... Unintentionally, anyway. David Beckham is an overpaid soccer player and in the mind of Landon Donovan, not a good teammate.

"All that we care about at a minimum is that he committed himself to us," Donovan was quoted as saying in an excerpt of Grant Wahl's book "The Beckham Experiment," scheduled for publication on July 14. "As time has gone on, that has not proven to be the case in many ways - on the field, off the field.

"Does the fact that he earns that much money come into it? Yeah. If someone's paying you more than anybody in the league, more than double anybody in the league, the least we expect is that you show up to every game, whether you're suspended or not. Show up and train hard. Show up and play hard."

"I can't think of another guy where I'd say he wasn't a good teammate, he didn't give everything through all this, he didn't still care," Donovan said. "But with (Beckham) I'd say no, he wasn't committed."

Wow; that sounds awfully similar to the opinions of Thomas Jones and Kerry Rhodes regarding Our Favre and his time with the Jets. It also sounds similar to the views of Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway -- and that's before Favre is even a teammate.

At this stage of his career, David Beckham is famous for being David Beckham -- not for being the best soccer player in the world. Likewise for Favre being famous for being Favre -- not for being a quality starting quarterback.

When Beckham and Favre both retire for good (for real), I propose we create a town hall meeting with former Packers, Jets, Vikings and Galaxy teammates to talk about the pampering and selfishness that exudes from Our Favre and the soccer player who likes rope around his own body.

[The Monthly Mustache Shakedown with Dr. Aaron will return with a brand new category next week, in the meantime your weekly dosage of mustache chatter is served up below]

Earlier this summer, as documented by the American Mustache Institute, Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel bowed down in deference to the power of the "ultimate performance enhancer" by growing a rally mustache that rewarded him with his most productive stretch of the 2009 season.  Shortly thereafter, he assaulted his creation with a Mach 4 razor and predictably his numbers plummeted.

Two weeks ago reliever Josh Kinney emerged from the minor leagues sporting a Goose Gossage-level horseshoe stache. With the facial hair gods smiling on him, Kinney promptly saw his ERA lowered from 13.58 to 7.56 with it set to eventually reduce to 0.00, his lip scoffing at those who say the feat is mathematically impossible.

No doubt recognizing what they witnessed with Ankiel, Kinney and with the career-lengthening tickler on backup catcher Jason LaRue, the Cardinals starting rotation has recently made a similar pledge to each other and to the fans - they have publicly committed to a rotation-wide mustache growing event in an effort to ratchet up their performance. 

On Wednesday night, Adam Wainwright was the first to take the mound with still-developing-dirtlip in place and not shockingly went nine innings, giving up one run and setting a career high with 12 strikeouts in a 2-1 Cardinals win over the Giants. 



In between innings, the mustache bunch gathered around the day's ace trading secrets of facial hair maintenance.  Chris Carpenter's blonde squirrel's tail was beginning to show signs of life, Joel Pineiro's Spanish slickster was already prominent...

Brandon Jennings, pictured above with former Lions head coach Rod Marinelli Scott Skiles, has been popping off at the mouth over the last week.

Brandon Jennings, 19, said the Bucks would not re-sign point guard Ramon Sessions, and Luke Ridnour would be his back-up. He later said he wasn’t sure.

Jennings also said ESPN’s Jay Bilas was “hatin’ on him” during last week’s draft – he was the best-dressed of all the players on stage – and point guard Ricky Rubio was over-rated.

BILAS WAS HATIN' WITH A LARGE JUG OF HATORADE!

While all that is going on, I'm more worried about Jennings' lack of a true high fade. [/segue]



July 21, 2008 - The Return of the High Fade



When Jennings went to Europe to play professionally, he brought with him a high fade rich in American heritage. Based on his appearance at the 2009 NBA Draft, however, the standard fade is no longer. Quite frankly, that's upsetting. At least we can still relive the follicle pageantry.

Check out "The Return of the High Fade" right here. Kenny Sky Walker and Guile approve this message.

For some reason, Chris Evert is just now realizing how annoying it is to sit through a female tennis match. She's sick and tired of the screams, the shrieks, the yells and all around gruntathons.

"Grunting is one thing but the shrill sound that you hear with players nowadays, and especially they get louder when they hit a winner, that's the thing that I observe as a player."

"It comes before they hit the shot. That's the first thing you hear and you are kind of like thrown off guard as a player and then before you know the ball gets past you."

"It is distracting when you are hearing this and I think the grunts are getting louder and more shrill now with the current players.'

"The next time you watch say a Maria Sharapova -- the grunting is consistent but all of a sudden when she has a set up to hit a winner.

"I don't understand, they say you've got to blow air out when you hit the ball.

"Steffi Graf hit the ball a ton and she didn't grunt. There were a lot of players, hard-hitting players, and you never heard a peep out of them.

"I don't understand the philosophy of it."

And I don't understand how Evert didn't say something similar following this 1989 match with Monica Seles.




Unrelated: when I think of Monica Seles grunting, I think of the early 90s SNL skit "At Home With Monica" where she'd scream simply over opening the refrigerator door. Unfortunately, that's all I can do is think about it, because the video is nowhere on the Internets. Jerks.

We used to think that it was just our teenage sense of humor that led to being entertained by any and all headlines using the last name of Yankees starter Chien Ming Wang.  Surely headline writers weren't doing it on purpose, rather just the victim of an unfortunate scenario where the subject's name happened to be a euphimism for the male genitalia.

Reputable sports news outlets aren't simply looking for an excuse to slip the name into random headlines that make absolutely no sense just for the sake of personal entertainment, right? 



Nope.  Clearly the editors were all business on this one.