Bob Costas is this big sports commentator. He is a big deal because he's decent looking and has a way about him. He doesn't know shit. Every time he opens his mouth he says something that reveals his ignorance. But he has the right manner, the right facade, the right look. It all gets on my nerves.

When did he suddenly become the big expert? He's just a fucking talking head.

Last night he was talking to Phelps and Spitz, and then he compared them to Sandy Koufax pitching to A-Rod. That's a fucking dumb thing to say. If Phelps and Spitz raced each other in their prime, it would settle something. If Koufax pitched to A-Rod, the odds are like 2-1 that Koufax would get A-Rod out, because A-Rod can't be expected to get a hit more than 1 time out of 3, so what the fuck, Mr. Costas, would that prove?

Anyway, Koufax is a pitcher and A-Rod is a hitter. What does that have to do with comparing two swimmers? Pitchers can't hit, and hitters can't pitch. They don't do the same thing.

A better analogy would be two boxers. Pitting Phelps against Spitz would be like, say, pitting one of today's boxing stars against a boxer in Spitz's day, like maybe Ali or whoever was around then. That would be an analogy that would make some kind of sense.

Costas once pontificated that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player of all time. No. No he wasn't. I can name a few offhand who were a lot better than Mays, and I mean A LOT. There's Ted Williams, a drug soaked Barry Bonds, Lew Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, to name just the first few. I'd also take Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Mel Ott playing in the Polo Grounds, maybe Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby, Honus Wagner, and if I thought about it, maybe others ahead of Mays, who was maybe, maybe, top 20 of all time. He liked the guy because he ran out from under his loosened hat when he caught a ball, and was the biggest hot dog of all time. He liked the guy because of his aggressive style of baserunning, but I got news for ya Charlie, aggressive baserunning doesn't win ballgames the way hitting does, and Mays was not one of the 10 best hitters of all time. As a fielder he was a little, little tiny bit better than Mantle, not as good as DiMaggio, but as a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut, Willie was king.