Last week, Forbes Magazine, through E-Poll surveys, polled its readers and compiled a top 10 list of the most disliked people in sports. I was confused at first why it was Forbes and not, say, Sports Illustrated executing such a poll. I mean, these are sports figures we’re talking about, isn’t ESPN’s magazine better equipped? Forbes may not be the foremost expert on sports, but flip through any issue of their magazine or click on any page of their web site … dudes know a lot about hateable personalities.

But the list isn’t as much of a reflection of the Forbes company as it is about the company’s readers (ages 13 and up). And what’s reflected is a severe case of “lemmingism.” Everyone who made the list makes sense, but are they a true reflection of the most disliked sports figures?

I mean, hockey is one of the five largest sports in the country (and Canada, if you care) and no one from the NHL represented. Most of the names you’ll see here are hated because of overexposure more than their actions that caused the overexposure. Can they be blamed for that? And if they can, why isn’t Erin Andrews at the top of this list? (She’s not) Heck, one of these guys retired 17 years ago. Is that the best (worst) Forbes readers could come up with? Do they even follow sports?

In the words of the 10th most disliked athlete, “you cannot be serious.”

1. Michael Vick
Why he’s here? Yeah, okay. This isn’t surprising. He had dogs kill one another in his off time. Honestly, if Vick had murdered a human, his jail sentence would have been longer, but he’d be no more hated than he is now.
Does he belong? I’ll put it this way … yes. Yes, he does.
Possible replacement Brett Favre. Vick’s infamy was brutal and awful, but it was also original. You know what isn’t original? Brett Favre’s annual hijacking of the sports pages while he decides if he wants to be a professional suckwad or a retired suckwad. Most of the guys on this list are on here because people are tired of hearing about them. On that front, Favre is head, shoulders and suckwad ahead of everyone else.

2. Manny Ramirez
Why he’s here? Steroids. He used ‘em. He got caught for using ‘em and he missed almost a third of the season for using ‘em.
Does he belong? Dodger fans don’t think so. Manny gets L.A. fans giggly-er than girls at a sleepover.
Possible replacement Sean Avery. I wanted to put a woman on here, but I’m unconvinced that Serena Williams counts. I guess Avery is as close as we’re going to get. I mean, c’mon … these are women’s sunglasses, dude. New York’s self-proclaimed bad boy has literally lobbied to be marketed like a WWE villain, which is not only a tacit admittance that he’s a wanker on the ice, but he’s seemingly badmouthed every last one of his hot and famous ex-girlfriends. Anyone who badmouths Elisha Cuthbert: unlikable. That’s a rule.

3. Alex Rodriguez
Why he’s here? Overexposure. Perhaps the overwhelming disgust for both Madonna and Kate Hudson has spilled over onto him as well.
Does he belong? If you take into account America’s tendency to convert jealousy into hatred along with the fact that he’s dating a movie starlet, makes $25 million a year to play a game in the most famous city in the world and cheated so as to help him achieve all these things, then yeah. I reckon he belongs.
Possible replacement Kyle Busch. This little pipsqueak. This picture best illustrates why he really ought to have made this list. And if you’re a NASCAR apologist, then what about when he snapped the Nashville Superspeedway Les Paul guitar trophy into shards ’cause he was just so gosh darned excited. A-Rod’s a tool that seems embarrassed by himself a lot of the time. Busch shares no such embarrassment.

4. Terrell Owens
Why he’s here? An inability to censor his narcissism.
Does he belong? He belongs for the amount of time various media outlets have spent talking about him over the years, but generally, Owens has done very little to warrant the ire of the American people. At worst, he’s been a bad teammate. Then again, his statistics suggest he’s made his teams better. It’s all about perception.
Possible replacement Tom Brady. Oh no! Not my sweet Tom. What’s he ever done to anyone except urinate awesomeness and use unicorn horns to pick Superbowl glory out of his teeth? Well go ask Bridget Moynahan. He knocked up Coyote Ugly, split while she was pregnant, ignored the birth while pretending not to ignore the birth, hooked up with a Brazilian supermodel (superfluous pic here) and impotently allowed her to treat Moynahan’s kid as if it were her own. Oh, then he had the gall to skip the 2008 season. So I ask you, what’s worse: being a bad teammate with good stats or being a bad husband, father and man with no stats?

5. Kobe Bryant
Why he’s here? Smugness and possibly rape. Mostly smugness.
Does he belong? For the smugness? Yes. For the possible rape? I’d have to visit Denver a few more times to say for certain.
Possible replacement Fedor Emelianenko. People just don’t like it when someone so obviously talented doesn’t need fans’ approval to stay talented. We don’t like when talented people clamor for it either (see: Rod, A) but when you’re good and you know it and no one can do a damn thing about it, it tends to alienate fans. Fans want to feel a part of it all and when they know they’re not a part of any of it, it pisses them off. Now you tell me, which one of these two was I just talking about?

6. Allen Iverson
Why he’s here? Because people like “gangsters,” not “gangstas.”
Does he belong? Iverson hasn’t been relevant in two years. Right now, only three teams have shown any interest in paying him to play basketball and one of those teams is in Greece. Hating an irrelevant Iverson is like hating the words to a song a toddler just wrote.
Possible replacement Mark Cuban. If the fine readers over at Forbes want to flippantly throw Iverson on here because he came into the NBA with cornrows and tattoos and everyone was depressed that Michael Jordan was gone, that’s fine. Now allow me to retort by submitting my own irrationally-justified basketball personality. Mark Cuban is loud, he picks fights with players, his hair is often mussed, he likes Jason Kidd too much, his cha-cha-cha is a 1/2-step too slow and he was accused of insider trading. But go ahead, convince me a neck tattoo is worse.

7. Isiah Thomas
Why he’s here? Sexual harassment … and because he hasn’t done anything well since 1993.
Does he belong? Oh yeah. He might have tried to kill himself and when it didn’t work, he might have tried convincing authorities that his daughter was the one who was ill. Also he sexual harassed a woman (not daughter related).
Possible replacement I had a whole case for either Al Davis or George Steinbrenner and although they both totally deserve to be on here, the readers polled by Forbes accidentally got this one right. Isiah Thomas is awful.

8. Stephon Marbury
Why he’s here? Sociopathology.
Does he belong? Absolutely not. Oh sure he’s been a locker room cancer on each of the last four teams he’s played before arriving in Boston, but few noticed until he got to New York and became Isiah Thomas’ cancer. But seeing as how Thomas is more disliked than Starbury, isn’t this a clear-cut case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Friends don’t put friends on disliked lists. Think of it this way: Stephon Marbury builds the character of every NBA player with whom he comes in contact. Good for the game.
Possible replacement Brock Lesnar. And since very often “bad” is good for the game, who better to illustrate this than the UFC’s Brock Lesnar? Look, you don’t get more white than Brock. He’s a 6-foot-3, 265-pound farm boy who lives and trains in the Minnesota woods, has a drooling problem, drinks Coors and signifies that “he’s No. 1″ with the wrong fingers. He’s thoroughly unlikeable, yet UFC has never been more popular. It’s far more fun to hate than to love.

9. Nick Saban
Why he’s here? Bullying. Lying. Willfully living in Alabama.
Does he belong? Nah. For $32 million, I’d probably live in Alabama too. But I wouldn’t talk to anybody.
Possible replacement Brett Favre (again). Yes, but what better way to emphasize how disliked he is than by having him wear out his welcome on this list, just as he’s worn out his welcome in the NFL. Remember in “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out” when you beat Bald Bull and then later in the game a meaner, tougher Bald Bull returned? Such is Favre. Just when his awfulness seems to subside, another offseason arrives and it takes three star punches to get him to go away.

10. John McEnroe
Why he’s here? Because he was really outspoken three decades ago.
Does he belong? About as much as a polar bear at the Pyramids.
Possible replacement O.J. Simpson. McEnroe was a loudmouth infamous for throwing hissyfits (and rackets) and complaining about almost every call that didn’t go his way. Essentially he was an NBA player. But all of this happened in the past. He’s retired from the pro tour now. So if inactive players are suddenly eligible for this list, why not pick an athlete who, you know, probably murdered two people? Bonus: How great would it be to have two Buffalo Bills in the top 10?

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Vick, Ramirez, Rodriguez, McEnroe photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
All other photos courtesy of Flickr

Remember when Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in January 1974 and eventually helped the terrorist organization rob the Hibernia Bank several months later? Or when Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero avoided doing jail time by aggressively and enthusiastically informing the FBI of the activities of the Soprano organization? Clinton pardoned one and Paulie Walnuts helped whack the other. 

Jose Canseco falls somewhere in the middle.
Undeniably, one of baseball’s least sympathetic characters is trying to become an ambassador of baseball’s Steroid Era. In an ESPN Philadelphia radio interview from Thursday, Canseco was summoned from whatever madcap reality in which he normally operates to discuss the newest bulletpoints added to the growing list of steroid issues. Like saying “Beetlejuice!” three times, Canseco heard 1. “Steroids” 2. “David Ortiz” and 3. “Manny Ramirez” and appeared unsolicitedly.

So what is it this time?

As a guest on the Mike Missanelli show, Canseco discussed, among other things, the necessity for Major League Baseball to have sought out his council on how to deal with the players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.

Here’s a snippet:

What baseball should have done in the past is consulted with me. I would have resolved this issue from a long time ago, but [the league is] very stubborn. They blackballed me to get me out of the game. They don’t want to talk to me, they don’t want to listen to me. They’re extremely stubborn. In the past they’ve gotten away with everything. My doors are open to speak with Major League Baseball and the Player’s Association on how to get this subject matter put behind us and move forward. I think a lot of players are getting really bad advice from their attorneys, from their consultants and … it’s just, really, really bad.

“Put behind us?” He says all of this as if the league and the Player’s Association are somehow disallowing Canseco from doing his job of moderating the acceptance of steroids in baseball. He’s like a pastry chef wondering why all his customers are so fat. But there he is, desperate to help the league that, by his own admission, blackballed him, threw him out and locked the door.

The best thing that happened to Canseco after his 2001 retirement was realizing that he was willing to publically discuss things MLB was not. Like it or not, Canseco is the most reliable source on steroid use available to the public. And like a child who finds something that entertains his parents, he’s beaten it into the ground until it becomes truly annoying.

We knew we were supposed to ignore the crazy guy on the bus babbling nosensensically, but we thought he said something interesting, so we engaged him for just a second. He didn’t say anything interesting and now we’re stuck in a conversation with him for another 11 stops. Major League Baseball was smart enough to never make eye contact with Canseco. All these years since his retirement, MLB just keeps working on the sudoku puzzle, hoping Canseco will exit the bus at the next stop.

He hasn’t really helped them, which is why they’ll never seek his council. He’s burned them twice. First by being the poster boy for cheating, then by telling the world how obvious it at was. The league will never let him burn it again by asking for help that it’s too late for him to give.

Canseco poo-pooing the attorneys and consultants of players under indictment is both humorous and sad, like a drunk who danced so much he wet his pants, because Canseco suggests that his advice would have worked out better.

Because lord knows when one thinks of Jose Canseco one thinks of rationality and reliability.

Just like Patty and Puss,’ Canseco has been bent and reshaped enough that he assumes he is someone other than who he is: an incredible slimeball. He wants to create situations in which steroids are looked upon passively, like Ty Cobb‘s anger and racism, as if it were a cute affectation from a bygone era. Because if he is successfully able to do that, then he’s got a chance at the Hall of Fame (don’t worry, he has no chance at the Hall of Fame). He’d perhaps have a cherished baseball post-career. And for that to happen, he believes he needs to insinuate himself back into the central point of one of baseball’s ugliest eras by railing against it.

But he was one of the largest players involved in creating it in the first place. Accepting anything from No-Way Jose would be igniting another fire that the league would be unable to extinguish.

As the saying goes, when one door closes, a window opens. So a long as you’re into climbing through open windows, it all evens out.

The closing door, in this case, was slammed earlier this week on 28-year-old, Olympic silver medalist Kim Willoughby, who was sentenced earlier this week to five years probation for assaulting Sara Daniel, someone she did not know, outside a club in Honolulu two-and-a-half years ago.

The punishment doesn’t stop at probation. Oh, no, no. This attack happened in Hawaii, a place in which you’d have to be extremely angry to want to fight. So along with probation, both anger management classes and over $2,000 in medical bills for Ms. Daniel are forthcoming. So what happened? The volleyballer apparently hates when fights she’s trying to start are stopped by a third-party.

That third party, in this case, was Sara Daniel, who broke up a fight Willoughby tried to start. Still steaming, Willoughby followed her outside the club and beat her until her nasal bone and eye socket were both broken.

And now you’re probably thinking this representative of our great nation got off fairly light, right? Well, maybe. Except that Willoughby is allegedly a steroid user. In May, the Italian Olympic Committee announced Willoughby had tested positive for a steroid, nandrolone. Although Willoughby denies it, she can’t disprove it and her Italian team therefore hasn’t paid her in months.

So, she’s broke. So broke, in fact, that she’s in danger of being unable to pay the minimum $50 a month fee for Daniel’s medical bills ordered by the court. And if she can’t pay, guess what that probation will suddenly turn into?

Ironically, if she wasn’t on the ‘roids, she’d be less likely to get into fistfights with strangers, which would likely keep her from bashing in strangers’ faces, which would halt her need to pay strangers’ medical bills, which she would hypothetically be able to pay because she would not have been bounced from her team.

That sound you hear is a jail door slamming shut

Honestly, I can’t think of a worse person to accidentally get into a fight with than an overly aggressive Olympian. Maybe a barracuda. I hear those suckers are nasty.

That sound you hear is a Australian window opening

Much like Willoughby, Aussie swimmer Nick D’Arcy couldn’t keep his hands off fellow swimmer Simon Cowley and it cost him dearly. About 17 months ago, the butterfly swimmer punched up Cowley’s jaw, eye socket, cheekbones and nose in a bar fight that ended with Cowley on a stretcher and D’Arcy off the Australian Olympic team headed to the Beijing Games.

He ended up not having to spend a day of his 14 month sentence in jail. Apparently missing the Olympics and being banned from his national team until August 1 of this year carries the same weight, which makes me think swimming is super fun, if not doing it is the same as going to jail.

The altercation occurred on March 30, 2008, the same night D’Arcy was named to the Olympic team after the Australian trials ended in Sydney. And what better way to celebrate than by kneading a fellow teammate’s face into swollen dough? To be fair, unlike Sara Daniel, Simon Cowley provoked D’Arcy by slapping him. D’Arcy responded not in continuous attacks like Willoughby, but by one impactful punch that messed up Cowley’s whole face.

But D’Arcy paid his dues and will spend the next few months trying to shimmy through the suddenly open window of the world, while Willoughby hopes her foot is planted firmly enough in the door frame to stop it from slamming on her for good.

Manny Ramirez‘s return to Chavez Ravine on July 16 was overwhelmingly (and unsurprisingly) positive. Why not? They cheered Bonds in the Bay Area. Missourians still dig Big Mac (and Big Macs). They cheered Alex Rodriguez in the Bronx. Heck, New Yorkers even cheered Sergio Mitre after he threw 5.2 innings in a winning effort on Tuesday. The bottom line is that fans – generally speaking – want their players to be clean and awesome, but when push comes to shove, they’ll settle for just awesome.

And maybe at the major league level that’s actually okay to do – no matter what fans are told they’re supposed to feel about it. What have steroids been proven to do? The answer after all the bluster of the last half-decade, is not too much. Sure some of the superstars that have been decidedly guilty (if not proven so) for PEDs have seen a dramatic dropoff of their statistics after the point in which they were slammed. Miguel Tejada, Jason Giambi and Sammy Sosa all come to mind. But two of this season’s biggest stories have been Alex Rodriguez’s admitted use of steroids and Manny Ramirez’s 50-game suspension for taking care of her uterine wall.

Rodriguez missed 28 games at the start of the season because of a hip injury unrelated to the steroid scandal (supposedly) and Ramirez returned from his suspension at the beginning of this month. So how much different are those dirty rotten cheaters’ numbers been this season than their career averages? Again, not too much.

Ramirez’s 2009 statistics if averaged out over the course of a full season:

G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
156 642   510   113   174    43     4     39     131    –     –   117   96    .340   .470    .666   1.136

Now, here are Ramirez’s numbers from his previous (presumably steroid-riddled) 15 seasons in the league:

Stat compilation courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com

G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
157 682   547   97     138   19      0     45     131   14    2    121   109   .252   .397    .535    .932

Now, here are Rodriguez’s numbers from his previous (presumably cheat-filled, frosted-tipped) 14 seasons in the league:

Stat compilation courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com

Not all of Rodriguez’s stats are on par, but the big ones that get the headlines (and asterisks) are. He’s running less and earning fewer runs, but that isn’t necessarily even in Rodriguez’s control. What is in is control are homers, RBIs and his patience at the plate all of which surpasses even his 162-game averages (and few superstars still play all 162 games these days). Again, the aspects of Rodriguez’s game that would conceivably be punctured by a leak in the steady flow of steroids simply have not been affected.

One can extrapolate from these numbers that this is why an overwhelming amount of fans can’t be bothered losing sleep over this ongoing ruination of the game. If one believes Ramirez and Rodriguez are no longer using steroids (it would be simultaneously shocking and appropriate if they were), then one has to wonder at all the “fake and liar” talk is about that surrounded these two superstars. What were they lying about? Because it doesn’t appear to be statistics related. And judging by the applause those two players got in their first home games following their shamed revelations, the stats are really all anyone cares about.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

Now that the bombshell mildly notable item that Sammy Sosa juiced has soaked into the core of your being, it’s time to start hunting for witches.

If you believe clean players ever existed, where were they in all of this? I’m aware of the brotherhood teams and organizations have, but think of the hundreds of players to go in and out of the league, isn’t it strange that no one but Jose Canseco – the poster child of steroid abuse – had anything to say about it?

Even more strange are the reactions of baseball personalities around the league after a revelation like Sosa’s has been made.

“That’s not that surprising at all,” Houston first baseman Lance Berkman said. “There are just certain guys that you pretty much know without coming out and making an…accusation, but it does not surprise me, not even a little bit.”

“You think the sun’s going to rise in the east tomorrow,” former Cubs announcer Steve Stone replied when asked if he suspected Sosa of steroid abuse. “Nobody really questioned who was doing what and it wasn’t my job as a broadcaster to ever question who did what.”

I’m not suggesting Berkman or Stone or anyone else ought to have talked to the press and made accusations that they couldn’t back up with proof. But these guys were basing their (ultimately correct) hunches on something. And it is that something that Major League Baseball has not sought after.

Also, is Stone’s position acceptable? He’s right that calling out his suspicions of steroid abuse isn’t what he’s paid to do. But if an international affairs news editor sees that the local news editor is printing false information, does he hold his tongue and risk a severe weakening of the overall product (the newspaper) because, hey, local news ain’t my division, man.

Sometimes to do your job right, you have to do more than is expected. Ironically, a bastardized version of this philosophy probably compelled a handful of the steroid users to start using steroids in the first place. This massive wave of silence by everyone makes it appear as if everyone thinks it’s not a very big deal. And if steroid usage in MLB isn’t a very big deal, isn’t that something MLB should concern itself with?

There were 135 players implicated, named in the Mitchell Report, suspended or confessed to having used steroids. The team pictured above – the 2001 Texas Rangers – watched 23 of those PEDestrians waltz on through the Arlington clubhouse. At what point does our suspicious glare stop resting on just the players and start inquiring as to who else on the 1998 Rangers or the 2001 Rangers or the 2003 Rangers knew about their star players? Every major league ball club had at least nine players on that list of 135 in their clubhouse at some point in their career, but why did, say the Houston Astros, the closest neighbors of the Rangers, manage only nine players? (Admittedly four of Houston’s players Ken Caminiti, Miguel Tejada, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens are big-time names in this scandal, but still…)

The Yankees had 27 of the 135 names in the clubhouse. The Mets? It had 23 of the named players, same as the Rangers. San Diego and Anaheim? They had 21.

So what?

So why haven’t we heard about the organization’s management? It’s more than plausible that the same organization that brought Rafael Palmeiro, Sosa and Tejada together in 2004 and 2005 were aware of something others weren’t. Sure, it could have been a coincidence. The fact that Canseco and Mark McGwire were on the A’s shooting steroids into each other’s butts 15 years before Tejada and Jason Giambi did it for the same team was probably a coincidence. But some of these things are not coincidences.

There are a lot of innocent people keeping their mouths shut. They’ve been keeping their mouths shut for a long time. Make sure you blame them too, right along with Barry Bonds, Bud Selig and Florida pharmacists. It’s easy to plead blind and dumb because it’s hard to disprove.

But take a look at the above picture from 2001. Four of those five guys are on the list of 135. And in 2000, there were two others on that Texas team (Dave Martinez and David Segui) and the year before that? Two others (Juan Gonzalez and Greg Zaun). And what about the year after this picture? Yup. Two more (Ismael Valdez and Todd Greene). That’s a locker room epidemic. And there ain’t no way everyone else in that locker room and in the owner’s box walked blindly through a lineup full of cheaters.

I’ve never pretended to understand the mind of a professional bodybuilder and therefore, I could never be one.

All the best t-shirts would never come in my size, I could never air-guitar properly again without ripping one (or seven) of my pecs off and I’d always be slippery with grease, which wouldn’t bother me so much as it would the people who sat in the same seat as me on the train.

So take my navigation through the 2009 Belgium Bodybuilding Championships with a grain of salt, will you? If you’re low on salt, check out the AP Story.

Twenty thong-wearing iron-pumpers (probably grunting the Belgian equivalent of “dude” and “bro”) waddled quickly out of the Arsenaal* Theater on Sunday after anti-doping officials paid a surprise visit to the infamously steroid-prone contest. How prone? Glad you asked. During last year’s competition, the northern Belgium region found 22 of the 29 body builders’ sample test positive with some form of performance enhancer, most showing excessive levels of anabolic steroids. That kind of prone.

*Are we all in agreement that the ARSEnaal Theater is the perfect venue name for a group like this.

So, it wasn’t so much shocking as sad when the anti-doping officials arrived and witnessed the entire gaggle of muscle-men just grab their gear and run off as soon as they entered into the room. Nevermind shock, the best part of this ridiculous little story is how deadpan the anti-doping officials seem to be about it.

“The sport has a history of doping and this incident didn’t do its reputation any good,” anti-doping official Hans Cooman said.