This being Dallas week, and with Dexter Manley's appearance this week on "The Sports Fix," here's a look at Dexter's return to Washington:

For more information about Thom Loverro, go to www.thomloverro.com

Happy 75th birthday to Frank Robinson -- his goodbye to Washington:

   Roger Clemens entered a not guilty plea Monday in federal court in Washington on perjury and other charges stemming from his February 2008 testimony before a Congressional committee about the use of performance-enhancing substances. The  federal judge may have issued as gag order in the Clemens case, but  I laugh at the gag order, and present this to you for your consideration in determining the credibility of Clemens' accuser -- Brian McNamee.
  , I would recommend a collection of writer Pat Jordans work in the book, "The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan." Great read.
   The first story in the collection is a story called "Roger Clemens Refuses to Grow Up," originally published in the New York Times Magazine in 2001. Any reasonable person who reads the article would have to conclude that McNamee was the pilot of the Rocket and surely knew whatever fuel he was using.
    One excerpt: "Brian McNamee, an assistant-strength-and-conditioning coach for the Yankees and Clemens' personal trainer, joins us for dinner. As we get settled at our table, Clemens picks up the menu. 'Give me direction -- can I have a steak?' he says. McNamee nods. 'And potatoes?'
    'Dry,' McNamee says. He is a sour, taciturn man with a long jaw and narrow eyes and a thin, sinister-looking beard. McNamee's life seems to revolve around the conditioning of Roger Clemens."
    Another excerpt: "When Clemens is finished with his preliminary workout, McNamee goes downstairs to see whether the Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte has arrived yet. Pettitte has been working out with Clemens during the off-season for two years, picking up between three and four miles on his fastball during that time."
     Lest we forget, Pettitte admitted to his use of illegal performance-enhanching substances and fingered Clemens as a fellow user under oath from congressional investigators.
     Throughout the article, there are references to McNamee's control over clemens, such as,"At noon, McNamee calls a halt to the workout. 'The first part of the day is over,' he says."
     Now, facing trial on perjury charges after he denied in front of a congressional committee McNamee's charges made to Mitchell Report investigators that Clemens using illegal performance-enhancing substances, Clemens's life revolves around Brian McNamee.

     For more information about Thom Loverro, go to www.thomloverro.com

    Everything Stephen Strasburg did since he made his remarkable debut as a Washington National has been big, hyped, blown up.
    So why shouldn't the news that he needs Tommy John surgery be treated the same way?
    Strasburg's elbow disaster that will likely sideline him for more than a year is not just a blow to the Nationals -- it's a blow to all of baseball.
    Not a crippling blow, of course, but in today's sports landscape, when attention is unpredictable and fleeting but even more important to the financial health of the sports entertainment business, a star like Strasburg was a high value baseball commodity.
     Strasburg had captured the eyes and ears of the nation of sport before he even stepped on the field for the Nationals that memorable June night against the Pittsburgh Pirates at standing-room-only Nationals Park, when he exceeded what was unprecendented hype by striking out 14 batters with no walks over seven innings on his way to a win.
     He continued to amaze, for the most part, and garner attention. He was good for an extra 15,000 to 20,000 people in the stands whenever and whereever he pitched. He had become a Sportscenter staple, one of the "crawl" figures, if you will, the ones whose nearly every move would show up on the crawl on the bottom of your television screen.
      You could make the case that he had became baseball's first social media superstar, as people texted and tweeted his exploits whether they were watching at the ballpark or from home.
      And now Stephen Strasburg will disappear from view. He will become invisible, until the day when, if all goes right, sometime next year, Strasburg will begin some sort of rehab throwing program that the media will be desperate to record.
      In the meantime, what does baseball do with this? If Strasburg was such a prominent figure, shouldn't the attention that is paid to this injury be prominent as well?
      Shouldn't baseball take this opportunity to seriously study and come to some sort of conclusion why the perception exists that today's young pitchers are far more fragile than the generations that came before them?
      I don't want to use the word "epidemic," because, again, much of what we are working with here is anecotal. But the perception is that the game has a serious pitching problem with its young hurlers.
      Baseball commissioner Bud Selig should consider forming one of those blue-ribbon panels he puts together from time to time -- one made up of medical experts, players, baseball executives, and coaches from colleges, high schools and youth baseball -- to come up with an in-depth study as to whether or not pitchers really are not as durable as their predecessors, and if not, why not, and what can be done to address it.
      Youth baseball coaches should be included in this because many believe that is where the problems are starting. CBS sports.com columnist Gregg Doyel wrote what many in the game believe to be the case -- the problems for young pitchers are starting long before they reach the major league level.
      "Specialization is to blame. Occasionally the parents, who want a scholarship for little Johnny, are unwittingly to blame," Doyel wrote. "Instead of playing two or three sports, giving each game a few months a year, kids are locking into one sport and going all year with it. And if that sport is baseball, and if that kid is a pitcher? Well, kids have the surgery to show for it."
      Doyel wrote that celebrated sports surgeon Dr. James Andrews (whose name every baseball fans has heard of, which tells you something is wrong) and fellow doctor Glenn Fleisig at Andrews' American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, have reported a tenfold increase in arm surgeries on college and even high school pitchers. They conducted a study where they questioned nearly 100 young pitchers who needed surgery, and compared those results to almost 50 young pitchers who didn't need surgery.
      The conclusions, according to Doyel were that pitchers who pitched in leagues more than eight months a year were five times more likely to need surgery by age 20. Pitchers who regularly threw 80 pitches in a game were four times more likely to need surgery. And pitchers who regularly pitched with a tired arm -- not a sore arm, just a "tired" arm were 36 times more likely to need surgery.
     We discussed this issue -- the curse of the specialty young athlete -- briefly last Friday on "The Sports Fix," the show I co-host with Kevin Sheehan on ESPN 980 and espn980.com, and later that day I received this email from a listener:
     "I have a 14-year-old pitcher and am trying to keep him sound through college. Talking to anyone who listens. We have come to the same conclusions you stated. Richmond Braves trainer told him two years ago to quit playing ball for at least three months a year -- play more than one sport to create a balance in your strength. Don't pitch for everyone who asks (a problem if your good).
     "He stated that they (Braves organization) were seeing too many worn out 18 year olds and polished pitchers who couldn't learn anything new and thought they knew it all anyway."
     Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo wouldn't necessarily buy into the notion that baseball has a pitching problem. "Those are bigger scope and broader questions" than he was willing consider at this point.
     "I don't know if there are more arm problems," Rizzo said. "There are certainly more surgergies. They are certainly more publicized, and the stakes have certainly been raised."
     But then he raised a disturbing thought. "We are constantly talking to veteran players and veteran pitchers from the past," Rizzo said. "(Washington Nationals pitching coach) Steve McCatty pitched two year with a sore arm.. Did he have a ligament problem at the time?  They just didn't have the technology to diagnose it. He may have pitched a big portion of his career with a bad elbow...(SandY) Koufax had a sore arm, so sore he couldn't stand the pain and retired. He probably pitched with arm problems."
     So if McCatty -- Strasburg's pitching coach -- may have pitched a big portion of his career with a bad elbow, does that breed such moronic opinions as MASN television analyst Rob Dibble, who suggested on his Sirius XM radio show last week -- before the diagnosis that revealed the torn ligament -- that maybe Strasburg should stop crying and go out there and pitch, because that is what they did in the past?
    "Okay, you throw a pitch, it bothers your arm, and you immediately call out the manager and the trainer?" Dibble said. "Suck it up, kid. This is your profession. You chose to be a baseball player. You can't have the cavalry come in and save your butt every time you feel a little stiff shoulder, sore elbow."
     This is someone who has a voice that reaches baseball fans -- granted, a small number of baseball fans, given the numbers who watch Nationals telecasts. Do you really want this kind of foolish speculation to define the debate about such precious commodities as young pitchers? Or should baseball take this moment and use it to come up with some intelligent conclusions and recommendations that will influence the game from the youth level all the way to the major leagues?
     And make no mistake about it, this is a debate inside the game. Many are watching with interest what Nolan Ryan is doing as president of the Texas Rangers -- deemphasizing pitch counts in favor of mechanics, conditioning and a heavier workload to build arm strength. But this is a problem that goes beyond the Rangers, and is one that Selig should declare worthy of industry-wide study.
     When the Nationals signed Strasburg more than a year ago, I joked that they should just have the Tommy John surgery and get it over with.
     It's not funny now.

     For more information about Thom Loverro, go to www.thomloverro.com

 Sammy Sosa tells Chicago magazine that what he did for the Chicago Cubs and baseball should be celebrated -- not scorned.
   "[My] number should be untouchable because of the things that I did for that organization," fumes Sosa. "That right there shows me that they don't care about me, and they don't want to have a good relationship with me....
   "My numbers don't lie," he declared. "Everything that I did was so big — my career was so good — that even if people want to scratch it from the board, it's not going to happen. Those numbers are going to stay there forever."
   If everything Shrunken Sammy did was so big, why does he seem so small?
   Sosa -- and others who should know better -- still operate under the myth that Sosa and fellow cheater Mark McGwire's home run chase toward Roger Maris' single season record in the summer of 1998 somehow saved the game of baseball.
   It's part of the bigger myth that people flocked to the ballparks and baseball profited because of steroids.
   These numbers -- unlike Sosa's -- don't lie
   In 1998, 70 million people came through the turnstiles in major league ballparks -- seven million more than the previous season.
   Impressive, right?
   Forgotten in this fairy tale is the fact that two new major league teams began operation in 1998 -- the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Both teams drew a combined 6.1 million fans that year.
   Take away those numbers, and attendance for 1998 was the same as it was in 1997 -- 63 million.
   But what about the rest of the steroid era, when the numbers kept climbing?
   In 1992, baseball attendance was 56 million. It jumped to 70 million in 1993, with more than half of that increase resulted from the inaugural seasons of the Rockies in Denver and the Marlins in Florida.
   The 1994 and 1995 seasons -- both strike-shortened with the game severely damaged -- drew 50 million fans.
   Then -- following Cal Ripken's breaking of Lou Gehrig's consecutive game record -- it jumped to 60 million in 1996 and 63 million in 1997. Then came the 1998 season, and the introduction of the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays and 70 million fans.
    The game drew 70 million again in 199, then 71 million in 2000 and 72 million in 2001. The numbers dropped to 68 million in 2002 and 2004, then back up to 73 million in 2004, 75 million in 2005, 76 million in 2006, 79 million in 2007, 78 million in 2008 and down to 73 million last season.
   Going from 56 million in 1992 to a high of 79 million in 2007 certainly proves that steroids put people in the seats, right?
   Like the power numbers of the era, that conclusion is an illusion. Here's something closer to the reality of the attendance increases.
   In 1992, Camden Yards opened and started the new era for ballparks (new Comiskey opened in Chicago the year before, but has very little connection to Camden Yards and the ballparks that followed).  Two years later, Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) in Cleveland, The Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, and Coors Field in Denver welcomed sold out crowds.
   In 1999, the Mariners opened Safeco Field in Seattle. The following season, three new ballparks -- Comerica Park in Detroit, Enron Field (now Minute Maid Park) in Houston and Pacific Bell Park (now AT&T Park) in San Francisco -- opened for business.
   The 2001 season brought Miller Park to Milwaukee and PNC Park to Pittsburgh. Great American Park opened in Cincinnati in 2003. Petco Park in San Diego and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia came on the scene in 2004.
   Two years later, the new Busch Stadium opened up in St. Louis, and Nationals Park in Washington in 2008, followed by the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field in New York in 2009.
   Seventeen new ballparks over 17 seasons, most of which opened to sold out crowds, some that lasted for nearly six seasons. And that doesn't count the refurbishing of Angels Stadium in Anaheim and the upgrades at Fenway Park in Boston.
   The substances that baseball profited from were bricks and mortar.

   For more information about Thom Loverro, go to www.thomloverro.com

     For those who might believe that Washington Redskins head coach Mike Shanahan is some kind of outrageous ogre for his treatment of Prince Albert Haynesworth, and that somehow the coach's reputation among players throughout the league is that of an unreasonable tyrant, check out what the anonymous NFL player who contributed the "Player X" column in the current ESPN the magazine had to say about Shanahan when talking about coaches and training camp:
    "With the league's talking about 18-game regular seasons, coaches just have to ease up. I'd love to see a head coach do away with two-a-days. Make it one daily practice just like during the regular season. Get the work done and get out.
     "That will never happen, though. Coaches are too scared of being fired or of what the media will say about them. Actually, Mike Shanahan may be the only one with the guts to do it. He isn't insecure, he just wants to win, and he always takes care of his guys. He'll give veterans days off. It's no coincidence while he was in Denver. he always got some of the hardest-working vets to play for him, big time leaders like John Lynch. I think he'll get the same kind of guys in Washington."
     This is from an NFL player who, with his anonymity, has nothing particular to gain by singing Shanahan's praises. Doesn't sound like Shanahan's image among NFL players is that of a raving dictator.
     Then again, Prince Albert is neither a hard-working vet or a big time leader.

     For more information about Thom Loverro, go to www.thomloverro.com