Sticking to the bully pulpit

This is not where you come today to read that sending a psycho killer to the Graybar Hilton is some sort of corner turned. A smirking Derek Chauvin caught on video kneeling on George Floyd's neck until he died is as close to a slam dunk as there ever will be in an American courtroom, and that's the plain truth of it.

So, yes, convicting Psycho Boy on all three counts was justice, but it was also a case in which the justice system couldn't avoid justice no matter what kind of Barry Sanders spin move it threw at the Big J. The corner will be turned the day justice is done when justice is far more easy to elude.

But enough about that.

Today, this is where you come to read that the Stick To Sports crowd just took another walloping.

This is because the NFL, the NHL and Major League Baseball all issued statements on the Chauvin verdict, and so did the Minnesota Lynx, Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Timberwolves because Chauvin's murder of George Floyd was local. LeBron James weighed in with one word: "ACCOUNTABILITY." Megan Rapinoe tweeted a reaction. Magic Johnson, Victor Cruz, Donovan Mitchell, Billie Jean King, Ja Morant ...

The list goes on. And on.

This must have profoundly galled the STS brigade, who somehow feel only businesses that sell motor oil or insurance should be allowed to express/act on their political leanings. That professional sports, and those who work in them, operate like any other business never seems to occur to the STSers. Sports should be a haven from all of that unpleasantness, even if it's a product like any other product.

And let's face it, those who manufacture that product are no less qualified than, say, the My Pillow Guy to weigh in on matters outside their purview. In fact, given the idiocies spewed by My Pillow Guy and others of his ilk, they're far more qualified -- and certainly have far more standing in American society.

Stick to sports, you say? How about stick to goose down or its synthesized equivalent?

Or for that matter, how about sticking to legislation instead of performance art?

Because, listen, no matter how disingenuous some of the responses might have been from the various professional sports, they were far more eloquent than the responses from some of our elected meatheads. The endless pandering to respective political bases almost always produces a treasure trove of standup comedy, but perhaps never more so than yesterday.

The silliest of the lot?

That was delivered by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who somehow managed to frame George Floyd as some sort of  civil rights hero because he had the bad luck to cross paths with a psycho cop. He gave his life for justice, Nancy declared -- just like Martin and Medgar and JFK and Abraham Lincoln his own self, presumably.

Ay-yi-yi. And people say LeBron James isn't qualified to discuss such weighty matters?

Hell, he's Winston Churchill compared to Nancy Pelosi. Or at least he was yesterday.

Stick to gaveling, Nance. Stick to looking the other way while your wrestlers are being molested, Jim Jordan. Stick to whatever it is you do with high school girls, Matt Gaetz -- and the rest of you Q-Tips, stick to hanging out in your little White Citizens' Council treehouse, or whatever you call that Anglo-Saxon Caucus of yours.

Let the grownups handle the eloquence.

And by "grownups," I mean the ballplayers.