I spent three and a half years writing Dugouts for AOL FanHouse, and only a few topics were taboo. One was the FanHouse Fantasy Girls. I could more or less slander MLB players on a regular basis, but I couldn’t have an ill-dressed stripper reading box scores. I also wanted to make fun of the writing style of Terence Moore.

But do you think they’d let me do that?

Even in a Dugout?

Uh uh.

I don’t think so.

But the most taboo topic of all was Jay Mariotti, the former Chicago Sun-Times columnist and ESPN personality who joined FanHouse in 2009 to write judgmental pieces about athletes who commit spousal abuse and beat the sh** out of his own girlfriend. I wanted to do a Dugout about Tony Reali awarding Jay points for convincingly dragging around his girlfriend by the hair, with Woody Paige getting all jealous and writing “beat wife” on his chalkboard. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

No. Uh uh. (sorry, Terence.)

The good news is that Jay won’t stop being a creep, and now I’m not working for the people who helped kill WCW so I can say whatever I want. Mariotti was in court on Wednesday and plead not guilty to three new felony charges: stalking, corporal injury on a spouse or domestic partner, and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury. The Los Angeles Times said if he’s convicted, he’ll face up to five years in state prison. His lawyer says they are “complete fabrications.” Who to believe, who to believe.

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the blogosphere has been waiting with baited breath as we imagine a world where Jay Mariotti has no place to type or blather for our annoyance. That day has finally come, as Mariotti has been suspended indefinitely by his employers ESPN and AOL Fanhouse after allegedly assaulting his girlfriend Saturday morning near their apartment complex. We can finally bid Jay’s smarmy face adieu from our television screens and make fun of Bill Plaschke’s inability to pronounce simple words in peace like I’ve always dreamed.

Says an AOL Fanhouse representative to SI’s Richard Deitsch, “We are continuing to gather all the facts. In the meantime, we have suspended Jay Mariotti and are not featuring any new work from him.”

From Sports By Brooks comes more news:

Mariotti was arrested and charged with felony domestic assault in L.A. on Saturday morning after an alleged altercation with his girlfriend. The police report from the incident has not yet been made public by the Los Angeles Police Dept. Sources told me today that the Around The Horn panelist appearance schedule is drawn only a week in advance.

That said, I’ve been advised that Mariotti’s legal troubles were indeed relevant to his not being assigned to the show next week. Meanwhile, the move by AOL Fanhouse comes in light of website commenters posting indelicate reactions to Mariotti’s arrest on many of his archived columns on the website.

So there you have it! Jay Mariotti has finally done himself in. And to think I always thought it’d happen because he’d get killed by an unruly bar patron pissed off by how much Mariotti was lurking on people. And hey, who knows; he could still be playing Around the Horn in jail. Unfortunately for him, the rules are going to be quite different, if you know what I mean.