This morning I was watching Mike & Mike on ESPN and Greeny (Mike Greenberg) was practically glowing as he reported on Yankee, Alex Rodriguez’s recent comments after playing an excellent series against the Minnesota Twins. Greeny was praising A Rod for his Full LaLouche after the sweep.

A Rod is well known for thinking quite a lot of himself, despite a record of poor playoff performance and has never hidden that fact from the press. Of course, he finds it hard to hide anything from the press, including, but not limited to Kabballah-ing with Madonna, hanging out with Canadian strippers, and taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Suddenly, after this series, A Rod has had a change of ego heart, and has suddenly realized that there is no ‘I’ in "team" and much to the delight of sports reporters everywhere. His transformation rivals that of "Nuke" LaLouche from the movie Bull Durham, the kid with the "million dollar arm and a five cent head" who learns to talk the talk from veteran catcher Crash Davis. A Rod has learned the lesson exceptionally well it seems, praising his team and especially team captain and all around gentleman, Derek Jeter, whom he’s struggled to share the spotlight with since arriving in New York.

I find Jeter and Rodriguez both to be very pretty, but I am on the fence regarding the canned comments. After almost a decade of hearing A Rod tell us how great he is and blaming his failures on others, I don’t really buy it. I have images of him in the locker room reading little index cards before the game, eyes towards the sky, sub-verbalized whisper in the air – "Jeter … Jeter played great. Derek and the other guys … yhea … team, team, team."

Whatever. I guess it is what it is. Even though I find it hard to believe that a lot of these uber-driven, super-athlete- types would ever really want to say how great their teammates are after saving one game with a two-run homer and hitting another one in the very next game. That’s just me though. However, I think if the Full LaLouche is going to be the standard in sports, it should translate to politics as well.

Instead of "YOU LIE!", Joe Wilson might have shouted out, "I’m just here to help the team defeat healthcare and the good Lord willing, things will work out!"

Instead of facebooking about the notorious liberal death panels, Sarah Palin would have said, "Sometimes you win. Sometimes there’s extermination. Sometimes … it rains."

Instead of putting Nancy Pelosi in her place, the NRCC statement would have read something like, "It’s a beautiful day for sexism in America."

Sean Hannity would be confined to any of the following:

"He’s in a slump."

"You can’t steal first base."

"He chased a bad pitch."

"In any other ballpark, that’s a homerun."

Also, those lovely cliches would never be followed up by Bob Uecker saying, "BUT, did you know he’s an African Nazi trying to destroy America."

So maybe there is something to this political correctness in baseball. Now we just need a little in politics. 

*photo from weblogs.cltv.com