It is Saturday night, which means you're either halfway till tomorrow's hangover or watching Game 6 of the ALCS. Unfortunately, Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek was played by Steve Harvey for about 20 minutes as TBS, the "Superstation," experienced router problems in their Georgia headquarters and had to air a Steve Harvey Show rerun for the beginning of the game. How angry are fans? Just check out Google Trends, which shows that one out of every three queries on the search engine with something to do with the technical difficulties–and one about why someone wore lipstick to their mastectomy. Yeah, we'll take the crab juice.

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There are any number of people within sports who heap shame upon their families every time they leave the house. This season, however, baseball more or less found itself in the clear: no high-profile steroid busts, no Clemens re-un-reverse-retirements, no players smacking around their wives in full view of 50 Red Sox fans.

Ah, but there's still despair and intellectual/moral/emotional rot for those who dare to track it down. The race for sixth place starts behind these five entities.

The Seattle Mariners
You can almost—almost—forgive the Yankees this year's failure; they can blame a chunk of it on injuries and the rest on A-Rod. But the Mariners opened the season with a $118 million payroll, including $22.5 million in commitments to the since-released Richie Sexson and Jose Vidro. Along the way, they axed their manager and GM, and finished 61–101 (.377). Seattle boasts tasty seafood and gentile citizens who, charmingly, stop when the street signal starts blinking, but the city has become the Baltimore of professional sports.

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When you or I need a hug, we simply go down to the corner and offer to pay a stranger for his/her kindness. But baseball players, bound by a code of duty and hairy-shouldered manliness, have to stymie their affectionate impulses. We propose remedying this situation with a league-mandated hug-off, commencing with the following lonely hearts.

Milton Bradley, Texas Rangers
We focus so much on the rage that has set Bradley upon umpire, teammate and Sunday driver alike, not to mention his insistence upon “introducing himself” to unflattering broadcasters. What we don’t focus on: the scared boy inside the sociopath, one whose good deeds and on-field accomplishments have been acknowledged with little more than widespread adulation, huge mounds of cash, and free home-theater systems.
Type of hug: Quick shoulder-to-shoulder bump, with a battalion of snipers and security personnel monitoring the proceedings nearby.

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According to our mole embedded deep within the Brewers clubhouse, dugout fisticuffs between Milwaukee's Prince Fielder and Manny Parra began when the 275-pound Fielder said, “Manny, old chap, I have only the deepest admiration for your contributions to the team, but I do wish you’d throw a strike occasionally.” Parra, a lithe 6’3” 200- pounder, responded, “You look like a meatloaf with arms. Go snack on some kelp, you vegan churl.” After dabbing a stray tear and huddling with Brewers utilityman/emotional lynchpin Bill Hall, Fielder pounced on Parra.

And thus we were treated to a full day of “they're losing it!” headlines… just as we’ll be treated to similar reports when these five intrasquad tensions bubble over into slappy semi-violence.

Jason Varitek and Sean Casey, Boston Red Sox
Varitek is the heart-of-the-franchise guy who was born wearing eye black. Casey is the smiley, beefy dude whose genial disposition has earned him the nickname “the Mayor.” Sooner or later, Varitek will snap during one of Casey’s fraternizations with the enemy at first base—say, when he attempts to get New York–based enemy operatives to participate in his “Doughnuts for Darfur” charity bake-a-thon. Terse conversations will ensue.

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Maybe it’s the summer heat, or maybe they figure that we’re all too revved up about fantasy football to concern ourselves with baseball silliness. But man, this was the dumbest week for baseball dummies in some dumb time. Here are your most flagrant offenders.

Melky Cabrera, New York Yankees
There's plenty to dislike about Yankees fans: the sense of entitlement, the pink replica caps and jerseys, the stubborn refusal to admit that A-Rod is 32 times the player Derek Jeter is, etc. But one of the truly great Yankee Stadium traditions is the first-inning “roll call": fans in Section 39 chant each starter’s name, followed by a quick wave from said starter. On Tuesday night, Melky Cabrera took this tradition a bit too seriously, responding to the fans during a play and promptly kicking the ball for an error. IDJIT.

Jim Bowden, Washington Nationals
As the July 31 trade deadline approached, it seemed there would be a mere three or four legit relievers on the market: Colorado’s Brian Fuentes (zesty!), Pittsburgh’s Damaso Marte (mysterious!), Atlanta’s Will Ohman (oh-some!), and Washington’s Jon Rauch (tall!). Bowden, who controlled the destiny of the latter, didn’t see it this way. He struck way early, sending Rauch, his top-20-reliever bona fides, and his cheapie-pants contract to Arizona for minor-leaguer Emilio Bonifacio, who ain’t especially young (23) or proficient at any one thing (he’s fast, yet has been thrown out on eight of his 25 steal attempts... in triple-friggin’-A). Why can’t we lure guys like Bowden into our big-money rotisserie leagues? Every cellar needs a dweller. MORON.

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