American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime is the work of four writers (Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe, and Christian Red), and you can kind of …

It starts out well.Author Rudy Marzano cuts straight to correcting misconceptions and debunking myths about the Dodgers and their fans, and the tone has a very faint sour top note — a whiff of simultaneous …

On balance, an excellent read in spite of some frustrating overwriting.Plum-colored prose is a frequent fault of baseball books that I can tolerate at some times better than at others; here it's bothersome because Verducci …

Hang in there, taxable citizens.
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Dear Sars…I suspect this letter is more for your readers' input than your own, but it's a topic I need some unbiased and impersonal advice on.
It has to do with drinking, …

Harry Kalas, legendary Phillies broadcaster, and Mark "The Bird" Fidrych both passed away yesterday. Tough week for baseball, but seeing Nick Swisher on the mound brightened things a bit, at least on this end.
Remembrances/bullpen jokes …

The other day, I received an email from reader Todd K in which he crabbed at length about Jeff Pearlman's new book on Roger Clemens.I had just read in Sports Illustrated's baseball preview issue that …

Dear Sars,
I want to end a friendship without creating any animosity or ill feelings.I have been friends outside of work with someone I work fairly closely with, both in physical proximity and a lot of …

"A-Roid," "A-Fraud," it's a tabloid field day around here. Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Times has a good (and more importantly, calm) piece about the revelations, and the last few days of coverage.
If you demonize and …

And it's freakin' hideous.
I don't know why Pete ROSE of all goddamn people lives in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of North America, but if he's going to live there, and he's going to sign …

Don't we all, Ms. Yoshida. Don't we all.
Eri Yoshida, a knuckleball pitcher, will play for the Kobe 9 Cruise in a new independent league starting in April 2009. The team selected her last month along …