…because we’ve had our first Jamaal Tinsely off-court incident.

Someone in a group of people fired on cars carrying Tinsely and his friends outside the Conrad hotel in Downtown Indianapolis early Sunday. Pacers equipment manager Joey Qatato was shot in both elbows.

Two of Tinsley’s three vehicles were pocked with bullet holes and his brother, James Tinsley, apparently returned fire with a gun he carried legally.

Now for the benefit of the non-locals in the audience, here’s what you have to understand. The Conrad Hotel is no dive where things like assault rifle shootings take place. It’s Indy’s first four-star hotel. It’s in the heart of downtown in the Wholesale District, where many of the city’s nicest restaurants and so forth are located. Thank God this was at 3:40 in the morning, because it’s an area normally heavy with pedestrian and auto traffic on a Saturday night. Most disturbingly from my perspective, it’s about 8 blocks from where I live.

This incident actually gets stupider, if that’s possible.

Members of Tinsley’s group said people in another group harassed them about Tinsley’s expensive cars — a Mercedes, Rolls-Royce and Dodge Charger — and the amount of money he made.

Tinsley’s group left the club and headed for Tinsley’s Downtown condominium, but soon realized they were being followed by a gray Chrysler and a dark pickup truck, Thompson said. They pulled into the Conrad Hotel because they thought it would safer, he said.

The shooting began about 3:40 a.m., after both groups reached the hotel, Thompson said. After Qatato was shot, he went inside, where Conrad employees called emergency medical services and police.

Qatato had been sitting with Tinsley in the player’s Rolls-Royce. A Methodist Hospital spokesperson said Qatato was released Sunday afternoon after being treated. Tinsley, in the front passenger seat, was not injured.

Two of the three vehicles in Tinsley’s group followed the shooters to Monument Circle, and James Tinsley returned fire. It was not known whether anyone was hit. James Tinsley had a gun permit, Thompson said.

That last part’s my favorite. See, I’ve never been shot at, but if I ever am, I certainly doubt my reaction will be to get into a car chase with the shooters.

A memorial to honor those who fought for the United States from the American Revolution through the Civil War, or a good place for a shootout? CWAMB reports, you decide. (Image by Flickr user cbteam234, used under Creative Commons license)

Some days there’s nothing you can do but laugh, so I submit to you this dialog on the incident by CWAMB writers and regulars:

CJ: A Pacer involved in a shooting incident? I refuse to believe it. And seriously, the Conrad? What that fuck? Am I going to have to start packing heat now?

Matt: sheesh, and the only person arrested so far was a wanted drug dealer Tinsley was hanging with. See Mike? This is why Indy doesn’t love the Pacers anymore. Their image isn’t just tarnished, it’s trashed.

CJ, unless you plan to go start shit on 38th street, I think you’ll be fine :p

It’s a little wild something like that happened in essentially the heart of downtown, though.

CJ: My friend Lars says “OK, when ‘it’s not unusual to see a .223 assault rifle used in street violence’, it might be time to move back to Carmel”

Matt: I think the real lesson learned here is “When you see Jamal Tinsley, duck and cover!”

Andrew: I’m surprised Jamaal didn’t fire off 3 or 4 wild shots that hit nothing but air.

Matt: to be fair he was going to, but he held the gun too long and the shot clock went off.

CJ: Also, the force the air displacement from the bullets injured his back, he’ll be out 4-6 weeks.

Matt: strangely, even though Jermaine O’Neal was not involved in the incident, his knee got injured as well.

Jason: The headline of a Star article the day of the shooting. “Shooting accuracy point of concern”

Hey Jason, isn’t it about time we add a “Police Blotter” category? Sheesh.

Think of it dear readers… After this weekend, either Notre Dame or Michigan will be 0-3. Truly, it is good to be alive in such exciting times.

CNN:

“Mr. Vick has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to those charges and to accept full responsibility for his action and the mistakes he has made. Michael wishes to apologize again to everyone who has been hurt by this matter,” Martin’s statement said.

Vick’s attorneys have been negotiating with federal prosecutors over terms of the deal, which must be approved by the judge. While prosecutors can recommend a sentence, the decision ultimately rests with the judge.

The plea would help Vick avoid additional federal charges.

Federal prosecutors had offered a deal recommending an 18- to 36-month prison sentence. Vick’s attorneys were trying to reduce that to less than a year, two sources told CNN earlier on Monday.

Good riddance. Way to throw away your career so you could torture animals for fun, jackass. HT: Stampede Blue

And now for something completely different:

Embattled NFL quarterback Michael Vick, facing federal charges related to his alleged participation in dogfighting, has been hit with a “$63,000,000,000 billion dollar” lawsuit filed by a South Carolina inmate who alleges the Atlanta Falcons star stole his pit bulls and sold them on eBay to buy “missiles from Iran,” FOX News has learned.

Ok, you’re thinking this possibly can’t get any better, right? You’d be wrong:

The complaint also alleges that Vick would need those missiles because he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in February of this year.

“Michael Vick has to stop physically hurting my feelings and dashing my hopes,” Riches writes in the complaint.

Riches wants $63 billion dollars “backed by gold and silver “ delivered to the front gates to the Williamsburg Federal Correctional facility in South Carolina. Riches is an inmate at the facility serving out a wire fraud conviction.

And if you think that’s entertaining, you ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve read the filing. Hint: the plaintiff alleges, among other things, that Vick “violated my copyright laws”.

Does it show that perhaps I am a bit too much of a news junkie that my second thought (after “WTF?”) upon reading this was “that doesn’t make sense, Iran wouldn’t sell missiles to Al Qaeda, they’re a Shia country and Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization? That’s just ridiculous.” But then through secret anonymous sources inside the government, we at CWAMB managed to obtain conclusive photographic evidence that these allegations are totally true!

Vick and Bin Laden at the 2007 Bomb and Dog Fight Convention (photoshop by Jason)

Coming up with 63 billion is the least of your problems, Vick. You’re off to Gitmo for sure now. I wonder if they’ll use dogs in your interrogation?

UPDATE: Ricky IMs to say “Wait. Does Mr. Riches want 63 billion dollars, or 63 quintillion dollars?” And yep, he’s right. The Fox News article quotes the lawsuit as being for “63,000,000,000 billion”, or yes, sixty three quintillion dollars. CWAMB regrets the error.

Ricky adds: “Because if it’s the later, if we assumed no growth rate in gross world product(GWP), that would take about 940,000 years of GWP to pay off.”

I suppose I’m totally stealing Mike’s thunder by writing about this, but how many other opportunities will I get to link to the video of “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”?

So long Phil… Thanks to Scott Lemieux for the reminder.

So… Some belated congratulations are in order. Congrats to Tom Glavine for becoming the 23rd pitcher to win 300 games. Congrats to Alex Rodriguez for becoming the youngest player to hit 500 home runs. And congrats to Barry Bonds for tying Hank Aaron with 755 career home runs.

There. I said it.

See, as hard as it is to believe, I recently read something interesting at ESPN.com. Specifically, this exchange between Jim Capel, Rob Neyer, and Jayson Stark titled “Who’s The Greatest Slugger Ever?”

While in the end I’m on the side of Ruth, both because of the points Neyer makes in the thread, and the little fact that Ruth still has the highest career adjusted OPS+ of all time, and while everything I’ve read tells me Barry Bonds most certainly isn’t the type of person I’d want to have a beer with, I think the defense of Bonds in the thread has a lot of merit to it.

First, with or without steroids, Bonds has been a supremely talented baseball player. Stark quotes a Giants fan friend as saying “that even if you believe he cheated, he was the best player in baseball before he cheated and the best player in baseball after he cheated.” Let’s also keep in mind that lots of people were “cheating” (like it or not, under the rules of baseball at the time, what the steroid users were doing wasn’t actually cheating), but they all didn’t put up one ridiculous season after another like Bonds did.

Yes, surely Bonds’ numbers were elevated by steroids, but at the same time they were also likely depressed by steroid-enhanced pitchers. We of course can’t know for sure what net effect steroids had on the league, but the best analysis I’m aware of, from a chapter in the Baseball Prospectus team’s “Baseball Between The Numbers”, says that the answer is very likely “not much”. But what differences are “fair” between the eras anyway? Are steroids less fair than amphetamines, which had been used in baseball since WWII? Are they less fair than players not having to compete against the best minority players pre-Jackie Robinson? Are they less fair than the improved medical procedures and training regimens that modern-day players have available? As Capel writes, “If people can accept numbers from an era in which blacks and Hispanics were banned from the game, if they can accept numbers from an era when amphetamines were rampant, then why can’t they just accept the new numbers?”

While we wish and hope for some platonic ideal of baseball “fairness” from which to judge from, it doesn’t exist. Even if to you steroids is the cardinal sin of baseball, you still can’t escape the fact than in an era where players were popping them like candy, Bonds still put up crazy numbers even compared to the rest of them.

None of this is to portray Bonds as some sort of martyr. He’s got his millions, he’s going to be just fine, believe me. He’s going to have the record whether people like it or not. And while you’re of course still free to not like him as a person (heck, I sure don’t), don’t tell me the record is somehow less “legitimate” than any other baseball record, and don’t tell me that he doesn’t deserve a spot in the Hall of Fame.

My hat is off to the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) for finally going after sports leagues and their egregious copyright claims.

The CCIA’s complaint fingers the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBC Universal, Morgan Creek, DreamWorks, Harcourt Inc., and Penguin Group (USA) for deceptive trade practices, accusing them of systematically mispresenting the rights of consumers to use copyrighted material. “These warnings that we have been seeing for decades are false,” CCIA spokesperson Jake Ward told Ars Technica in a Monday interview. “They are a misrepresentation of the law and a violation of consumers’ rights.”

Exactly correct. Just because the NFL claims you can’t even come up with “accounts of the game” without their permission doesn’t mean that there’s any acutal basis for their claim in copyright law. It really is totally legal for me to tell you that the Colts beat the Bears in Super Bowl XLI by the score of 29-17, no matter what the NFL claims. Such a thing as fair use of copyrighted material exists, no matter how much certain overzealous copyright holders might wish it didn’t.

I strongly recommend reading the whole Ars Technica post above for more details on what exactly is going on here and why it matters.

Michael Vick has been indicted for his… extracurricular activities.

McGruff says “You’re mine now, Vick!” (picture courtesy UVA)

Something tells me Roger Goodell is going to have something to say about this as well.

UPDATE: The Smoking Gun has a copy of the indictment, and it’s as disgusting as you’d expect. HT: Outside The Beltway.

UPDATE: From Jason -  how long until the NFL Shop bans this like they did jerseys with Mexico on the back?

“Ookie”… that’s your a/k/a, Vick? Ookie?!

A-Rod has hit 25 HR this year.

MLB thinks I just committed copyright infringement.

MLB is ran by idiots who hate their fans. That is all.