my child is a middle-aged radio producer who can come to my house, give them some “Jesus Juice” and help them UNWIND. Maybe the Maz can even flip on old “Seinfeld” episodes and spoil the jokes for your kid!!!!

HELP THEM UNWIND!!!!! 

Jesus.

Jerry Sandusky and the founder of NAMBLA are uncomfortable with the wording on this website.

Also, check out the coverage map of where Mazawey is willing to unwind your child; give your vehicle that “TLC” it has been missing; and/or deliver your groceries …

Are you telling me that Tom Mazawey — producer of two radio shows on 105.1 — is willing to travel to the border of Ohio to deliver your groceries? Or to Genesee County? Or as far west as DeWitt?!??!?!?!?

As I joked on the Podcast the other night, I really wanted to call Mazawey and ask him to pick up some chicken for me at Zehnder’s in Frankenmuth and deliver it to Luna Pier.

Of course, no website would be complete without references!!!

I gotta get in touch with “Janet in St. Clair Shores.” Please, someone out there reading this, tell me you know “Janet in St. Clair Shores.” I gotta ask her why she chose Mazawey over Tom “The Governor” Millikan for her car-washing and grocery needs.

Does 97.1 webmaster Evan Jankens refuse to lower himself by ArmorAll-ing her tires?

“Hey Mom, Call Tom” might be the greatest gift the DetroitSportsRag has ever received. Whenever I am feeling a little blue, I just enter the URL and hilarity ensures.

This fucking town. Never a dull moment.

Sports Talk Radio Ratings — November

The following chart displays the November radio ratings in Detroit courtesy of Radio-Online ….

As you can see, the first month without Tigers Baseball caused WXYT-FM to take a precipitous fall. Just like every November, 97.1 came crashing back to earth as it lost about 25% of its audience this fall.

Not that a 6.3 is anything to sneeze at — especially considering I wouldn’t tune into that garbage station even if I were at gunpoint with a CIA agent stuffing hummus up my rectum while Ted Nugent’s band, Damn Yankees, was blaring from a boombox.

105.1’s ratings improved slightly — they are now up to a 1.4. Based on this pace, it would appear the Detroit sports talk radio challenger will overtake 97.1 in 2083.

Of course, this is still a putrid performance considering they are the SECOND-LOWEST-rated FM station on the entire dial — beating out only Wayne State’s signal.

Maybe Greater Media needs to instruct their employees to stop taking time off of work to delivery Fruity Pebbles, Depends and Comet to “Janet in St. Clair Shores.”

Mariachi Cantina Update

Speaking of side ventures for radio “personalities,” it doesn’t appear that Terry Foster’s Mexican restaurant with the racist decor is any closer to opening.

You might remember that Foster Tweeted that his new Chesterfield Township dining establishment was due to open in two weeks. That was almost EIGHT WEEKS AGO!!!!!

So what is the holdup, T-Fos?

I am not sure what is funnier, that Foster says he will check with the ownership group “soon” — a mere EIGHT weeks after stating the place was TWO weeks from being open — or that he thinks @dts79 is serious in asking about the decor.

Based on the stereotypical wall paintings; the fact that this location once housed an Outback Steakhouse that could not make it; and the continued delays in simply OPENING, this joint might make Foster’s failed candy store at Lakeside Mall and Foster’s Closedhouse™ (Justin Spiro) look like the work of Bobby Flay.

And Finally …..

As you might have noticed, I never did a write-up of the annual Tom “Killer” Kowalski Christmas party that occurred on December 11th at the Lodge in Keego Harbor.

Frankly, there wasn’t much to discuss. It was a fairly tame affair and most of my contact with the local media was prefaced with, “this is off the record.”

For the first year ever, my wife joined me at the charity event — which raised $32,000 for Killer Cares — and she got a kick out of African-American Matt Prentice giving me death stares from across the bar. That was pretty much the only entertainment of the night.

But the one highlight — other than taking a piss with Dan Miller — was my interaction with Fox 2’s Jennifer Hammond, who doesn’t seem to be a big fan of my work.

You might remember that “The Hammer” wished me bad karma last year. At the CHARITY event. That I was supporting for a mutual friend who had passed way.

Well, Jennifer decided to come over to the table at which some DSR fans, Danny “Pet’s Picks” Fox and Melissa Myst and I were sitting. She once again wished me bad karma. When I told her she did the same thing last year and I didn’t die, she told me she didn’t wish to see me dead…just for “bad things to happen to me every day.”

Honestly, Jennifer, you need a new bit.

Hammond then noticed Melissa sitting next to me and asked if she was my wife. When we told her yes, she incredulously stated that Melissa was “too cute” to be married to me.

When the table finally convinced the sportscaster that Melissa was indeed married to Jiff Mess, she made a comment that Melissa could do much better than me.

I mean, what doesn’t say charity event and Happy Holidays like wishing bad karma on someone and then insulting his wife????!!!!!!!!

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 21, 2014

You all know the story by now. It’s been told many times on this website. It’s even been referenced in the Detroit Metro Times. When Rob Parker was a columnist for the Detroit News he wrote a book that featured some of his awful columns.

It was titled “Getting Robbed: 50 Columns from America’s Angry Black Sports Columnist.” Shockingly enough, nobody wanted to purchase this garbage and sales were awful. Eventually, there was a shortfall with the publisher (co-owned by former Red Wings defenseman Aaron Ward) and Parker had to come up with five large.

The foreword for the book was written by Joe Dumars. A man who was the Piston General Manager at the time. Ya know, a subject Parker was covering for the paper.

It was probably a journalistic no-no to ask Dumars for this favor, but that wasn’t the only contribution Adrian Wojnarowski’s favorite basketball executive made regarding Waab’s book.

Dumars gave Parker the $5,000 to reimburse the publisher. He did so with a personal check from the account of “Joe Dumars.” Parker proceeded to NEVER criticize Dumars’ management decisions while bombing everyone else in Detroit. Coincidental, I am sure.

Now, fast forward to today. Parker was enjoying the Lions/Bears game this afternoon at the Hamlin Corner bar in Royal Oak. WDIV’s pride-and-joy was hanging out with former Pistons Rasheed Wallace and Derrick Coleman.

Anyway, DetroitSportsRag fans Paul Cassetta and Corey Chubner also were at Hamlin enjoying some food and football.

And they decided to approach Rob Parker in an effort to collect the $5,000 “loan” from Dumars. It didn’t go well …..

Yep. There was no response from Parker. He just walked away. He has been dodging the question for over a decade now.

By Jeff “Nerd Sitting Alone in His Basement Tweeting” Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 25, 2014 (The Birthday of Our Lord & Savior)

As the New Year approaches for everyone but the Jews and the Chinese, one of the biggest mysteries on the local sports media scene is how Detroit Sports 105.1-FM program director Jason Dixon still has his job.

Back in August of 2013, WMGC flipped from an adult contemporary format to an “All-Sports” station, finally giving desperate Detroit sports fans an alternative to the genetic mutation abomination known as “guy talk” masquerading as a local sports channel down the dial at 97.1-FM.

After waiting years for an FM alternative to the Bill McAllister Metrosexual Hour; the 43-year-old, Cross-Eyed Virgin Whale/Ann Arbor Benedict the Third program; and the Studio Gangsta Wolverine Troll Show — co-starring his slow adult friend, African-American Matt Prentice, Detroit Sports 105.1 finally arrived.

Unfortunately, local sports fans thirsty for a viable option other than “The Cricket” have been totally underwhelmed by Dixon’s awful programming decisions; we are in a worse position than before 105.1 switched formats because we now have two unlistenable “sports” stations without any hope for a savior.

The 105.1 experiment has been a massive failure mainly because of outsider Dixon’s cluelessness as to the market. For the last 16 months, WMGC has vacillated between a 1.0 and 1.4 rating. Those are historically atrocious numbers and, if it weren’t for Wayne State’s public radio station, Detroit Sports 105.1 would be the lowest -‘rated FM channel on your dial.

The master plan of airing a national morning show that nobody wants to hear (and if they do, they can listen to it on SiriusXM); giving a show to a notorious ratings failure in Ryan Ermanni; not providing a co-host for Matt Dery; and anchoring the entire endeavor around a burned-out grandma who actually figured out a way to talk LESS about sports than 97.1 does was quite an achievement.

But this article isn’t about rehashing all of the above because I am not telling you anything you don’t already know. No, what motivated me to pen this vitriolic column on Jesus of Nazareth’s alleged birthday was a promotional ad 105.1 started airing a few days ago that was a thinly-veiled attack on this site regarding the Jim Harbaugh-to-Michigan news.

You can listen to the bumper below, which is basically a microcosm of the total ineptitude of everyone working at 105.1 …..

“Keep it here for the latest reports and rumors, whether it’s a football insider or some nerd sitting alone in his basement Tweeting that he has — ahem — [cough] a source.”

How fucking dumb are these imbeciles? They are running a promo mocking the people who have been all over this story since day one — while they have provided their audience with absolutely no inside information whatsoever!!!!

This is a station that employs a producer for their afternoon shows who goes on the air and mocks the bloggers who are accurately reporting the Harbaugh story and extolls the virtues of the Adam Schefters, Jason La Canforas, Ian Rapoports and Tim Kawakamis of the world. Ya know, the same NFL writers who are now doing a collective back-track that would make Michael Jackson envious.

These jackholes actually have the chutzpah to mock NERDS who Tweet with sources?!??!??! That would be akin to the Boston Globe running ads belittling Woodward and Bernstein in 1973.

It’s almost 2015 and these talentless hacks are still running with the geeks-in-the-basement line to refer to bloggers? Only “Al Gore Invented the Internet” is a more played-out meme. And you wonder why these losers are getting CRUSHED by a freaking GOSPEL station in the Arbitrons?

And this Twitter NERD with sources is the same guy who broke the story that YOUR radio station was switching formats!!!!!!!! Not to mention that I also was the first to report that David Brandon was out as AD at U of M and TWEETED out the exact time of said press conference!!!!!!!

I seriously am in shock that 105.1 has the unmitigated gall to mock me in an ad when I run circles around these dummies on a daily basis.

Instead of being a Twitter NERD with sources Tweeting from my basement, I guess I could be ….

A racist, homophobe slapdick with a coke-head brother who makes Chris Brown and Ray Rice look like the living embodiment of chivalry.

Or a radio producer who has a side business where he offers to unwind your kids and deliver tampons to your mother.

Instead of being a dweeb, I guess I could have emulated the guy who cheated on his spouse and then let his scorned ex-wife take his two young children to Indianapolis while he stayed in Detroit to do sports radio updates for Sean Baligian.

I mean, who lets their kids leave the state? When I broke up with my now-wife years ago and she moved back to Orlando, I was ready to hire Ronald Kuby, Gerry Spence, Robert Shapiro and Alan Dershowitz to prevent her from taking my DOG with her.

MY DOG.

Not my CHILDREN.

And finally, I KNOW that I would rather be a dork in my mother’s basement than a washed-up, opiate-addicted, hermit-looking old lady with the posture of Estelle Getty in the “Golden Girls.”

THIS is the battle you want, fellas? You want to take shots at me in promotional ads and read my articles VERBATIM without even mentioning the god damn source? Well, welcome to gorilla warfare™ (Terry Foster).

Mark Twain once famously opined, “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” Well, the modern axiom should probably be …

“Never pick a fight with a parasitic, sociopathic blogger who can afford GoDaddy’s cheap bandwidth charges and has no internal governor or editor.”

But don’t worry,105.1 employees. I am sure nobody reads the shit that I spew anyway. There’s nothing to worry about.

Holla when you need the pup walked @JeffMossDSR…anytime my man.

— Paul Pabst (@PaulPabst) December 24, 2014

OOPS!!!! It looks like Dan Patrick’s producer is trying to muscle in on Tom Mazawey’s moonlighting gig.

I guess I am not going to be welcome at the Matt Dery golf outing for a second year running. Oh well, you can find me in my basement with my protractor, broken glasses with tape and the complete Star Trek DVD compilation, if ya need me.

By Troy Feldpausch
troygoal@iCloud.com
December 26, 2014

When the Lions took Eric Ebron with the 10^th overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, most Lions fans were left scratching their heads over the pick. “Is TE really THAT glaring of a need that we need to use a top 10 pick on one?” seemed to be the common question. I mean, they already had a dominant blocking TE (TM Matt Shepard) in Brandon Pettigrew and a red zone threat in Joseph Fauria (7 TDs in 2014).

But, when the pick was made, fans were immediately spoon-fed that Ebron was going to be a “Jimmy Graham-type player” in Joe Lombardi’s offense.

“He’s going to stretch the field,” they said.

“He’s a matchup nightmare,” they claimed.

Like most Lions fans, I had not seen even one game that Ebron played at North Carolina, so I did a little digging to see what kind of player he was.

Here is what Greg Cosell, senior editor of NFL Films, had to say about Ebron after the draft:

“He’s extremely athletic. If you just look at his touchdown against the University of Miami, a 71-yard touchdown, he caught a 10-yard pass and outran the secondary. You saw him run what’s hugely viewed as wide receiver routes – skinny posts, vertical seams and crossers. He ran bubble screens as well. He’s a movement guy and I’m sure when (the Lions) got to that point in the draft he was probably the highest rated guy on their board and they saw him as a guy who would take their offense to a higher level.”

Here’s my take: When Khalil Mack, Sammy Watkins, Mike Evans, Justin Gilbert and Anthony Barr all went before the Lions pick at #10 and they couldn’t find a trade partner, they panicked and went back to their Millen-esque drafting of the “Best Player Available”. Problem is: Was he the best player available? Hindsight is always 20/20 and clearly the answer now is “NO!”, but let’s take a peek at his draft notes:

“Could stand to play with more consistent intensity and focus. Makes the occasional concentration drop. Ordinary touchdown production. Can be loud, boisterous and overly egotistical, which will rub some people the wrong way.”

YEAH!! Let’s take THAT guy at #10.

So instead of a guy who could stretch the field and create matchup nightmares for teams, we’re stuck with a guy who is being trumpeted for his BLOCKING!!! Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press even went so far as to write an ENTIRE ARTICLE about Eric Ebron’s blocking prowess. I am not making this up.

http://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2014/12/23/detroit-lions-eric-ebron-blocking/20796689/

This article has been Tweeted out by Dave Birkett, of all people. The one Lions’ beat writer I can stand.

Heck, even in Jim Caldwell’s press conference, when the coach was asked if he was “disappointed” in Eric Ebron and HIS ZERO CATCHES AND ZERO TARGETS IN THE 15^TH GAME OF THE SEASON, he responded:

“No, did you watch him block this weekend? Did you take a look at the film? He was effective, tough, hard-nosed,” Caldwell said Monday. “He did a lot of good things. He might not have caught passes and ran down the field, but no, I’m not disappointed.

Hey Jim, no, I didn’t “watch the tape”, but what I did do was read Carlos’ article. In that piece, even HE points out that Eric Ebron is 6’4” and 265 pounds. The guy he blocked? Tim Jennings. Yep…Tim Jennings, the cornerback for the Bears who is 5’8” and 185 pounds. Eric Ebron is 8 inches taller and outweighs a guy by 80 pounds and we’re supposed to congratulate him on this block? The other great part of the article was Carlos’ mentioning that Ebron was 2^nd in this vaunted rookie TE class with 23 catches and 3^rd with 210 yards. More on that later.

The prior week, all we heard about after another thrilling 1 catch, 11 yard performance against the Vikings was Ebron’s block that sprung Golden Tate for the Lions only touchdown. Ya know whom that block was on? Vikings safety Andrew Sendejo, whom Ebron barely hovers over by 3 inches and outweighs by 40 pounds. Did he pancake block Willie Young? Did he put Jared Allen down on the ground? Heck no!! But he sure can block guys that he outweighs by an average of 60 pounds!

Hey Jim, I didn’t watch the tape, but I did do a little digging on the Internet and discovered that Eric Ebron has the fewest receiving yards by a WR/TE that was a top-ten pick since Darius Heyward-Bey in 2009.Yep, the Darius Heyward-Bey that was taken by the Raiders before Jeremy Maclin, Percy Harvin, Mike Wallace, Clay Matthews, B.J. Raji and Brian Orakpo, to name a few.

I won’t go into the multitude of players whom that the Lions could have taken in the draft at #10. I mean, it’s not like there were other offensive options available for them.   http://mmqb.si.com/2014/11/27/best-rookie-receiver-class-ever/

Problem is, this team has been burned so many times by drafting WRs not named Calvin Johnson that they will probably never draft another WR in the top 10 in any of our lifetimes. I mean, if I drafted Charles Rogers, Roy Williams, Mike Williams, Derrick Williams, Titus Young and Ryan Broyles in the first 3 rounds, I might not take that route again, either. I mean, can you imagine if the Lions had taken Odell Beckham, Jr. at #10 and then he missed all of the preseason and the first four games of the regular season?   It would have made the Millen Man March seem tame by comparison.

Instead, let’s only focus only on the other TE options that the Lions could have drafted LATER ON IN THE DRAFT if TE was such a glaring need (which it wasn’t). Let’s look at how Ebron’s stats compare to the other SUPERSTAR TEs that were in this draft class and whom he’s second to in catches, 3^rd to in touchdown receptions and 3^rd to in yards.

Ebron – 12 games – 23 catches/210 yards/1 TD/Long play of 17 yards

Austin Seferian-Jenkins – TB – Taken with the 38^th pick, or nearly a full round AFTER Eric Ebron. Here are his stats before getting being placed on IR on December 15^th.  His QB for most of the year? Josh McCown 9 games – 21 catches/221 yards/2 TDs/ Long play of 30 yards

Jace Amaro – NYJ – Taken with the 49^th pick and burdened with having Geno Smith and Michael Vick as his QBs. 13 games – 35 catches/311 yards/2 TD/Long play of 43 yards.

Richard Rodgers – GB – TAKEN WITH THE 98^TH PICK 15 games – 15 catches/185 yards/2 TD/Long play of 43 yards

I have no idea if any of these guys are good at blocking cornerbacks, though.

By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 26, 2014

A couple of months ago, I commenced writing an article regarding Max Scherzer’s impending departure from Detroit that I never finished or posted. I started banging out the column just hours after the Giants eliminated the Royals thanks in large part to Madison Bumgarner’s left arm.

The premise of the piece was “Good Riddance, Max” and it was an angry send-off comparing what Bumgarner had just accomplished to Scherzer’s laissez-faire attitude in recent postseasons regarding his workload.

In case you’ve forgotten the details of the 2014 Fall Classic, Bumgarner threw a complete-game shutout (117 pitches) in the pivotal Game 5 to give the Giants a 3-2 series lead, and then returned on TWO DAYS REST to toss 68 pitches and close out the Royals in Game 7.

The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post article prior to Game 7 in which a reporter asks Bumgarner how many pitches he was prepared to throw in the decisive game (for a team that had already won two of the last four titles, mind you).

“Two hundred,” he said. Facetiously? Maybe. “As long as you’re getting outs. I feel like pitch counts are overrated. So whatever.”

MadBum (what you will get after dining at Mariachi’s Cantina) didn’t give a shit about his future contract status. Or about potentially damaging his arm. Or about the calculus involved in throwing 68 pitches on two days rest. HE JUST WANTED TO WIN ANOTHER WORLD SERIES.

Now, let’s compare that to Scherzer’s comments after Game 2 of the 2013 ALCS. Remember, the Tigers were up 1-0 in the series and on the verge of going up 2-0 and heading back to Comerica Park.

Detroit had a commanding 5-1 lead entering the bottom of the seventh inning. Here is the ESPN play-by-play of what occurred with Max still on the hill ….

Tough inning!!!!! Anyway, after that EASY frame — and a moderate pitch count of 108 — Jim Leyland went to his bullpen in the eighth and the rest is a history that we are all STILL trying to forget.

Here is what Chris Iott wrote for MLIVE.com that night with quotes from Scherzer regarding that sequence of events. Now, remember to compare Max’s comments to Bumgarner’s attitude this past fall ….

Scherzer was asked if he knew he was done after seven.

“Yeah,” he said.

So, no discussion?

“I told them I was done,” he said. “They wanted me done. They had it all lined up how they wanted to approach the eighth inning.

Scherzer was asked again whether he could have gone back out to pitch the eighth.

“No,” he said. “I was done. You can write that. I was done. Everybody, they wanted me done. I was done. I was not going out there for the eighth inning.”

Scherzer was asked if he knew while he was pitching in the seventh that he would not have enough gas in the tank for the eighth.

“Yes,” he said. “I knew I was at my pitches. I knew I was reaching the end. I could tell on my arm. My arm was getting tired. I was getting to the end of my line.”

Scherzer was clearly tired of the line of questioning at that point.

“This is nonsense,” he said.

Now, only Scherzer and Leyland know if Max REALLY told Cancer Stick he was done. Was he protecting his manager or was he really spent? You know what, though?IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER!!!!

Can you imagine Jack Morris, Roger Clemens or even someone like Bumgarner being taken out of that game after throwing only 108 pitches? Hell no.

I mean, Morris would have taken Leyland’s Marlboro carton, lit a cig and stuck it in the old man’s eye if he tried to insert JOSE VERAS to start the eighth.

We are talking about JOSE VERAS, people!!!!

But Scherzer isn’t THAT guy. He is analytical. He is a businessman. You don’t make it through 198 starts in your career with only ONE complete game (a .5% clip) without making it clear that the preservation of your meal ticket is your numero uno priority.

This was the justification I was going to use for not caring about Scherzer’s departure when he inevitably signed with the Cubs, Red Sox or Yankees and I still think it is pretty valid.

Add in the $175 million over six years that it will probably take to re-sign the pitcher who will turn 31 in July, and it wasn’t difficult to convince myself that the team would be better off sans Scherzer.

So what has happened in the last few weeks to lead me back to the “Bring Back Scherzer Flotilla?”

Alfredo Simon happened.

You see, what gets overlooked in the Tigers’ failure to win a World Series over the last nine years due to repeated postseason collapses is that you actually have to qualify for the postseason in order to earn a chance to choke it away.

And I am sorry, a starting rotation that includes Simon (4.33 FIP in 2014); a question mark in Shane Greene; the unpredictability of Justin Verlander; and the precarious health of Anibal Sanchez isn’t exactly comforting. At all.

This franchise’s window is closing in the very near future; we cannot turn into a carbon copy of the Philadelphia Phillies UNTIL we win that elusive World Series.

And while re-signing Scherzer now might be financially disastrous in 2018, between all of the other bad contracts the team will be saddled with and the dearth of top-flight prospects in the farm system, would the signing significantly alter the team’s future anyway?

It’s like being in a tremendous amount of debt, getting diagnosed with both pancreatic and liver cancer and then deciding that it wouldn’t be financially prudent to charge that 70″ HDTV to your Best Buy card. WHO CARES?!??!?!?

Bringing back Scherzer just buys more time to see how the 2015 season will play out while many of the team’s “if’s” get sorted out.

Let’s just say that Verlander bounces back to even just his 2013 form (WAR of 5.2), Sanchez stays healthy and Greene can somehow duplicate Rick Porcello’s production from the last two seasons. Well, that could make David Price somewhat expendable at the trade deadline if the team has any glaring holes to patch.

Now, I would love a full season of that starting five — which would bump Simon to the bullpen where he belongs — but that would surely guarantee a $200 million payroll in 2015, and I am not sure that even the most “spoiled” Tigers fans would expect the Ilitch family to absorb that kind of payroll for an entire year.

Even if they sign Scherzer, this team has a myriad of questions marks heading into the season:

Will Jose Iglesias stay healthy? if his shins are a chronic issue, who will play shortstop now that the team has traded away almost every middle infielder in their system?

Will James McCann be able to platoon effectively with Alex Avila or will he Rob Brantly-it-up in the majors? And can Avila even play a full season productively or will brain injuries finally end his career?

Can Anthony Gose hit his weight of 190?

And we haven’t even begun to discuss the Bermuda Triangle known as the team’s bullpen. I mean, we are talking about the team banking on Joel Zumaya, Jr. and a 40-year-old closer coming off a season in which he lost two miles off his fastball; put up an ERA of 4.81 and a WHIP of 1.53; threw his rookie third baseman under a SEMTA; and told his own fans to fuck off.

Would Dave Dombrowski be better off spending some of the $25 million he’d have to earmark for Scherzer in 2015 on the bullpen instead? Maybe, but we all know that’s not how Mike Ilitch works or even possible at this point of free agency.

If you are going to convince him to exceed the luxury tax, you have to do so with a big, shiny superstar who has both name recognition and Scott Boras as his agent (and Jon Heyman as his hype man).

It’s not a perfect plan — for many of the reasons I stated above — but it seems to be our only chance at not having a severely weakened starting rotation in the improved American League Central.

And with all of that guaranteed money headed his way, hopefully Max Scherzer can stop acting like Steve Jobs and start acting a little more like Steve Carlton.

Bite the bullet and bring back Max.