Taking a break from fuming over the Lightning for a minute, I got a nifty little email this afternoon from one of the upteen PR firms that contact me from time to time with various sport inanities that are you there. This may be a Tampa Bay Lightning blog (that also covers Tampa Bay sports and sometimes national sports news), but at any given time I’ll get emailed marketing for rival franchises (Panthers) or uninteresting videos that PR firms hope to make viral….

In this case, I got a Baseball marketing attempt. This set off my cynic alarm:

Fans who want to rub elbows with the 24 greatest home run hitters of all time should check out http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/500-Home-Run-Club-LLC/63511284320?ref=ts

It’s the timing that really makes me cynical about this. Yes, it’s Spring Training and hope springs eternal. This is when MLB has it’s annual renewal…

But then again? This is also the time that is plagued by scandals to no end with thanks to some of these aforementioned “24 greatest home run hitters of all time”. How many of those players used the Juice to get where they are? How many are suspected to have used performance enhancing drugs to reach that plateau?

Hope springs eternal… but cynicism prevails while the ugliness of the ‘Roid era continues to hang over MLB. “24 greatest home run hitters” at this point in time is subjective at best, no matter what the stats say.

No hockey news in the local media this morning besides a WHA fluff piece in the Trib.

That being said, I can’t turn a blind eye towards congressional hearings and the world of Major League Baseball and what the media has been throwing out this morning.

MSNBC reports on John McCain’s bitch slapping of baseball. ‘They can’t be trusted.”

There’s a great piece by Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times entitled “Antitrust: That sums up how I feel about MLB” which also lays a very clear, literary smackdown towards last Thursday’s congressional hearings.

Meanwhile, I continue to lose respect for Pro-MLB-Till-I-Die Curt Schilling as he continues to attack Jose Canseco and avoid the problem that faces baseball. I make reference to the above Rick Telander column when I tell Curt Schilling that Baseball is not an island, Curt. Cut the pompous bullshit and admit there is a problem and there are guys – Canseco and others that you are too high-and-mighty to name – that are benefiting from steroid use and abuse.

And of course you can view thousands of more stories and varying opinions related to this on Google News.