Good riddance. Sure, there's something sweet about little kids looking for souvenirs from their big league heroes—go back to the Coca-Cola commercial with Mean Joe Greene in the '70s for proof.

But that's Hollywood. In the real world, ever since the advent of eBay, things ain't so quaint.

Sadly, there are at least as many adults as children looking for keepsakes at any athletic gathering. And there is nothing I've encountered in the sports realm more creepy than the grownup souvenir hound.

I'm still freaked out by the memories of an exhibition baseball game at RFK Stadium in April 1999, at the peak of Mark McGwire's steroid-fueled popularity. Before the game, hundreds of folks old enough to know a lot better screamed at McGwire to give them an autograph or a ball or anything.

There was no joy in Mudville. McGwire had no chance to make everybody happy. The scene was utterly grotesque.

I showed up early to the Nats/Pirates doubleheader last weekend, and there was a crowd of mostly Pittsburgh fans in the left field bleachers hoping to watch warmups.

A lot of youngsters were leaning over the outfield fence to gawk at and chat up the visiting pitchers and catchers and coaches as the players loosened up.

But in the middle of the pack was one middle aged guy wearing an all-Pirates ensemble and a baseball glove and a scary expression. He wasn't at all happy. He held his glove up high and yelled at the players to throw him a ball while sporting an angry look of entitlement.

I could tell from his behavior that this was not a one-off event for this dude; I'd bet it's a lifestyle. I'm sure he has a clothing ensemble in the colors of every ballclub to help in his souvenir hunts, and shows up to batting practices at parks everywhere competing for balls with kids 40 years or more his junior.

He scared me. I'm sure there are guys like him in every town. I think they're going to have to find a new hobby.

Using insightful analytical phrases like "bunch of BS" and "that kind of crap," Sarah Palin made her debut on Fox News as a commentator last night! Sorry to say: missed it. But Bill O'Reilly, on whose show Palin appeared, said later the whole thing was really "no different from interviewing Chuck Schumer." Hmm.

On the home front, D.C. has been picked as a possible host city for soccer's World Cup in 2018 or 2022. (That sounds exciting, if you care about soccer, but so have Baltimore and Philadelphia and Boston and Los Angeles and Seattle and 12 other cities. Even Tampa Bay.)

A D.C. Council committee has voted to run the city-funded Circulator bus across one river—the Potomac—but not another—the Anacostia. At-large Councilmember Kwame Brown says he'll fight the fight to get a new route that runs down Pennsylvania Avenue SE to Southern Avenue SE. In a news release, he explained he could not "in good conscious" vote to extend the bus into Virginia while D.C. residents are still waiting.

Metro is holding its third and final day of a "right-of-way" safety workshop today. “Last year we had two employees die as a result of accidents on the tracks and last month we had a train miss a safety inspector because the train operator violated safety procedures,” says Michael Taborn, Metro’s acting chief safety officer. “It is imperative that we strengthen our safety procedures for the thousands of Metro employees who have access to our tracks. Their lives are on the line each and every day.” Is three days enough?

Amen to this sentiment in today's Washington Post: "Let's stop praising Mark McGwire to the skies for finally revealing the world's worst-kept secret—that he used steroids during his storied major league career." No Hall for you!

The Pew Research Center released some interesting survey results yesterday showing that African-Americans are upbeat about African-American progress. Thirty-nine percent of blacks say the "situation of black people in this country" is better than it was five years earlier—compared to 20 percent who said the same in 2007. Fifty-four percent of blacks also said that Barack Obama's election has improved race relations (note: among whites, about a third thought his election had improved race relations, while 45 percent said it has made no difference).

I wonder: What would the survey have shown in the District?

After spending years in a shamed self-exile, McGwire's confession came as he sniveled through an interview with Bob Costas for the MLB Network.

While saying he wished he'd never done drugs and wished he'd never played baseball during the steroids era Dead Balls Era™, McGwire also blamed baseball's lack of steroids testing for his decade-long (he says) drug-taking. He said he didn't take a lot of 'roids, and they didn't help his hitting. The forbidden fruit of the day just kept him healthy, McGwire said.

He looked sad and lost. I liked McGwire better when he said under oath that he didn't want to talk about steroids.

Baseball fans in DC sure benefited from his drug taking. During batting practice at RFK Stadium in 1999, before a Cardinals/Expos exhibition game, McGwire hit two balls to the roof. Nobody there, present company included, had ever seen anything like it, because nothing like it had ever taken place. Within a matter of seconds, McGwire had reduced every tape measure shot ever hit there — even the ones Frank Howard hit which are commemorated with painted seats in the upper deck — seem like Texas Leaguers.

I'd never witnessed any athletic feat of any sort quite like McGwire's.

But, as McGwire pointed out yesterday, the drugs didn't put those balls on the roof. Other than, you know, keeping McGwire healthy enough to do it.

I remember watching McGwire after his feats of inhuman strength. He went back behind the batting cage and canoodled with his batting practice guest that day, Goldberg, the pro wrestling champion and a guy who always looked like a fellow synthetic testosterone connoisseur. Wrestlers don't have to cry or apologize for shooting things into their bodies. In any case, McGwire dwarfed Goldberg.

(AFTER THE JUMP: What's this mean for Mike Lupica? Even Thomas Boswell got caught up in the Dead Balls Era™? Another forced Google hit for Dead Balls Era™? Whatever happened to A.J. English? Not Alex English?)

The McGwire interview just continues the pain for Mike Lupica. He's the author of "Summer of '98," a book about the McGwire/Sosa home run duel and how that season enhanced Lupica's relationship with his three sons. From the Publishers Weekly blurb on Lupica's work:

In his columns, Lupica often deals with strikes, the atrocious behavior of some overpaid athletes and all the tawdriness of sports business and hype. But, in this book, he gives himself completely over to the beauty of baseball as both a game and as an agent of bonding between fathers and children.

Amazon has 37 copies available "from $0.01."

Washington Post columnist Tom Boswell, who blasted Jose Canseco for suspected steroid use as far back as the late-1980s, threw away his suspicions and picked up pom poms a decade later.

Here's a bit of his story that ran on Sept. 14, 1998:

Yesterday, baseball produced a moment that, for me, may have been more enjoyable than McGwire's 62nd homer: Sosa hit his 61st and 62nd. Hit them in a crucial game in the wild-card race won, 11-10, by the Cubs in the 10th inning. He hit them at Wrigley Field as the wonderful ivy-addled loonies went nuts. Both balls were crushed at least 480 feet.

Yesterday, Sosa matched McGwire in every way. When Sosa came to the plate with one out, nobody on base and the Cubs trailing by two runs in the ninth, my 11-year-old son Russell was literally jumping up and down in front of the TV.

Big winner yesterday: Barry Bonds. Let the feds try to put him in jail now, with everybody else already outed. He's in, well, the clear. (How slow are the wheels of justice moving in the U.S. vs. Bonds, anyway?)

The court of public opinion, if no other judicial body, has already convicted McGwire's rival Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, and Rafael Palmeiro of using drugs. Since baseball locker rooms are real small and baseball contracts are real big, common sense tells us now that everybody used the so-called performance enhancing drugs.

Now we just have to wait for Cal Ripken to come out and confess to being a P.E.D.-ophile. Just say you took 'em and let us close the book on (here it comes!) the Dead Balls Era™.

***

Where are they now? Well, here's former Bullet AJ English.

A small story on the wires about a Delaware high school basketball game caught my eye.

At the Appoquinimink boys basketball game against Howard on Tuesday evening, junior A.J. English III, who was on the bench in street clothes while serving a suspension, left the court and went into the locker room along with his brother A’Jen, a sophomore starting guard, at the conclusion of the first quarter and neither player returned.

They're sons of AJ English, who the Washington Bullets got with a second round pick in 1990 draft. English had a quiet two year career in the pros — and is remembered in NBA circles only as the guy who was always confused with the far more successful Alex English.

I, for one, still confuse the two. Which is the only reason I read the story. But the part about brothers standing up for each other as the English boys did got me intrigued, and through some Googling it seems AJ III is a hot prospect for Appoquinimink who got in a spot of trouble with the beautifully named basketball Coach, Spencer Dunkley, and that got his former Bullet dad, who goes by A.J. Jr. in these matters, into a tussle with the coach in the local media.

First, after a loss, Appoquinimink coach told the local paper, the Middletown Transcript: “Can't play with them. Can't win with them. Won't play with them. Don't need them. Please put that in the newspaper. Thanks, that's all I have to say."

So the high school beat reporter went to the former Bullet. And got this:

A.J. English Jr. had this to say about Appoquinimink High coach Spencer Dunkley’s quotes after a 62-61 loss to Middletown:

“That doesn’t deserve a response,” A.J. Jr. said. “My maturity level allows me to take the high road on that. Any coach knows you keep that kind of stuff in the lockerroom and out of the newspaper. How can any kid trust him after that?

“He showed his inexperience by making those statements.”

Appo's leading scorer A.J. English III was on the bench as time wound down and his team was down a point.English Jr. said A.J. III was suspended until Monday, Dec. 21 and is uncertain if he'll return.

I do get giggles out of the lengths some parents go to for alliterative kids names, tho. "A'Jen" seems a stretch. Guess "Alex" wasn't on the board.

***

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I don't think I'd ever heard a college player booed by home fans like Vasquez was last year. It was like Juwan Howard at MCI Center right before he was run out of town. But Howard was getting paid eight-figures a year (!) to take that abuse.

Vasquez tried to get out of College Park, but yesterday he withdrew his name from the upcoming NBA draft.

Seems NBA scouts thought less of him than the Terps fans.

Seriously, do other college stars get booed at home?

***

Manny Acta lives to lose again!

The Nationals manager-for-now got to watch Elijah Dukes misplay two balls hit to the outfield by consecutive Yankees batters in the seventh inning, turning two outs into two Yankees runs and a lead into a loss in New York.

The .258 winning percentage means the Nats are now on a pace to beat the '62 Mets mark of 120 losses.

Why is Acta still around?

Well, much appreciated Cheap Seats Daily commenter Angry Al posted that Acta's going to stay no matter how much losing goes on, because the Lerners are so cheap they don't want to pay Acta and pay another manager.

I hadn't thought of that. But sounds like a plan!

***

Biggest winner in baseball yesterday: Barry Bonds.

How the hell are the feds gonna move forward  with their lame prosecution of Bonds for a couple dubious lies, now that Sammy Sosa's been outed?

Turns out Sosa's was among the 104 names on baseball's not-so-secret list of positive testers from 2003.

Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens all swore before Congress and country that they never ever never ever took anything. And The Man is going to let them walk, even though there's at least as much proof that they're PED-ophiles as we've seen against Bonds? No way. (A-Rod just lied to Katie Couric. That's fine.)

***

Biggest loser in baseball yesterday: Mike Lupica. The enthusiastic New York sportswriter's book "Summer of '98," sanctified that season's home run duel between Sosa and fellow chemical Popeye, Mark McGwire. "Summer" now stands alongside the Washington Post's 2003 editorial about Colin Powell's U.N. speech about all the WMDs in Iraq, a piece headlined "Irrefutable!," as the most ridiculable documents ever published.

(According to a review on Amazon, "Lupica gives both McGwire and Sosa their proper due.")

Please, Cal Ripken. Admit you used steroids! Baseball will never get past the Dead Balls Era™ until you do!

***

On the verge of the U.S. Open: Slate posts a video of what golf, a game where losers are allowed to blame camera clicks, would be like if basketball announcers called the action.

The real treat is hearing a few seconds of Johnny Most, the greatest play-by-play man in the history of history. And I'd forgotten how forced Dick Vitale's calls were.

The piece was conceived by my friend Josh Levin, Slate's sports editor and the godfather of tape-measure journalism (count the measurements!), and put together by his colleague Andy Bouve.

***

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Almost. There's still one holdup: Cal Ripken hasn't been nailed yet.

Every other boy of summer that any kid of the 1990s and beyond ever looked up to has already been ruined during the federal government's bizarre 'roid raids.

Cal's the last man standing.

Ripken always said he cared deeply about the game of baseball. If you meant it, Cal, please come forward now and confess.

Make something up if you have to. Just say you watched your pal Brady Anderson grow overnight from a base-stealing, punch-and-judy hitter into a mini-McGwire, and when Anderson nailed 50 homers in 1996, you started putting things in your body.

Who wouldn't believe that? You don't even have to say what it was you took, Cal. Nobody does anymore!

Then we can all move on.

Until we exhume Babe Ruth's body. That dude HAD to be juiced.