"AND NOW... FROM HARVARD... BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARACK OOOOOOOOOOOOOOBAM-AAAAAAAA!"

I’m a part-time sports blogger and dick-joke-maker, so of course I hate Bill Simmons. I hate him because he paved the road for all of us to do what we do, and I hate him because he gets paid a fortune to do it. I hate him because he has access to so many athletes and celebrities, and I hate him because he has an army of followers who would mindlessly take bullets for him. I hate him because he gets to be the world’s biggest Boston homer, and I hate him because people can call him on his shit opinions and nobody cares in the long run.

So of course I hate him, too, for getting to interview Barack Obama about sports. Yesterday, Twitter blew up with us sportsy types bitching about Simmons not asking the tough questions, but with all my hate comes a certain level of expectations, and the thing that Sports Guy has built his career on is indifference. He wants to talk about 90210 and his dad, so should we expect him to ask why gas is $4 a gallon? No.

With that, when are the Chicago Bulls gonna win a damn championship, Barry?

“I’m not worried,” Obama said during their conversation from the White House. “If you look at what has been happening with the Bulls, even with [Derrick] Rose out, even with [Luol] Deng out, they’ve still got one of the best records in the league. That is a well-coached team.”

“It hasn’t happened, but it will happen,” Obama said. “Somewhere along the line, my Bulls are going to come through.” (Via HuffPo)

Obama also said that the Bulls are going to win while he’s in office, so I’m going to go with three punchlines here to hopefully please everyone:

For Republicans: “Yeah? Well they better win this year, bud.”

For Democrats: “If they don’t win this year, they’ve still got 4 more seasons.”

For Mayans: “Dudes, we’re serious.”

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David Stern took a break from planning his 2-week vacation that sadly never happened to talk to everyone’s favorite self-anointed basketball expert, Bill Simmons, on his podcast last week. You can bet that The Sports Guy took his gloves off and offered the perfect solution for the lockout that would not only satisfy both the players and the owners, but would also allow for a 17-team deal that would fix every team’s budgets and put Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, and Kevin Love in Boston Celtics uniforms for the next 10 years.

But you’d be wrong. Instead, Stern did what he does best – he said all the right things. Stern even mentioned that he’d be willing to contract some teams, which, as Newsday points out, is remarkable for a commissioner to admit.

“In fact, when you talk about revenue sharing, a number of teams have said that if you have a team that is perpetually going to be a recipient, aren’t you better off with the ability to buy them in? Because between the revenue sharing and the split of international and the TV money, we could almost buy them in with their own money.”

It sounds sincere, until the most obvious candidate for contraction, the struggling New Orleans Hornets franchise, is mentioned. Stern quickly dismisses the notion by saying the Hornets are “going to be an interesting team that I’m not sure is a candidate for contraction.”

Indeed the Hornets are interesting, because they can be moved to another city without any concern for public outcry or backlash. But we’re getting pretty far ahead of ourselves, since, you know, there ISN’T GOING TO BE A SEASON. Sorry, my caps lock got stuck.

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Last month, I introduced you to Celebrity Guest Dugout Week, a week full of Dugouts written by the biggest and brightest names in sports journalism. Well, there ended up only being one, by Bill Simmons of Grantland.com.

I was disappointed in the turnout (Peter Gammons didn’t return my calls, the guy who runs Bleacher Report just snail mailed me a box of crayon drawings and Spiffy Sean Styles of Lethal Entertainment is horrible), so I called Simmons up and asked him to find me another guest writer. After a four hour phone conversation wherein he compared his wife and kids to Kevin McHale, we found our next author — American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski. His unique brand of transgressive fiction and dirty realism is perfect for my webcomic about baseball players cursing, and here we are.

Today’s Dugout follows. People are finally going to start taking us seriously.

[editors note: Today's Dugout is actually guest written by a good friend of mine, Mr. William Hanstock of Progressive Boink and Baseball Feelings fame. Be sure to follow him on Twitter, or at least let him know what you think.]

[secondary editor's note: Today's Dugout about how nobody talks about the Angels was written before the Angels decided to pitch a g.d. no hitter.]

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“meh, she’s just alright” – The Internet

Sports

Kate Upton is Good At Commercials - I’m pretty happy that the hottest woman ever’s first real moment of celebrity was posing in Sports Illustrated, which has a big SPORTS on the cover, which means I can post her here all I want and it counts as sports. Extra points for SoBe’s callous use of “Teach Me How To Dougie” in a post-M-Bone world. [Warming Glow]

Bill Simmons is God of Hollywood - KSK gives the Sport’s Guy’s recent manifesto about Ryan Reynolds the Fire Joe Morgan treatment, which essentially makes it the longest thing ever written on the Internet. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

Here’s a Picture of Derek Jeter’s Balls - I’m happy we made it through over 100 years of baseball before the Internet showed up and made that “balls = testicles” joke so omnipresent. Trufax: I don’t want to look at either interpretation of Jeter’s balls. [Smoking Section]

Bo. Source: Bo. - Two consecutive days of Bo coverage! Tomorrow is a statistical breakdown of how and why Ronnie Lott was the MVP of Tecmo Bowl and not Bo. [SBN]

Not Sports

The Craziest (and Coolest) Celebrity Items Ever Listed and Purchased at Auctions - Including a tissue snotted into by Scarlett Johansson, which replaces “Traci Brooks’ Ring-Worn Bra” as things I would probably buy but won’t, and won’t tell anyone about. [Uproxx]

The First Two Minutes of Bioshock Infinite’s E3 Demo - As cool as this looks, I feel like nothing’s going to ever be as great as that first time you play through the first Bioshock. I don’t want weapons upgrades, I want references to wordy-ass literature! [Gamma Squad]

Three Countries Hate Captain America - I also would’ve accepted the headline “several countries including America hate Chris Evans”. Seriously, why do they keep casting handsome Hollywood comic relief guys as my gritty Golden Age superheroes? The Dark Knight Returns, starring Bradley Cooper as Batman! [Film Drunk]

Casey Anthony Party Photos - Girls who look like Kristen Wiig and probably murdered a baby #cangetit [EgoTV]

Today on With Leather: I wanted to call it “Celebrity Dugout Week!” or “Guest Dugout Week!” but I’m always swamped on Mondays, and I’m not sure how many readers would buy Wednesday to Tuesday as a legitimate theme week. Anyway, welcome to Celebrity Guest Dugout Week!

Today’s comic is by “That Sports Guy!” Bill Simmons, of ESPN and Grantland.com fame. Simmons is an incredible talent and the only person in the history of sports journalism to have seen movies or watched TV shows. Can you imagine Peter Gammons dropping “I Love Lucy” references into his columns? “Vlad Guerrero hacked at the ball like Ethel Mertz desperately stuffing chocolates into her mouth to keep the chocolate factory from firing her.” It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for anybody else!

Enjoy the strip, which we hope to be the first of many. The first of many, or the first part of one really, really long one.

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In case you haven’t read about it, that Tweet above has Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall in a little hot water this week. Of course it doesn’t help that there is no other NFL news to discuss right now, but most people generally see the death of Osama Bin Laden as an accomplishment and closed book for the United States, particularly for the families of American soldiers and the victims of 9/11.

People were naturally going to have dissenting views about Bin Laden’s death, so this is less than surprising. What is surprising is that Mendenhall continued to defend himself on his Twitter, egging on the responses of rage, scowls from the media and even the shame of his team’s owner. Mendenhall maintains his point that he is an American and is protected by freedom of speech. His critics say he could have just kept his mouth shut. Either way, he finally deleted the controversial Tweets.

There’s a reason that we haven’t mentioned this story until now – why bother? A lot of other people just want to embrace the idea that something great happened. So I threw together this collection of Tweets from professional athletes and some of the more famous talking heads in sports with their thoughts and feelings about the death of one of the greatest villains the world has ever known.

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