Grinder Games

February has been the month of shattered illusions, at least if you are incredibly naive. First came the earthshaking news that Michael Phelps smokes weed. Now we find out that Alex Rodriquez used performing-enhancing drugs. Wow. Really? No way. That is a stunner. You could knock us over with a used needle.

Also not surprising was that ESPN's Peter Gammons slurped A-Rod in last night's interview/apology. Filip Bondy in the New York Daily News rightly excoriates Gammons for kowtowing, saying Gammons is "a professional apologist for the sport," and a "pitchman who has the trust of the sport's insiders for all the wrong reasons."

Couldn't have put it better ourselves. Gammons stopped reporting on baseball a long time ago -- right about when he and Karl Ravech made those commercials reenacting a scene from "The Natural." The Panglossian glow with which Gammons presents the game helped enable Major League Baseball to ignore obvious steroid abuse for more than a decade.

Oh, and did we mention that Dwayne Wade may not be the nice guy he seems. British commodities trader Richard Von Houtman says the $1.7 million, two-story apartment in Miami Beach he rented Wade was trashed by the star. Von Houtman described finding apartments filled with used condoms, empty bottles, half-smoked blunts and uneaten food. “They’d have these parties in there two or three times a week,” Von Houtman said. “There were always dozens of people in there. Rappers, Dwyane and his entourage, women they’d pick up in clubs.”

Anybody interested in sports news that has to do with, you know, sports, not gossip, can check out the top NFL Free Agents for 2009, along with predictions about where they might go.

The Daytona 500 is this weekend, about which we are psyched. There is no better event to watch on HD and really, after a NASCAR off-season of bad news and worry that has precisely mirrored the mood of the nation, it will be a relief to see the green flag fall. One way or another, the races will go on. Ed Hinton has this hysterical chat with Humpy Wheeler about what NASCAR will look like in 2059.