Readers of the Brewers blog on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Web site are sounding off at the opinion St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Bernie Miklasz, who wrote today that the Brew crew are a good, but an arrogant bunch.

The comments are harsh to say the least (perhaps Brewers fans a little bitter after being consistently beaten by the Cardinals up until this season?) and typically read like this:

"Takes a lot of guts to talk about the Brewers being arrogant considering the Cards and how they act. Albert needs to look in the mirror. Did anyone else think that they threw at Braun on purpose. They are bush league and just plain out jealous that they keep getting their a**'s handed to them. Do they realize that if the would have beat the Brewers this year they would be in the playoffs?"

Join the fray here.

I was listening to Kevin Wheeler on KMOX last night on the drive home and caught his conversation with first-year Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak. After some chitchat about the team's early-season run of great play -- and great plays, like Pujols' Monday-night mad dash and Ankiel's phenomenal-cannon heroics on Tuesday -- Wheeler asked Mozeliak to comment on the latest news about Mark Mulder, the oft-injured lefty whose recovery from recent shoulder surgery took a detour yesterday after he was examined by team doctor George Paletta.

I wasn't recording or taking notes -- I was driving -- so I didn't get it down verbatim, but the gist of Mozeliak's response was this: The decision to sideline Mulder for at least a week owing to what was described as a mild strain of the rotator cuff was the right thing to do for the team and, Mozeliak stressed several times, for Mulder.

Sparks flew when three sports mavens with St. Louis connections got together the other night. Bob Costas convened a panel of experts on his show Costas Now to discuss "Internet Media" -- or, more specifically, this newfangled thang we call blogging.

One guest was Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards. I forget whether Edwards said anything at all during the segment; it was Costas' other guests, Deadspin.com blogger (and diehard Cardinals fan) Will Leitch and 3 Nights in August author Buzz Bissinger, who chewed up the airtime.

The St. Louis Cardinals are trying to get us pumped for the upcoming season, during which we'll likely watch the "new-look Cards" finish with a losing record. And it kills me to say that. Especially after a decade-plus of stretch drives, one National League pennant and a World Series championship.

The bloom of contention is, as the poets say, off the rose. The front office has undergone changes; two executives, John Mozeliak and Bill DeWitt III, got promotions. The team on the field looks different too (as you may have read).

But with lowered expectations come funny commercials!

Check out these slightly weird ads. They don't exactly conjure feelings of an October run or a 100-win season. They do, however, make me long for summer.

The organization's new slogan, "Play Like a Cardinal," is a little fuzzily defined. Judging from these commericals, it might translate to: Share a hot dog with a friend, play hard and be sure to include the mascot in team warm-ups.

My favorite spot stars pitchers Adam Wainwright and Jason Isringhausen and a hot dog. The two aren't afraid to share a baseball during a game, and apparently also are unfazed by wiener-swapping:

Here we have Fredbird doing the high-knee jog with the team. To those who don't see the mascot every...single...freaking...day on television in St. Louis during the baseball season, the guest spot might seem novel. Well, hell, the kids love him:

A third spot has Rick Ankiel professing that he isn't just a pitcher. And he is only sort of a right fielder. Rest assured he is 100 percent "ballplayer," though:

-Nick Lucchesi

Former Vashon High School coach Floyd Irons, one of Missouri's most victorious high school basketball coaches, and his former confidant and booster Mike Noll, were sentenced to federal prison Monday, along with mortgage broker John Mineo Jr., thus closing the book on a real estate fraud case that earlier resulted in prison time for a property appraiser as well.

U.S. District Court Judge E. Richard Webber showed leniency with Irons, Noll and Mineo.

The judge sentenced Irons to two twelve-month prison terms, to run concurrently, as well as five years' probation, and ordered him to pay $653,147.09 in restitution to the banks that lost money as a result of the mortgage fraud. Federal sentencing guidelines, which judges may stray from, had called for a 27- to 33-month sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith had recommended 18 months.

Webber sentenced co-conspirator Mike Noll to twenty months in prison and five years' probation and ordered him to pay $1,032,212.71 in restitution. Guidelines had called for a 33- to 41-month sentence. Goldsmith had recommended 25 months.

John Mineo Jr. received a sentence of twelve months and one day -- which ends up amounting to a lesser sentence than twelve months, because of prison rules, Judge Webber noted -- and was also ordered to pay restitution of $653,147.09. Guidelines had called for jail time of 21 to 27 months. The federal prosecutor had recommended 14 months.

It was a long afternoon, with proceedings beginning at 2 p.m. and not wrapping up until 7:15 p.m. Irons was the last to be sentenced; his day in court ended with an unlikely sight: a receiving line of well-wishers offering hugs and handshakes. More than 100 people -- standing-room only -- had crowded the courtroom in his defense.

Degree of culpability, as well as character, seemed to factor most into Judge Webber's rulings.

Noll's attorney, Ed Dowd, claimed that Mineo approached Noll about the scheme to purchase and flip properties using false paperwork. But the judge rejected that idea and determined that Noll was the ringleader.

Dowd asked for leniency for Noll, based on Noll's twenty-year history as an informant on gambling and organized-crime cases. Dowd said Noll has had shots fired at him and received oral threats against his life because of his work for the FBI. "He has lived in danger while he served his country for no reason other than he wanted to help," Dowd said. "He has given the government everything he knows and is willing to continue to cooperate."

Dowd also referred to Noll's decades of providing financial assistance and support for children across the metro area to attend sports camps and tournaments, high schools and colleges. "He has no assets at all to support his family or to pay his legal fees," Dowd said, "so [my fellow attorneys] and I have been working on this case for free...because, particularly, of the numbers of young people he's helped."

Dowd read from letters written on Noll's behalf by parents and students who were recipients of his beneficence. The defense attorney also cited from letters written by two Catholic brothers and by St. Louis Rams executive vice president Bob Wallace.

Noll himself asked Judge Webber to spare him from prison: "Basketball kids, my extended family and my immediate family, they will bear the brunt of a lengthy punishment -- "

"How is that true?" Webber interrupted. "You're going to have to pay back more than one million dollars, and if you ever try to do anything like that again you're going to get arrested."

Back in January Rick Majerus offended local Catholics (and particularly Archbishop Raymond Burke) when the Saint Louis University basketball coach publicly stated his support of stem-cell research and abortion rights.

Now it seems Majerus has insulted yet another Christian populace: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Speaking on the syndicated radio program The Dan Patrick Show last week, Majerus opined that nothing -- not even Mitt Romney or Mormons' "magic underwear" -- would help Brigham Young University defeat Texas A&M in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament.

The comments came at the close of a ten-minute interview on Monday, March 17, in which host Dan Patrick asked Majerus to quickly provide his picks for the tourney. "Let me run down the list," said Patrick. "You just say who you like. You don't have to tell me why unless it's a really insightful comment that the listeners will say, 'Damn, that was insightful.'"

When asked about the BYU-Texas A&M matchup, Majerus responded, "A&M. I don't like BYU from my Utah days. The magic underwear Mitt and those guys send themselves."

Huh? During his tenure at University of Utah, Majerus apparently learned quite a bit about the Mormon culture, including the practice of wearing temple garments under their clothes. The garments -- often referred to as "Mormon underwear" -- are traditionally worn by adherents as a reminder of their promise to live a virtuous life. Though as Slate reported prior to BYU's entrance in last year's tournament, few Mormons wear the garments while competing in sports.

In response to Majerus' comment, a laughing Patrick quickly changed the subject: "You're going to get me put on probation." But not everyone was willing to forgive and forget so quickly.

Posting last week on the sports site bleacherreport.com, blogger Andrew Perkins compared Majerus' comment to Don Imus' ill-fated musings on Rutgers' women's basketball team last year. "Whether or not he has any love towards Mormons is not the issue," wrote Perkins. "The issue is that Majerus said something that is discriminatory and disrespectful to a specific group of people."

Perkins isn't the only one whose shorts are bunched over the remarks. Responding to Perkins' blog post, a reader named Tracy Hall commented, "If Majerus had made a derogatory comment about a Jewish player's 'magic beanie,' he would have been fired on the spot. It's time to realize that anti-Mormons and anti-Semites belong to the same Klan."

No matter whom you support -- the SLU coach or the Mormons -- you can't argue with the coach's pick. The ninth-seeded Aggies beat number-eight seed BYU 67-62.

-Unreal

In the most recent edition of his made-to-waste-away-your-workday "Links of the Week" series, ESPN's Bill "The Sports Guy" Simmons featured a reader-submitted YouTube clip of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa circa 1998, with the following description:

Here's an incredible YouTube find from Tim in Pittsburgh. I'll let him explain: "I found my old VCR tape of McGwire's No. 62 game, and it had this gem of an interview with Sosa and McGwire before the game. Looking back, it's off-the-scale hilarious. There's also some aspect of 'Ambiguously Gay Duo' that comes across as well." And then some. It's impossible to believe that this was only 10 years and 13 Joe Buck hair stylists ago.

Here's the clip:

Joe Buck's perma-combover notwithstanding, with all the artificial testosterone pumping through their respective veins it's amazing that the prevailing sentiment was homoeroticism. One can only imagine they were one missed man-hug away from an epic roid-fueled throwdown of Clemens/Piazza bat hurling proportions.

-Unreal

Say what you want about the King of Beers. When it comes to making quirky, attention-grabbing advertisements, the folks at Anheuser-Busch know few bounds.

Like, have you seen the Bud Light commercial entitled "Cut the Cheese" that’s making the rounds online? The one the Federal Communications Commission ostensibly banned from this year’s Super Bowl? Since yesterday the ad has garnered more than 8,500 hits on the popular sports blog Deadspin, which -- like other media -- reports that that the commercial was too risqué for television screeners. (Deadspin in turn credits BostonSportz for getting there first.)

Not true, according to A-B’s vice-president of brand management, Keith Levy. “Bud Light’s 'Cut the Cheese' spot was not banned by the FCC and was never intended for TV,” says Levy in a statement to the RFT. “The spot was created as an Internet-only ad and was made available online at budbowl.com to adult consumers who participated in Bud Light’s Super Bowl ad mobile-phone voting campaign.”

The brewery did the same thing last year with an online-only ad titled "Apology Bot."

Okay, now that we got that cleared up, you can check out the “banned” commercial below. Umm, Buttweiser anyone?

Psssst! Here’s a “bonus feature” of our own. The following commercial aired in the U.K. in 2006. Same oeuvre as the Bud Light ad, with a slightly different odour, as the Brits would say. Watch out for the brown trout.

-Chad Garrison

Kansas City’s NBC affiliate took hidden cameras into Milestone Christian Academy, the new school that hoped to become a hoops powerhouse, and which drew from KC and St. Louis schools. Regina Taylor Gilbert, mother of former Career Academy and Vashon High School player Marcel Taylor-Smith, sent me the story this morning.

NBC got a look at e-mails from Milestone coach/pastor/principal Peter Flournoy to Regina Gilbert in which he apparently promised to pay Gilbert’s rent, utilities and groceries, and get her a job.

Meanwhile, Second Mile Ministries, which started the school, has suspended Flournoy after learning about his outstanding warrants for bad checks. Here’s a statement from Second Mile:

Having discovered there were misdemeanor warrants in Peter Flournoy's past in Etowah County, Alabama for insufficient checks outstanding, the Second Mile board has taken the following action. Because part of the mission of the church of Jesus Christ is to be redemptive, Mr. Flournoy will be given 90 days to take care of all his outstanding warrants and insufficient checks in Texas and Alabama. During this time, he will [be] suspended as Principal of Milestone Christian Academy. He will be retained as boys basketball coach and will assist in teaching responsibilities.

At the end of 90 days, if Mr. Flournoy has not taken care of his outstanding warrants and insufficient checks, he will be dismissed from the staff of Milestone Christian Academy.

C. Michael Bobbitt, Director
Second Mile Ministries

I did find out that the Kansas City Star will be publishing a related investigative story, but the reporter told me the paper hasn’t yet set a run date.

-Kristen Hinman

At the bottom of this post you can download two pdf documents that contain chunks of the transcript of former Vashon High School basketball coach Floyd Irons' November 12, 2007, interview with officials from the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA).

This portion of the interview pertains to Irons' involvement with brothers Johnny and Bobby Hill, who, prior to enrolling at Vashon in 2002, attended public schools in Alton, Illinois. Irons tells investigators that while the Hill brothers played for Vashon, he personally bankrolled an apartment for them.

If your regular news-reading these days has been confined to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, you might be tempted to believe that St. Louis' Only Daily owns this story.

Truth be told, however, Irons was the subject of a Riverfront Times investigation, "Basketball by the Book," in 2006-'07. [Editor's note: The series went on to garner journalism awards from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the Education Writers Association (EWA).]

Though the Post doesn't like to admit it, Riverfront Times readers know that Floyd Irons' recruiting violations have become a story because Kristen Hinman made them a story. (In fairness, some Post columnists have credited Hinman.)

Click below to download the transcript excerpts:

Vashon High School basketball coach Floyd Irons' November 12, 2007, interview with officials from the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA), Part 1

Vashon High School basketball coach Floyd Irons' November 12, 2007, interview with officials from the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA), Part 2

We'll upload more soon, we promise.

-Tom Finkel and Kristen Hinman

I went off on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the other day for not giving credit where credit was due regarding Kristen Hinman's investigative series "Basketball by the Book," which painstakingly provided documentary evidence of residency violations on the part of Vashon High School and its boys' basketball program under longtime coach Floyd Irons.

As I noted, a Post story earlier this week, headlined "Inquiry into player eligibility leaves Vashon's titles at stake," outlined how the Missouri State High School Activities Association (known as MSHSAA) has opened an investigation into the eligibility of more than a dozen Vashon students who played under Irons since 1998. Vashon won five state championships since then, in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

MSHSAA officials, reporter P-D David Hunn informed us, are looking into "whether players lived within Vashon attendance boundaries, were registered at the correct addresses or were improperly recruited."

I expressed my, uh, peevishness because the Post somehow neglected to mention that the MSHSAA investigation was undertaken only because Hinman had exposed Vashon's violations in "Basketball by the Book."

Instead, St. Louis' Only Daily attributed its knowledge of the probe to "documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch."

Well, among those "documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch" is this "document," a letter from MSHSAA executive director Kerwin Urhahn that makes clear precisely what prodded the agency to action:

Hunn went so far as to contact the author of that letter, Daryl Rinne, the principal of Kearney High in the Kansas City area, which lost to Vashon in the 2004 state championship game.

A graphical representation of Hinman's investigative labors is available for download right here:

-Tom Finkel

Readers of Riverfront Times who happened upon David Hunn's story about disgraced Vashon High School basketball coach Floyd Irons in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch may have noticed something missing.

Headlined "Inquiry into player eligibility leaves Vashon's titles at stake," Hunn's story outlined how the Missouri State High School Activities Association (known as MSHSAA) has opened an investigation into the eligibility of more than a dozen Vashon students who played under Irons since 1998. Vashon won five state championships since then, in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2006. MSHSAA officials, Hunn writes, are looking into "whether players lived within Vashon attendance boundaries, were registered at the correct addresses or were improperly recruited."

Hunn bases his story on "documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch."

That phrase has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Always puts you in the frame of mind that you're reading Something of Great Importance.

So what was missing? That would be the part where the Post credits RFT for exposing precisely those eligibility violations. Because what Hunn doesn't say is that MSHSAA undertook that probe as a direct result of Kristen Hinman's 2006 investigative series "Basketball by the Book."

In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that for all practical purposes, Hinman's story -- which went on to garner journalism awards from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the Education Writers Association (EWA) -- goaded MSHSAA into undertaking that probe.

[Update 2/7/08 2:30 p.m.]: I neglected to mention that if you want to know which players MSHSAA's investigating, you need look no further than this chart, which we published with the first installment of "Basketball by the Book," way back in November of 2006:

-Tom Finkel

"When Barack Obama asked the crowd yesterday in Kansas City whether there were any Cardinals fans in the audience, it first seemed like he had pulled one of those classic rock concert screw-ups by mixing up what town he was in," blogs Eric Barton of Kansas City's Pitch, RFT's other-end-of-the-interstate sister paper. "But with his quick recovery, it was clear that the presidential hopeful was just giving the Royals shit."

Yeah!

-Unreal

As an alumnus of the University of Washington and rabid Huskies football fan, I was a little shocked and saddened when I went online yesterday to read the Seattle Times. The paper is running an investigative series this week that probes UW’s tolerance for the behavior of players on the 2000-’01 football team. (That’d be the last great Huskies squad, which defeated Purdue in the Rose Bowl and finished the season ranked third in the nation.)

The series digs up dirt on some already loathed athletic department officials, including Rick Neuheisal, recently hired as head coach at UCLA, and former athletic director Barbara Hedges, who many fans and alumni believe ran the program into the ground. Essentially the Times points out several instances where the athletic department covered up and let slide some strikingly awful deeds committed by its football players.

The story also has a noteworthy, if tangential, local tie. St. Louis Rams head coach Scott Linehan was an offensive coordinator at Washington from 1996 to 1998. The first installment of the series probes the various crimes and misdemeanors of Jerramy Stevens, the team’s star tight end, who went on to play for the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL. The headline: "Convicted of assault and accused of rape, star player received raft of second chances."

Via records requests, Times reporters unearthed this letter Linehan wrote to the Thurston County prosecutor in support of Stevens. The precipitating incident: A friend of Stevens’ hit another student in the face with a baseball bat, and Stevens proceeded to “jump up and stomp on his face” while his victim was unconscious. Stevens was a senior in high school at the time, already signed to play for UW.

Here’s the money quote from Linehan, who would leave UW for the head coaching job at Louisville before Stevens played a down under his tutelage:

“We believe this to be an isolated incident. Under our discipline and supervision I believe Jerramy will show this to be true.”

Jerramy did no such thing. In fact, over the next nine years he’d go on to be convicted of drinking and driving three times, not to mention two hit-and-run accidents, including one in which he drove his SUV through the wall of a nursing home, knocking a dresser onto a bed where 92 year-old woman was sleeping.

Much of the Times story focuses on the allegation that in August of 2000 Stevens drugged and anally raped a UW freshman in a frat-house alley. An eyewitness and the woman’s friends told prosecutors that she appeared to have been drugged, and the DNA in a semen sample taken during a sexual-assault exam the day after the incident matched Stevens’. But prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to file charges, noting that the exam took place too late to test the woman for drugs. The woman sued Stevens and the university in civil court; the matter was settled and terms were not disclosed.

I called the Rams’ media department for a comment from Linehan. I’ll post an update when I hear back.

[Update 1/29/08 11:45 a.m.]: Rick Smith, director of the Rams media department called from Phoenix, where he'll attend the Super Bowl.

“It’s ancient history," says Smith. "That happened eight years ago. There’s no comment to make. It’s something that took place, and in the context of then and now we’re not going to revisit it. Scott’s not going to comment. Really, it’s almost eight years ago and its he’s not going to revisit it and neither are we.”

-Keegan Hamilton

Unreal is all about taking the stigma out of uncomfortable issues with humor. So when we read the Associated Press story about Pepsi's upcoming Super Bowl ad that'll play out in total silence for 60 seconds, we were all, like:

Naturally, the ad's already up on YouTube:

Kudos to PepsiCo, which has a history of reaching out to markets [reg. req.] outside the very middle of the mainstream.

And the ad's pretty dang cute.

But also dumb: Like, if the frickin' party's at Bob's house, why the heck are all the lights off when it's nearly kickoff time? And what's with everyone else on the block? Ambien orgies?

-Unreal