Jack Rackels here, back for yet another TAUNTR.com Sports Jackasses of the Day column. It’s been a few days since the last edition, so we’ll include sports figures who came off as jackasses for their actions over the weekend. Without further adieu, let’s get right to it.

1. Brad Bergesen: Better days lie ahead for the Baltimore Orioles. Although being stuck in the game’s strongest division, the American League East, will always make competing a daunting challenge, Baltimore has a talented, team-controlled core, a number of promising hurlers and an incredible backstop, Matt Wieters. Even with “sliced bread is actually the greatest thing since Wieters,” though, the future fortunes of the organization will come down to its talented pitching depth. One hurler in an impressive stable is 24-year-old starter Brad Bergesen, who turned in a fine rookie performance in 2009. Bergensen, the first of several rookies on the ’09 O’s to make their major league debut, went 7-5 with a 3.43 ERA and 131 ERA+ (league average is 100) in 123.1 innings pitched. If not for a line drive off the shin that cut his season short on July 30, he might’ve garnered some consideration for A.L. Rookie of the Year. And, while he doesn’t have the upside of Brian Matusz or some of the other top arms in the system, he’s definitely a big part of the franchise going forward.

For that reason, the Orioles’ marketing staff decided to use Bergesen as the star of a commercial promoting season ticket plans. Even with some other marketable players on the team, he was a good selection for the spot given his excellent rookie campaign. Unfortunately for all involved, though, Bergesen got hurt while filming the commercial back in December. In the spot, he’s seen throwing a bullpen session in a batting cage in the basement of Camden Yards. According to the Baltimore Sun, the session marked the first time that he’d picked up a baseball since the injury last summer. Plus, he reportedly didn’t warm up well enough, leading to a strained capsule in his right shoulder. He hasn’t touched a ball since, is about 10 days behind schedule and won’t be at 100 percent for the start of spring training. For a fucking commercial. It’s easy to point the blame in a lot of places here. First, the front office and team medical staff should’ve known his health situation better than anyone else. Why would they make him participate in the commercial—couldn’t they at least have rewritten the script?—if they thought that could happen. Most of the fault falls on Bergesen, however, since he tried to do too much, too soon. Plus, he should’ve gotten his arm in better shape to throw by warming up longer. Either way, he comes off as a total jackass, becoming yet another baseball player to miss time over a stupid freak injury.



As far as Baltimore is concerned, I would recommend that they keep Nick Markakis and Wieters as far away as possible from any commercial directors. Felix Pie wouldn’t work as well as a spokesman to sell tickets, but the last thing that franchise needs is a team commercial curse.

2. Jose Canseco: I genuinely wish that Jose Canseco would just go away. While a lot of what Canseco said about the steroid era proved to be accurate, the dude was just flinging mud against the wall. And, because steroids were obviously an issue plaguing the sport, a significant chunk of it stuck. However, he gets the two spot on this for something completely unrelated to baseball/steroids. Rather, Canseco is a jackass for his recent Twitter outburst. Here’s what the tweet read: “To all the haters talking shit who have something bad to say, all you tough sons of bitches do something to me or shut the fuck up.”

The tweet was reportedly the function of many within the MMA industry calling Canseco out for lying about meeting with Strikeforce executives about a potential fight with Herschel Walker. If you remember, Walker, 50, beat the shit out of some unknown fighter a few weeks ago. While Dana White called the fight a joke, the bout garnered a lot of attention. Never one to turn down an opportunity to get some pr/a check for an appearance, Canseco quickly tweeted his intentions to schedule a fight with Walker himself. He even talked some shit, saying that he would be unbeatable if given more time to train. Which is bullshit. Canseco got his ass beat in his joke MMA debut. Even if Walker will never fight at an elite level, as White suggested, he showed up to fight in incredible shape and took the bout seriously. Canseco, on the other hand, did neither of those things. He’s just looking to stay in the public eye now that the steroid controversy is dying down and he’s going to fade into obscurity even more.

The haters or there for a reason, Jose. You’re a fucking joke, a disgrace to the rest of the prestigious 40-40 club.

3. Peter King: I generally enjoy the work of Sports Illustrated senior NFL writer Peter King. I make a point to read King’s Monday Morning quarterback column each week, as it’s usually an enjoyable five minutes while I nurse a weekend hangover. However, he writes a lot of shit that’s off-the-wall, bat shit crazy in the column as well, theories that are often completely devoid of logic. This week’s King argument is a perfect example, and went too far, even for his own standards. He somehow wrote that the New Orleans Saints’ recent partying ways could extend so long into the offseason that it will affect their ability to repeat as Super Bowl Champions.

King: The logical question for the Saints: Is all this celebrating and spate of parades -- the Saints' Super Bowl parade was so big that it was shown live on CNN with Wolf Blitzer throwing to reporters in the middle of his "Situation Room'' show -- going to go on so long that they effect the Saints' ability to repeat in 2010? Teams in the Super Bowl are so far behind the preparation 8-ball already, finishing the season five weeks after the 22 non-playoff teams.

Brees has gone from Disney Parade to Saints' parade to the Ellen DeGeneres Show to Oprah -- all the while giving America a reason to say "Awwwwwwww,'' after seeing the touching cover of SI with Brees lifting his 1-year-old son into the sky after the Super Bowl win. He's the most beloved man in Louisiana as the big man in the Mardi Gras parade. He's the leader of the team. America can't get enough of him. Will he ever be allowed to come down to earth?

I’ve read some dumb shit in my day, but it’s columns like these that make me wish that the now-defunct blog Fire Joe Morgan was still around. Odds are, the Saints won’t repeat as champs. That’s not what I’m taking issue with. But to think it has anything to do with a Mardi Gras hangover is absurd. Rather, it’s hard for teams to compete because of the Plexiglas principle: regression to the mean. Several New Orleans players had career years and will almost certainly come back down a few notches in 2010. As well, the team has more free agents than any other team in the league. Teams that win championships often fail to maintain their previous level of success by resting on their laurels. Expecting everything that went right during a championship season to just happen again is a trap that many complacent front offices fall for time and time again. So, that would be a concern for the Saints worth King’s time for a column. But the partying, are you fucking kidding me? A few weeks of celebrating a tremendous accomplishment in a city that deserved some good fortune will have no bearing on the Saints’ record next fall. As well, there are so many other factors that go into playoff success. Since the playoffs are only a handful of games, you run into sample size/luck issues. With all the arguments to be made against another Super Bowl for New Orleans, though, King used the partying angle. For that sophomoric, misguided argument, he comes off as a total jackass.

4. Gary Brown: The Florida Gators are turning into the Cincinnati Bengals of the SEC. Gators defensive tackle Gary Brown early Sunday morning became the latest member of the program to get arrested. Brown, a top recruit from the Florida 2009 recruiting class, was arrested on battery charges after reportedly striking the face of a woman trying to kick people out of the party he attended.

I see why Urban Meyer has been so stressed out lately. Not only does Meyer have to deal with the pressure that comes with coaching the nation’s top program, he has had several of his players get in trouble off the field in recent seasons. The Carlos Dunlap DUI (which surely would’ve put him on this list if we had it back then), on the eve of the SEC finals against Alabama, was bad, but now there’s this. Brown, as Dr. Saturday’s Matt Hinton points out, is the 27th Florida player to be arrested since Meyer came over from Utah. That’s a lot of players. But back to Brown. Hitting a woman is never acceptable, and, if the allegations are true, he’s a definite fucking jackass.

5. NASCAR: The Daytona 500 was, by most accounts, exciting this year. Jamie McMurray, who admittedly cried like a little bitch after winning, edged out the popular Dale Earnhardt Jr., who actually did something on the track to justify his fame. The big story, though, was how the event was delayed nearly three hours because of huge potholes on the track. Driving around Boston sucks, with all of the gaping holes and poorly constructed roads, but potholes shouldn’t be an issue in a prime event like the Daytona 500. Were they trying to extend the race for more advertising revenue? I don't know. For the “Super Bowl of racing,” however, those kinds of track conditions should be unacceptable. Seriously, imagine if the NFL, while getting ready to host the actual Super Bowl in Miami two weeks ago, noticed gaping holes in the field at Landshark Stadium and then didn’t do anything to fix them until the middle of the first quarter, delaying the game for two hours. The talking heads on the four-letter network would’ve been given sports talk fodder to last them a month, until March Madness is here. Seriously, some fans complain about the baseball postseason games going too long, but the Daytona 500 on Sunday felt like it was never going to end. To the NASCAR fan the league already has won over for life, I’m sure it wasn’t a big deal. Any casual racing fan whose still not completely sold on the idea of watching cars drive around in a circle for four hours, though, was probably a bit deterred. Thus, whoever was responsible for the potholes is a jackass.