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Tomorrow is technically an “off day” for Gawker media, but we’ll be intermittently posting some stuff that will hopefully keep those of you trapped at work for a few hours occupied. Lots and lots of pictures.

And now here’s this: One Andy Hutchins, whom many of you knew around these parts as RockYouLikeAnIracane/Rockabye/incessantly needy boy from Florida, decided to curtail his usual late night masturbatory message board habits for a short period of time to write something of substance about the new Deadspin (and Gawker) commenting page which I’m told will launch on Tuesday. Andy stumbled upon the easily-sniffed out “stage” (Gawker is not NORAD) versions of the sites, which offer a preview of how the new system will work. He then provided a helpful step-by-step breakdown of how it will impact readers, commenters, Deadspin, the state of sports media, the Iranian election, the BCS, and anything else that cluttered his frighteningly active mind at 4 a.m. on a Wednesday, a time most young men his age are usually fast asleep with multiple co-eds on top of them. No, not Andy (never!).

Aside from the couple hours of annoyance he caused Gawker editors yesterday, he actually provided a good mock-up of some of the things we’ll all have to deal with starting next week. So look it over and marvel at his industriousness. All told, it was a great post in its service presentation and its gamesmanship. Cheers, sir. One can only hope his parents recognize his new-found maturity and finally let him drive a car at night.

Tomorrow: Lots of galleries and quicklinks and any breaking news not related to hot dog eating contests or fireworks.

Saturday: Gourmet Spud offers up his Canadian ass to entertain you. You know what I mean.

Sunday: Idiot Barking Dog.

****

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin during my first year. Yes. That happened.

Last week, Rany Jazayerli, blogger and baseball propeller-head of note, went after longtime Royals trainer Nick Swartz, stopping just shy of ripping out the man’s heart and waving it at the sun. The team didn’t take this so well.

Jazayerli, who describes himself as a “dermatologist by day, baseball writer by night, pathetic Royals fan all the time,” is no mere fan blogger. He’s a co-founder of Baseball Prospectus, and he’s done admirable work on the study of pitcher abuse. He knows whereof he speaks, and when he speaks like this, in a raging 3,000-word indictment of the way the Royals handle and mishandle injuries, the organization would do well to pay attention. The Royals, being the Royals, did no such thing. Today, Jazayerli writes:

I was just informed last night that I’ve been blacklisted by the team. That’s right: I’ve been banned by the Royals! The way this team is playing, I’m not sure if the Royals are trying to punish me or reward me.

Which he later clarified a little:

I don’t think I’ve been “banned” in the sense that they’re going to have security guards outside the stadium making sure that I don’t buy a ticket. It does mean that the Royals have cut off any access I may have from the team for my radio show, and - this is critical - have intimated that any other radio show which has me on as a guest faces the same penalty.

This is obviously the Royals’ right, but go back and read Jazayerli’s initial post, which is maybe nasty only to the extent that he holds up Swartz (and only Swartz) as a symbol for what is pretty clearly an organizational flaw. He documents three egregious examples in which the team seemed to underplay, if not ignore, the extent of a player’s injury, leading — in Jazayerli’s mind — to more catastrophic injuries. Here he is on Coco Crisp, who recently underwent season-ending shoulder surgery:

I don’t know about you, but to me, the handling of Coco Crisp’s shoulder injury is by itself a fireable offense. Crisp was playing – terribly, mind you – with a bum shoulder FOR FIVE WEEKS, and even after his shoulder pain became severe enough that he could no longer play, the Royals kept shuffling him in and out of the lineup for three weeks, putting him back out there as soon as the pain became tolerable again.

But the pain didn’t go away. It only got worse, and presumably his shoulder only got worse. The question that no one can answer is whether, five weeks ago, Crisp already had a torn labrum, or whether the injury occurred while trying to play through the inflammation. We can’t answer it, but we sure as hell can speculate. As far as I’m concerned, the Royals’ ham-fisted approach to Coco Crisp’s shoulder turned an injury which might have healed with a few weeks of rest into a season-ender.

This is all very damnable stuff, and at this point, an angry gadfly like Jazayerli should be the least of the Royals’ concerns. The team evidently thinks this is a public relations matter. It’s not. If Jazayerli is right, it’s a medical malpractice suit waiting to happen.

Banned! [Rany on the Royals]
Release The Hounds [Rany on the Royals]

Leyritz, awaiting his DUI manslaughter trial, was arrested today on charges that he dragged his ex-wife out of bed and shoved her, allegedly because she wrote a check without his permission. As you might guess, this one’s a little weird.

In some ways, it’s an old story: Onetime New York star washes out of Broadway and finds himself doing a crappy South Florida production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? From the South Florida Sun Sentinel:

Karrie Leyritz called police from a neighbor’s house, where she fled after the alleged argument, a police report said.

When officers arrived about 3 a.m., she was bleeding from a cut above her eye.

Police found streaks of blood on a wall at the Leytriz home, according to the report.

Karrie Leyritz told police what happened and admitted she had been drinking, the report said.

But police said in the report that the victim gave two “totally different” accounts of what happened.

First, she said she argued with her ex-husband in the foyer, then he hit her and pushed her to the ground.

Later, she said he dragged her out of bed and rammed her against the bedroom wall, the report said.

Karrie Leyritz denies giving two different versions of the story and says she was “misunderstood.” The argument started in the bedroom, she said, and ended in the foyer.

Police woke up their three children, who apparently slept through the incident. The two children they spoke to didn’t hear anything strange early this morning, the report said.

It’s all very strange and will probably put an end to the sputtering Jim Leyritz Image Rehabilitation Tour that nearly had him signing autographs at a minor-league game last month. The most bizarre part of the story? It’s this:

One child said he heard his parents argue earlier that evening, but that his mother was drunk and likely hit herself.

Photo of Leyritz with his ex-wife from the New York Daily News

Former Yankee Jim Leyritz to spend weekend in jail after domestic battery arrest [South Florida Sun Sentinel]

Rubio, Spain’s Pistola Pedro, “will remain in Spain to play for his DKV Joventut basketball team for the remaining two years of his contract rather than try to move to the NBA this season, El Periodico reported today.” [Pioneer Press]

A couple of scientists argue that Lance Armstrong did indeed employ certain exotic performance-enhancing procedures before his run of seven consecutive Tour De France victories: namely, getting his diseased testicle lopped off.

This comes to us via True/Slant. In 2006, Craig S. Atwood and Richard L. Bowen published a paper in provocatively contrarian Medical Hypotheses — sort of the Slate.com of medical journals — in which they argued that Armstrong actually derived an athletic advantage from the treatment, in 1996, of his testicular cancer, known leg-crossingly as an orchiectomy:

While it is perceived that cancer, surgeries and chemotherapy might actually impede sports performance, the above evidence would suggest that unilateral orchiectomy promotes physiological maturation and athletic performance by enhancing fuel metabolism, muscle repair and erythroid function. Therefore, Armstrong’s athletic advantage is most likely due to his unique genetic and physiological makeup coupled to the endocrinological changes induced by his unilateral orchiectomy, not drugs as suspected by certain reporters, cycling enthusiasts and French cycling authorities. Indeed, the use of drugs such as erythropoietin would be foolish given that there is evidence to suggest this mitogen can promote tumor growth.

Not that any of you athletes out there should try this at home:

The question remains then, would you give your left testicle to win the Tour de France? Only the foolish would undergo orchiectomy or administer drugs to alter sex hormone levels to enhance performance in endurance sports given the long-term risks to health and longevity. Likewise, the use of exogenous LH/hCG would be similarly problematic. Irrespective of this, artificially modulating these hormones for increasing human endurance performance is difficult due to the short half-life of LH in the blood. And while recombinant hCG has a longer half-life, it would be easily distinguishable from endogenous hCG. We do not recommend unilateral orchiectomy or endogenous sources of these hormones as performance enhancing modalities.

I have no idea if any of this is plausible, but the paper does boast an impressive array of footnotes and multisyllabic words, which leads me to believe the theory is not — you’ll excuse the pun — entirely nuts. Science, however, has yet to answer the most important question about Lance Armstrong, which is what on earth compelled one of history’s finest and most respected athletes into the arms of an Olsen twin?

Lance, enhanced [True/Slant]
Metabolic clues regarding the enhanced performance of elite endurance athletes from orchiectomy-induced hormonal changes (PDF) [Medical Hypotheses]

We get a massive amount of tips in our inbox each week. Some are pretty interesting, but don’t get published for one reason or another.

It’s usually because they’re just so absurd or really lack even the most tenuous of news angles to give them the go-ahead. Other times it’s because they’re just absolute horseshit. But every Friday (except today, because we actually have off tomorrow for the 4th of July — more on that later.) until we get sick of running them, we’ll present to you some of these not-so-shiny gems. All items should be treated as [Sic'd]. Enjoy…

Urban’s A Happy Drunk

“Urban getting his wine on”

Tyler Hansbrough Is Very Photogenic

This was taken just hours after he was drafted. thought you would enjoy. Wasted? or caugth off guard. you be the judge.

This was taken just hours after he was drafted. thought you would enjoy. Wasted? or caugth off guard. you be the judge.

Angry Joe Devanna Returns!

I’ll Alert The Video Editor Immediately

Sir, If You Let Me Know Who You Are, I’d Gladly Take It Down

Please Tell Me You Remember This Guy

lubert if you readin this here is esactly what happens. we was playin horshoe for like hour and i musta throw it like a thousand time. EVER time i throw it never make it even close to that pole. some time it only go like half way there AT TEH MOST. so there was little boy there and he start laughin at me and pointin and say “(laughs) hey look, stups cant even reach that pole.”
so that make me real mad and probly very sad. so next time it is my turn i decide that i gonna throw it as hard as you can. so i close my eyes and put my arm all the wya back and (grunts) I throw my arm forward as hard as i ever can in my life. now here is where it is a problem, them horsoe is HEAVY. and teh weight of it just carry my arm real fast and miss teh part whyen you supposeda let go.

to be honets it didn’t real help that my eyes was closed. anyways, finally i let it go and i open my eyes to see where that thing is gonna land. i was even even hopin for one one of them rigners. I was just hopin to get in even CLOSED to where that pole is. I feel like i waitin forever to see where that horshoe land. I dont see it all.

I still didn’t know that it was from me, I thought maybe someone just chucks at her. Finally qwerts come over and say (real soft in teh ear) “hey stusa, you do this. you hang onto it too long at it fly over you head and hit tonky in back.” I was devistating. i never, never, ever, NREVER would do that. it seem like just yesterday we was laughin about that video with that chimanzee.

and now i feel like we is never gonna laugh about that stuff agian. i am heartbroke and i am cryin most times. yesterday i cry even during gilligans and jimmy c come over and start doin he benji impressions just to cheer me up. i hope you will see this and you will knew that i dont mean it and i hope tonka is happy and healthy for teh rest of she life. (crying0

stu1ds

p and s - lubert if you readin this i so sorry that i hit you gramma with teh horshoe. i hurtin so much inside