Nothing makes you feel quite as warm on your insides as waking up to read about how the head of your favorite Major League Soccer club celebrated his 50th birthday by beating the shit out of his wife and smothering her with a pillow until she was unconscious. What a great morning.

The 6-foot-5, 250-pound [FC Dallas CEO Hal Douglas] Quinn allegedly pummeled his much-smaller wife’s face and body, choked her with both hands, and held a pillow over her face until she passed out, the sources said.

Quinn was arrested at 4 p.m. on charges of assault and strangulation, and his wife was treated by paramedics at the scene for injuries to her face, arm, legs and eye, which was swollen shut, the sources said. (via NYPost.com)

One of the saddest parts of the story, like with many spousal abuse scenarios, is the part where Quinn’s wife says it just “got out of hand” and that they plan to stay together because they have two young children. The very worst part of it is that the New York Post decided to use SOCK-HER EXEC as it’s headline. F**k you so hard for that, New York Post.

I had a great experience at Pizza Hut Park and had been using FC Dallas as a valiant attempt to get into soccer, but … yeah. It’s not like the team got together and tried to suffocate this woman, but it’s hard to support a squad run by a guy who has a part in sentences like this:

“In these cases, which are usually ‘he said, she said,’ there is often another side to the story, and there certainly is one here,” Hal Quinn’s lawyers said in a statement.

… so it’s probably best that I organize a Help Me Pick A New MLS Team poll and retire my FC Dallas jersey. The Houston Dynamo have a big cross-eyed fox mascot, maybe I’ll go see what they’re about.

[h/t to Randy D.]

Ochocinco and Terrell Owens got together at some point during the winter, shotgunned a marathon of ‘Necessary Roughness’ and decided they could get their shit together and have a Diva Wide Receiver Renaissance. T.O. showed up in Seattle to run the 40 in 4.45 and earn himself a one year, $1 million contract. Ochocinco showed up in Miami, legally changed his name back to Chad Johnson (because serious business) and focused on the finer points of his game, using the experience he’s earned from a decade in pro football to …

Wait, I’m sorry, what?

According to [Davie police captain Dale] Engle, Johnson and his wife, Evelyn Lozada, were driving to their home in Davie after dinner Saturday night when Lozada found a receipt for a box of condoms in the car, sparking an argument that got “heated.”

When they arrived at their home, the argument “escalated quite a bit,” Engle said, and Johnson and Lozada butted heads, giving Lozada a laceration on her forehead. Lozada told police that Johnson purposely head-butted her, while Johnson told police it was accidental. (via Palm Beach Post)

welp,

This is one of those situations where blogger analysis is useless, because Jesus, I’ve never found myself “accidentally headbutting” someone so hard it opens them up in an argument over condom receipts. Johnson was released from jail on $2,500 bond and Miami terminated his contract within the day.

You’d think the rest of the Dolphins would just throw up their hands, say “okay, fine, whatever” and move on with their lives, but we live in a world where everyone has an opinion, so someone’s inevitably got to have the “who cares if he rage-headbutted a lady, we’ve got football to play” one. Dolphins linebacker Karlos Dansby, everybody:

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I use the term “girlfriend” loosely. Depending on the integrity of the source it was either “the mother of his children” or his “baby mama”, but at some point we have to assume they liked each other. Regardless, he punched her “multiple times in the head with his fist”, threatened to kill her and threatened to beat up all the kids watching. That earns him $2,500 in fines, 100 hours of community service and a 12-month domestic violence program. It also earns him six months in jail, of which he’ll serve about 90 days, of which he’ll probably serve twenty minutes sitting in a jail waiting room.

The sports world is great at putting things like this into proper context. From the Los Angeles Times:

Mayweather pleaded guilty to a reduced domestic-violence misdemeanor charge and no contest to two harassment misdemeanor charges in the Clark County (Nev.) courthouse.

The jail sentence complicates, and perhaps scraps, plans for a late-spring fight between Mayweather (42-0) and Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao.

“You don’t need to be a genius to count the days,” said a person in Pacquiao’s camp, who was unauthorized to speak publicly.

USA Today is even worse, where the headline reads “Could Mayweather sentence actually help make Pacquiao bout?” Mayweather has a fight scheduled for May 5, but an opponent hasn’t been announced. More importantly, who gives a sh*t and can we please at least devote a paragraph or two per analytical blog that reads “this guy is a horrible person for doing this stuff”?

This is why I had trouble doing a Dugout when Manny Ramirez was arrested for domestic abuse … there’s nothing funny about a man beating a woman, and it pisses me off that the only option we’re offered is talking about how this is going to affect upcoming sports. F**k upcoming sports, stop beating your girlfriends.

I’m just gonna spit it out, because the headline is the punchline: A Massachusetts woman was arrested Thursday for hitting her boyfriend in with a baseball. And not one of those River City Ransom things where you hold the baseball while you punch, she threw it at his face.

26-year old Maritza Alvarado faces a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after a heated argument led to a fastball to the f**king forehead. The story refers to her as a “Methuen resident” and it seriously took me five minutes to look at the AP header and realize that’s a place in Massachusetts. Not surprised to see a couple of Meth residents having a run-in with the cops.

The boyfriend in this story is what we on “The Wire” like to refer to as “a good soldier”.

The man, who police did not identify, was found with fresh bruise on the left top of his forehead. When asked what happened, he told police Alvarado got mad and threw something at him then refused to speak further about the beaning. He refused to seek a restraining order against her and would not talk to police.

It was unclear if Alvarado had an attorney.

…because it’s totally this guy.

In a related story, I wonder if Derek Jeter could get police to arrest a woman by saying she hit him with a baseball, whether she actually did or not?

[h/t Sportress of Blogitude]

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.

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Former Major League outfielder Carl Everett, mostly famous for denying the existence of dinosaurs and for saying Adam and Eve were real because “someone saw them,” was tossed in a Tampa jail on Tuesday for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. According to the arrest affidavit, Everett and his wife got into an argument so he did what any sane, rational human being 39 years into adulthood would do — he put a gun to her head, then broke two different telephones so she couldn’t call 911. Well, sure.

Everett’s attorney, Clinton Paris, said it’s a family matter, which can hopefully be resolved quickly and efficiently.

Paris added, “he only did it because he loved her.” He didn’t, but he might as well have.

The best part of the story (and keep in mind that there really aren’t any best parts to this story) is that the report said he held a “silver handgun” to her head, and while that’s probably just a color description I can pretty easily imagine Carl Everett owning a pistol made of silver. This is the same guy who questioned the moon landing and said he’d retire if he found out one of his teammates was gay. This guy got to play professional baseball for FOURTEEN YEARS without somebody sh:tkicking him in the asshole and making him work at Family Dollar for the rest of his life.

[AP]