Hayes was the star power forward on the Baltimore/Washington Bullets during the 1970s. The team went to the NBA Finals four times in that decade.

FOUR times! The NBA Finals!

Four times! (OK: Hayes was only there for three of 'em. But, still...)

And, of course, the Bullets won one of those title tilts, during the 1977-78 season.

The late-model Bullets, playing under another name, are already in last place in the division, six games out of first place after playing only nine games, and, as Eastern Conference champs Cleveland come to town tomorrow, hope is scarce.

The cure? Easy! Just get it over with and change the damn name back to "Bullets," Abe Pollin! What could it hurt?

Happy Birthday, Elvin!

***

Speaking of names that should change: The Redskins won't lose trademark rights just yet.

The Supreme Court disclosed yesterday that it won't hear an appeal filed on behalf of an American Indian group that sued the Redskins, saying the team's name is offensive and therefore under federal law shouldn't be afforded trademark protections.

Redskins lawyers, including Dave "Yeah, That's the Ticket!" Donovan argued successfully that the plaintiffs waited too long to file the suit.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Another Redskins trademark lawsuit bubbles up? Why doesn't Dan Snyder just change the name? Maryland Nighthawks come back with a new name? With sign ban lifted, Redskins fans are back to complaining about players? Redskins fans worry that FedExField guards will turn "hi-def" cameras on them looking for bad sign carriers? Birthers take their fight to basketball? Ex-high school star WASN'T 24 years old when he played prep hoops here?)

So, the case was never decided on the merits of the charge that "Redskins" is illegally offensive. But, according to the Wall Street Journal, another, younger class of plaintiffs, who will argue they found the the team's name offensive as soon as they came of legal age, will make the very same allegation in a similar suit.

Just change the damn name now and get it over with, Dan Snyder. What could it hurt?

***

Speaking of Redskins victories: The Skins' surprising, exciting win over the Broncos has let fans be fans again.

"The weather was great, the tailgate was fantastic, the team showed more resilience than I've seen all year and they managed to score more than 17 points for the 1st time in close to 20 games," writes Dave Alperin of his game-day experience.

Alperin hasn't been this happy after a day at FedExField in quite a while. He's a pivotal figure in the 2009 Redskins fan uprising, as the season turned into a sort of Prague Spring for the folks who line Dan Snyder's pockets. Alperin is the guy who first alerted me to Snyder's sign ban, after he had stadium security aggressively search him at the gate before the Tampa Bay game a month ago.

Snyder's jack-booted thugs confiscated an anti-Snyder sign and assorted agit-prop he had fashioned at home the night before that game, after reading FedExField's rule book to make sure such stuff was indeed allowed under the rules.

Alperin told the guards he'd read the rules on Snyder's own web site, redskins.com. But as they were throwing his handiwork into the trash pile full of other fans' anti-Snyder art, Snyder's guards told him the rules had just changed. No more signs.

But there's been a change of heart, or at least a rules change, at Redskins Park, either because management was listening to fans or because Snyder realized how bad it would look to have the stadium ban still in place on the same week he's holding a "best sign" contest for Redskins fans at a local bar as part of a "Beat Dallas!" promotion for his radio station.

Whatever the reason, Snyder rescinded the sign ban before the Denver game.

But in typical Snyder fashion, the Redskins lost whatever PR benefits they would have gained from the move by waiting to announce that the ban had been lifted until just a couple hours before kickoff, when fans planning to attend the game had already left their homes.

"I heard about the rescinding of the sign ban after I got home from the game," says Alperin via email.  "There were a couple of signs that said 'Fire Vinny' below me in our section but I think most people didn't get the message until it was too late to take action.  Lots of t-shirts.  'Snyder Sucks', 'Worst Owner Ever', etc.  My daughter and I wore the 'Anti-Synder' shirts and security did not hassle us at all."

Alperin also note that "there were more replays and fewer commercials." Maybe the times really are a'changin'.

Yet fans who showed up will remember the game itself more than whatever alterations were made to stadium operations.

Here's how Alperin ended his game-day recap: "This game also showed me that as much as I love [Clinton] Portis, I don't think he is an effective running back anymore.  He just has had too many carries over his career."

Now THAT's a fan.

***

Another sign, so to speak, of the distrust Redskins fans have for management: I got an email from another ticketholder who told me that at the gate before the Denver game FedExField security guards were telling fans "that 'hi-def cameras'" had been installed at the stadium and that security staffers "would be using the cameras to monitor signs" and going after folks with any signs that weren't suitable.

I asked the team yesterday if what the guards were allegedly saying was true, and Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson quickly emailed back: "We have always had cameras in stadium and parking lots.  They are there for security purposes, not monitoring of fans or signs."

The only part of the allegation that I found suspicious was that guards were saying "hi-def" cameras were being used for the surveillance. As Swanson himself has told fans over the years whenever they complain about the stadium's analog minitron that occasionally shows replays: FedExField isn't wired for hi-def.

***

Basketball birthers shot down: Mouphtaou Yarou, a Villanova freshman who played high school hoops locally at Rockville's Montrose Christian, is officially not 25 years old.

Last week, the Sporting News reported that in paperwork from the 2007 Africa Cup tournament, where he was a participant, Yarou's birthday was listed as June 26, 1984.

But, on Friday, Villanova officials said they'd gotten a copy of Yarou's birth certificate, and that while his birthday is indeed June 26, the year was 1990. He's only 19.

Something I learned today: If he were in fact 25, he would not be eligible to play under NCAA rules. I know missionaries and military vets and multi-sport stars can play at older ages. This just in: the NCAA's rules are stupid.

***

Listen up, Wizards and Redskins: The Maryland Nighthawks got it over with and changed the damn name: The Nighthawks, a local minor league basketball outfit, sat out last season, but are about to return as the Maryland GreenHawks, the most eco-friendly professional sports franchise.

Boy wonder general manager Adam Dantus tells me the squad will sport literally and figuratively green uniforms and sneakers.

All the details will come out when the Greenhawks are officially unveiled tomorrow during a ceremony at, ahem, Bethesda Green.

One tidbit about the GreenHawks that already has leaked: Byron Mouton of Maryland fame will head up the roster. He will heretofore be known as Greenron Greenton.

OK, I made that up about Mouton changing his name. But, in minor league basketball, anything's possible.

***

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courtesy of D.C. Sports Bog

Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato, the poster children of the Prague Spring for Redskins fans, have been dubbed "Dumb" and "Dumber" in much of the agit prop that Redskins security has worked so hard to keep out of FedExField.

Awesome trivia: In "Dumb and Dumber," 1994 movie that informs the insurgency, there's a character named "Karl Swanson."

Really. You can look it up.

And in real life, as outlined by Paul Farhi in today's Washington Post, there's a Karl Swanson who's the third wheel in the Snyder/Cerrato continuum. (Full disclosure: I'm briefly in the story.) The flesh-and-blood Swanson has been Snyder's spokesperson since before he took over the Redskins. Swanson and Cerrato are the longest-tenured Skins staffers in the Snyder regime. They ride golf carts with the boss, and Swanson drives.

I don't know Karl Swanson much at all, but over the years he has returned a huge percentage of my phone calls and emails, even though long ago he grasped the likelihood was that Snyder wasn't going to come out great in whatever City Paper wrote about him. So I've come to admire Swanson a good bit. He's got the toughest job in Washington.

But dang if I didn't giggle when I Googled upon the "Dumb and Dumber" character  with his name. Makes his voyage to Redskins Park seem like destiny.

"We feel frustration and we feel sorry for our fans," Snyder told a crowd at an event the Redskins organized. He was standing at a podium in front of a gang of players in jerseys and behind a placard that said "Children Come First." As I noticed during a shot of the owner's box in last week's Monday Night Football broadcast, Snyder looks smaller these days than he ever did. (Seriously: Check out this video from WUSA.) Reminds me of what happened to Rev. Dimmesdale in the Cliff's Notes version of The Scarlet Letter.

(AFTER THE JUMP: 2% of WRC viewers are "Thrilled!" by Dan Snyder's mini-contrition? The Bathroom Diaries are looking for a few good places to squat? Have they considered FedExField's beer-friendly head? The EagleBank Bowl adds a conference? Wes Unseld gets a street named after him? Will it be clogged in the middle at all times?)

After leaving the stage, Snyder talked briefly with reporters, but Brett Haber reports for WUSA-TV that the owner refused to answer any questions about the treatment of the fans he feels sorry for, the ones he's taken signs from and ejected for yelling anti-management slogans or wearing anti-Snyder shirts.

Still, just in case this press stop signaled the dawning of a new era of glasnost at Redskins Park, I contacted the team to request a turn at interviewing Snyder.

Longtime Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson, who hasn't been as available to me as he once was, wrote back quickly, just like the old days.

"I’m not sure I’d call being stopped on a sidewalk by a couple of reporters an interview," Swanson said, "but in any event he does not plan on any formal interviews during the season."

Hey, informal's cool with me, Dan! Have you seen my wardrobe? Informal's pretty much the only game I can play!

But I'm guessing Swanson's telling me my request has been denied.

WRC-TV posted some video of Snyder's comments on its Web site last night, along with a "Sound Off" function where viewers could rate what they watched.

The scoring, as of this morning:

Thrilled: 2%
Sad:  3%
Intrigued: 4%
Bored: 8 %
Laughing: 17 %, and, the big winner,
Furious: 66%

***

The Bathroom Diaries, which bills itself as "The World's Largest Database of Restroom Locations," is now taking nominations for the 2009-2010 Golden Plunger Awards. These honors go annually to the best restrooms around the globe.

I think the FedExField bathrooms deserve serious consideration.

The Bathroom Diaries Web site lists past winners of the Plunger. Sure, they all look less viral than Snyder's loo. But, far as I can tell, no previous Plunger honoree had guys with big tubs of Bud Light waiting for you as you flush.

And as both my readers know: FedEx is the home of BeerInTheBathroomsGate.

(Check out the mission statement from The Bathroom Diaries, a site founded in 2000 by Lynchburg, Va.'s Mary Ann Racin that now lists over 12,000 places to do your business: "Few would visit a country without some advanced information, yet our tender bits are exposed to uncharted territories with no help or assistance.  At our most vulnerable, we are blind. Well, no more.")

***

The EagleBank Bowl has broadened its horizons. Organizers have announced they will accept schools from the Big 12 Conference beginning next year.

The game was originally designed to feature one of the service academies against an ACC squad each year. But that setup relied on the military schools fielding bowl-eligible football teams. Navy did its part last season, winning enough games in the regular season to earn a matchup with Wake Forest at RFK in the inaugural tilt. Air Force is a member of the Mountain West Conference, and its obligations to the MWC, which include mandatory appearances in bowls which that conference has contracts with, have proven more cumbersome than EagleBank Bowl planners counted on.

And then there's Army, which just isn't bowl material most seasons. Army is supposed to be the academy invitee to this year's EagleBank Bowl. But Army's on the bubble, at best, for bowl eligibility. Six wins are required. Army is now 3-5, and will lose this weekend at Air Force.

Army could well beat VMI and North Texas later this month. That would put the team at 5-6 heading into the season finale.

That'll mean its bowl eligibility, and a lot of EagleBank Bowl dollars, will be decided against Navy. Army will be a massive underdog going into that game.

The new deal with the Big 12 will take some pressure off organizers to find eligible teams. And Navy can still play every third year.

(The Big 12 pact doesn't kick in until next season. If Army loses out and things get really rough this year, the EagleBank folks can always add a Gary Clark Party to the agenda to get local folks really interested.)

***

Wes Unseld, known during his NBA days for clogging thoroughfares, now has one named after him. Baltimore officials announced that the 200 block of what was once known as Hilton Street will now be called Unselds Way.

From the street-renaming announcement, I learned a couple things about Unseld that I probably should have known. First, he and his wife have operated a private school in Baltimore, the Unselds School, since the late 1970s. Also, Unseld has lived in Baltimore since coming to the Bullets in 1968, having stayed there even after Abe Pollin moved the team to Landover in 1973.

So for all the years Wes Unseld was a fixture in this market, he never lived around here.

***

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Redskins security seized anti-Snyder paraphernalia at the FedExField gates before the Tampa Bay game a few weeks ago, without any honorable explanation for the seizures. The guards' heavy-handed tactics kept shots of bags on people's heads and "Snyder Sucks!" posters off the Fox airwaves for a few hours on that Sunday afternoon, but Snyder's strategy has otherwise totally backfired. Those whose agit-prop props were taken by Snyder's jack-booted thugs or otherwise censored got really motivated, and are now among the leaders of some very organized campaigns to demonstrate against the Dan Snyder Administration on a much bigger stage: "Monday Night Football."

***

The Third Coming? Mike Florio, the one-man TMZ of the NFL, rumors that Joe Gibbs will return to the Redskins to save Dan Snyder again.

The Gibbs rumors might take some steam off Snyder for yesterday's Steve Largent blasts. Largent, a former U.S. Congressman (awesome trivia about Largent: he lost his last election because Oklahoma voters were outraged by his stance against... cockfighting!), told a Seattle radio audience that Snyder is humiliating his buddy and onetime Seahawks teammate simply to avoid paying him the $6 million remaining on the head coach's contract. Largent says Zorn told him that Skins officials, presumably meaning either Vinny Cerrato or/and Dan Snyder, tried bullying Zorn into quitting by waving a copy of his contract in his face, and repeating the clauses that state that wholesale subservience is required or the team can fire him for cause. That sounds unbelievable, unless you've heard several dozen similar accounts of bizarre and mean behavior from Snyder from former employees.

Snyder was seen yesterday at practice talking to Zorn. Standing side by side, Snyder came up to Zorn's sternum. You know Zorn would like to go to the top of the boss' head with an elbow drop. But in his press conference after practice, Zorn simply said, "I have to hold back on any feelings."

God god. Forget a new set of eyes. Jim Zorn needs to grow a new set of balls.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Doc Walker puts a happy face on Skins' budding playcalling disaster? Sherm Lewis looks like Chief Zee without the headgear? Sam Elliott shills for horse racing? Horse racing leads to domestic bliss? Where's Karl Swanson when you need him?)

Zorn should tell the world what it already knows: He's being treated like dirt by a bunch of loser fools just so they can save a few million bucks. Snyder's putting a hurt on Zorn's image that he ain't going to recover from.

On Snyder's sportstalk station yesterday afternoon, Rick Walker tried to put a positive spin on the Skins' switch to a new play caller during a spot on John Thompson's show. Walker, calling in from Redskins Park, said the mood at practice was upbeat, that everybody in the organization was down with the plan to let Sherman Lewis take over Jim Zorn's game-day responsibilities, and basically insinuated that everything about the Redskins was suddenly just peachy.

Then John Thompson stopped the peachiness with a simple question: What's Jim Zorn's role going to be come kickoff against the Eagles on Monday?

Walker hemmed and came up with "clock management," then he hawed some more. And then Walker hemmed some more. Then, he told it like it was: "I don't know!"

Nobody knows what Zorn will be doing. At Fox-5 last night, sportscaster Lindsey Murphy reported that Jim Zorn "will be involved in the pass protection.". WUSA's Brett Haber said Lewis will only be able to call "a type of play," and not make actual play calls, because he's not familiar enough with the Skins playbook. Wowee. Now the Skins are saying that Sherm Lewis's playcalls will be filtered through Sherm Smith, not even Zorn. And he's the head coach?

Why not just make Zorn sell beer in the FedEx bathrooms? Get your bingo jokes ready, people. This is gonna be a disaster.

***

Walking around practice in a burgundy Redskins sweatsuit, Sherman Lewis sure looked like Chief Zee minus the headdress.

Speaking of: In chronicling how the Washington Post grounded and pounded on Dan Snyder in every section of the paper yesterday, I neglected to mention that Courtland Milloy held court for Metro with an assault on Chief Zee. The timing does seem odd.

But damn if Chief Zee isn't the most racist mascot in pro sports. There's nothing else even close.

***

Speaking of geldings... Shocker of shockers: Somebody's marketing horse racing to the masses! Laurel Park has been running commercials on Dan Snyder's sports station for this weekend's DeFrancis Dash.

The spots feature a voiceover that sure sounds like the great Sam Elliott, telling a tale about a father/son relationship enhanced by days at the racetrack.

Sure, the track has torn apart a whole lot more families than it's helped, but, it's still fabulous to hear any mention of racing in the mainstream media.

***

I was wondering whatever happened to Karl Swanson. I'd reached out to the Redskins top PR man a lot lately. But, no return calls. No return emails. Not even a "no comment"! But I wasn't taking it personally: These are tough PR times for the Redskins, what with the organization all messy and beer being sold in the bathrooms, but "Karl Swanson" wasn't even getting any hits in Google news. So I called and emailed Swanson yet again just to find out if he was still with the team.

And at long last, Swanson responded yesterday! He's still on the job. Swanson gave no explanation for the radio silence.

Maybe it's me.

***

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***

You don't need to read the Washington Post;s redesigned weather page to forecast the perfect shitstorm that is heading for Raljon on Monday evening.

The rest of the paper has all the evidence. There's no section of the Post that doesn't hold horrible news for Dan Snyder.

Mike Wise fills up the front page of Style with a profile of The Man Who Would Be Snyder, John Kent Cooke.

Some of the bitterness from Cooke, whose birthright to become owner of the Redskins was never exercised:

"Dan Snyder destroyed the reputation of this franchise," Cooke said. "I sure as hell don't like the way he gutted the organization after we left. And he commercialized the Redskins like my father would have never commercialized the Redskins. People brought cushions and pennants to the games. You know how they got those? My father gave them out at fan appreciation days."

Cooke also took issue with recent controversy over tickets. "Suing season ticket holders?" he said, incredulously. "My God, it's embarrassing. We would have never done such a thing."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Mike Wise dusts off Bobby Beathard to throw some jabs at Snyder? The Post's Business section tells readers that Snyder's a lousy businessman, just for the hell of it? The bingo caller line, again? The bingo caller last called plays for the Detroit Lions? How much would you have to get paid to go to a Redskins game? Eastern gets its first and last win? )

Better still, Wise dusts off long-ago general manager Bobby Beathard to unload on Snyder. While pretending to be saying how the younger Cooke would have been good for the Redskins, Beathard's really getting back at Snyder for giving him a low-ball offer to return to the team as GM in 2002, as Marty Schottenheimer was getting shown the door:

"I think he learned so much from his father [that] John would have been a great owner," Beathard said. "His dad wasn't a hands-off guy, but he wasn't a meddler. He didn't want to come over and want to watch films or tell us who to take."

Instead of paying Beathard a decent wage, Snyder rehired Vinny Cerrato.

Then, if you jump over to the Business section, Steven Pearlstein writes a few fab and devastating paragraphs about Snyder. And everything Pearlstein says is as easy to understand as, say, "The Emperor's New Clothes."

"What do you call a business that consistently overcharges its customers for an inferior product, hires the wrong people and pays them above-market wages, and yet still manages to be one of the most profitable and valuable franchises in its industry?

Here in nation's capital, we call it the Washington Redskins.

Economists, however, have a more generic name for such an enterprise. They call it a monopoly.

It should be apparent at this point that, whatever his other virtues, Dan Snyder isn't the business whiz he's cracked up to be. From the traffic jams and drunken crowds to the soggy hot dog rolls and the endless TV time-outs, a Redskins game at FedEx Field may be one of the worst entertainment experiences you can buy at any price. And that's not even taking into account the opera buffa now playing out on the field and in the locker room.

But for the fact that Washington football fans have no other choice, the Redskins by now would be in bankruptcy court, right alongside Snyder's other big fiasco, Six Flags."

The brutalest part comes later, when you realize Pearlstein's story is about an upcoming Supreme Court case, and all the Snyder hammering, beautifully written and dead-on as it is, is totally gratuitous!

Then there's the Post's sports section, which is full of the theme that all national reporters will use when the Philadelphia Eagles visit for "Monday Night Football":  The latter-day Redskins are the most messed up franchise in the NFL, and maybe in all of professional sports.

This has been said a lot lately, and will be said a lot more over the next week, but can't be said enough: Dan Snyder just promoted a bingo caller to be an NFL play caller, a job he last held in 2004 with a horrible Detroit Lions team.

Despite all Snyder's wacko meanness, it looks like Jim Zorn ain't gonna follow the owner's plan and quit. So unlike the last two Redskins coaches, Joe Gibbs and Steve Spurrier—both of whom walked away from contracts worth millions—Zorn's going to get paid.

Take THAT, Mr. Snyder!

***

Last week, the The Great Dan Steinberg reprinted a Craigslist ad he'd found before the Kansas City Chiefs game, in which a Redskins fan said he wouldn't go to FedExField—unless somebody paid him:

Don't want to go to the game? ME NEITHER. I will, however, watch my beloved Skins for a fair price...I'll only attend if the compensation is adequate.

Earlier this week, I tracked down the fan who placed that ad. The good news for Dan Snyder: That fan, Mike Stuart, says nobody offered to pay him to go watch the Redskins/Chiefs game.

"I did not get any offers, at least for what I was asking for," Stuart tells me via e-mail. "Instead, I was offered plenty of tickets FOR cash, the most laughable being 'I have 2 tickets in 417 row 15 for the Eagles on Monday Night for $150 for the pair and 2 in 133 row 21 for $260 for the pair.' I think he may have gotten this game confused with a Caps playoff game from last season."

Stuart says he's mad at his friends who used their tickets, and that he doesn't intend to go to any more games this season, and is looking forward to watching the franchise bottom out and start over.

"I don't see single winnable game the rest of the way," he says. "Funny, even though I've bled burgundy and gold my entire life, I actually see that as a good thing."

***

Have-Nots Update: In last week's Bowl for the Bottom, host Eastern defeated Spingarn, 38-12. That means Spingarn, now 0-6 and having been outscored 285-18, will be the city's only winless football team this season, barring something crazy. As for Eastern, the Spingarn game might be the last win in the school's history. Next school year, because of a DCPS reorganization plan, Eastern Senior High School will have only 12th graders, and therefore likely won't have enough players to field a team. And after that, DCPS plans to close the school at least temporarily, and some folks think permanently.

But, if Eastern is indeed going out, they didn't go out on bottom...

***

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Folks who bought FanZone parking passes on WJFK's web site and showed up to Saturday's preseason game with Pittsburgh found that Snyder had taken over the lot.

Yesterday, a marketing rep for CBS-owned WPGC, a WJFK sister station that was also promoting the parking lot, told me “some situations occurred” that led to Snyder’s takeover.

The marketing rep, however, would not go into detail over how the promotion, which positioned the FanZone lot as cheaper than Snyder's lots and without the new tailgating restrictions that so many fans are concerned about, fell apart.

Swanson says all the problems come from WJFK selling parking passes before getting the rights to use the land.

"[I]n a nutshell the Redskins, the radio stations and (I think) one other group were in separate negotiations to lease the lot as a parking site," Swanson tells me via email. "For reasons unbeknownst to us, the radio stations began advertising the lot without a contract and as negotiations were ongoing.  We entered terms and leased the lot for game day parking."

The Redskins did the fans who bought passes a solid for the Pittsburgh game, Swanson says: "[W]e decided to honor all of the passes the radio stations had already sold."

(AFTER THE JUMP: The sad tale of Bullets gaffer Dick Gibbs? Local rookie Brett Cecil makes his own blooper tape? Best of the decade time...already? AAU teammates Durant and Beasley make different sorts of news? Would only an idiot reference the Tom Boswell Curse?)

The radio stations are now scrambling to find a new parking lot. There's not much to work with in the area, however.

So, could FanZonegate™ be over?

Gosh, I hope not.

***

For years I've wondered what ever happened to Dick Gibbs. Thanks to the Des Moines Register, now I know.

Gibbs was briefly a Washington Bullet in the mid-1970s, but was responsible for one of the most memorable sporting moments of my formative years. Gibbs blew an uncontested, snowbird layup in the closing moments of Game 4 of the NBA Finals with the Bullets down by a point. His choke gave the Golden State Warriors a sweep and what was then regarded as perhaps the biggest upset in championship series history.

The miss made Gibbs a huge goat around here. In pickup games, me and my buddies would yell "Dick Gibbs!" at anybody going in for an uncontested layup, a euphemism for "Choke!" in hopes it would rattle 'em enough to blow the shot,  just like Gibbs blew his.

Gibbs didn't take well to goathood. He tells the Des Moines Register that the gaffe with the Bullets helped ruin his basketball career and his life.

He was traded the next season from the Bullets to Buffalo, but got the boot from the Braves after running into the stands to confront and spit in the face of a fan who heckled him about the layup that wasn't in Washington.

"How I remembered that for 25 years was that I went into the game, I missed a layup with hardly any time left, and I single-handedly cost us an NBA championship," Gibbs told the Iowa paper. "I took that one and carried it around with me."

He was living under a bridge for a while, with various addictions and mental breakdowns. Now I feel sorry now for using his name in vain all those years ago.

On behalf of all Bullets fans: We forgive you, Dick Gibbs.

***

Not to rival Gibbs's, but DeMatha alum and Toronto Blue Jays rookie pitcher Brett Cecil had his own Brain Lock Moment. Cecil's getting roasted up North for throwing a ball out of play before calling timeout during a home game against the Red Sox. The gaffe led to a Boston run in what turned into an 8-1 rout for the visitors.

The video is funny, just for the catcher's panic and the facial expressions on all concerned. But no matter what, if Cecil's living under a bridge anytime soon, he better not blame this.

***

Bad news for those just getting over Best of the Century/Millennium Lists: Best of the Decade lists are now coming out.

DCsportsfan.com just broke the crust with a poll of local boys who made good on the gridiron since 2000. The roster has too much Maryland, not enough Virginia, for my liking.

***

Michael Beasley, who'd make any list of the best basketball players to come from DC in recent years, has reportedly checked into a clinic to treat unspecified drug and emotional issues. Via the Great Dan Steinberg, happier news for Kevin Durant, Beasley's former AAU teammate from PG County and another sure all-decader: Durant scored 55 points in a Barry Farms showcase.

***

The Nats lose, if I'm carrying the one correctly, their 9th in 12 games since Tom Boswell returned from vacation. I'm not ready yet to start once again blaming all the losing on him or the Tom Boswell Curse. But I might in a loss or two...

***

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Last night's Redskins game in Baltimore got me thinking about big screens. The Ravens stadium has an amazing hi-def video system; FedExField has perhaps the worst viewing options for fans in American professional sports.

The antique and analog Jumbotrons at each end of Dan Snyder's stadium are tagged as either "minitrons" or "Lite Brites" by angry posters on Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com.

I've been asking the Redskins for years why the team doesn't answer the pleas of the fans and get a new big screen. Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson has insisted, again and again, that the reason they keep the old crappy video system is because "the stadium isn't wired for digital."

I'm no Thomas Edison, but Swanson's excuse seemed like hokum from the start. My house was built in 1925, and the wiring in some parts of it is still original. But I've got a digital TV from Costco that plugs in and works just fine. I always figured: Couldn't the stadium just do that?

But, recent events at the stadium sure seem to prove that yes, the Redskins could go digital just like me if they wanted to: Paul McCartney brought in his own high-def jumbotrons and ran them during his show at FedEx, to the enjoyment of the tens of thousands of folks who were forced to pay Snyder's sneaky $10-per-person parking charge. U2 will no doubt do the same next month.

So what's the real reason there's no good video at FedEx, Karl? We now know you read this blog. So tell us what the story behind the lack of a big screen TV is, and we'll post it here. Unfiltered.

(I had to laugh when I saw that last night's Skins broadcast had a sponsored segment called the "Samsung Hi-Def Play of the Game"!)

We couldn't be happier!

The bankrupt company's creditors are asking the courts to hold up proceedings until they can investigate the relationship between Six Flags and Red Zone LLC, an investment group Snyder formed with a lot of Redskins Park, including team bigwigs Vincent "Vinny" Cerrato and Karl Swanson. Snyder used the group's Six Flags stock holdings take over the amusement park chain via a stockholder coup in 2005. Snyder anointed Mark Shapiro, also a Red Zone member, as made CEO of Six Flags.

The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that in recent filings with the court, attorneys for the firms holding notes for Six Flags, which is now more than $2 billion-plus in debt, singled out as questionable several actions made under Snyder's tenure that involve Red Zone.

Among the dubiousest: Red Zone's sale of a chunk of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags, a deal that took place shortly after Snyder acquired the production company.

Back to us: SIX Flagging pegged that sale as fishy long ago. In a July 2008 post in this space, we called it "a bizarre transaction that essentially amounted to one of Snyder’s private equity outfits (Red Zone) making a $40 million sale to one of Snyder’s public equity outfits (Six Flags)."

Think the Private Snyder, playing with his own money, would strike a fair bargain with the Public Snyder, who was spending stockholders' loot?

Sure he would....IN OPPOSITE LAND!

Some folks were kinder to the deal: Rick Munarriz, a pundit for Motley Fool who urged invest in Six Flags under Snyder from the time he took over as Chairman of the Board until most nails were in the coffin, called the Dick Clark Productions sale "brilliant.

The investors also called for an investigation of a school of fishy moves Snyder and the board made in April, just before Six Flags filed for bankruptcy protections, including: giving raises, doling out $4.5 million in bonuses, and pledging big chunks of equity in the company when it comes out of reorganization.

All the perks to Snyder's insiders came as common stockholders investments were heading toward worthlessness.

If Six Flags' portion of Dick Clark Productions was scheduled to revert to Private Snyder and his investment buddies after the re-organization, well, we might have us some trouble!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder's Six Flags soap opera.