Douchebag of the Year

This year, like all years, saw a rich candidate of contenders for the prestigious award of Major League Baseball Douchebag of the Year. Dodgers center fielder Milton Bradley's pregnant wife called the cops on him after he choked her; teammate Jeff Kent defended himself against charges of racism by pointing out that some of his best friends were black (really); and teammate Derek Lowe left his family to shack up with a sportscaster bimbette. (No wonder Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta got the axe over the weekend.) Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers made a strong showing when he pie-faced an innocent cameraman and then blamed the victim. Yankees stalwarts Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez didn't do anything particularly offensive, but make the shortlist just on, well, being Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

We could go on, but Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro took all the suspense out of the proceedings when it was revealed that he'd not only bald-facedly lied to Congress and the country about his steroid use, but stooged on everyone in sight like a 14-year-old drug dealer shitting his pants at the thought of Spofford in the hopes of getting off light. What's worse, the jackass even threw innocent people under the bus, like blameless teammate Miguel Tejada, who generously shared his B-12 shots with Palmeiro only to see the mustachioed Viagra shill narc him out to the man, claiming the life-giving vitamins must have been tainted with The Juice.

This isn't Palmeiro's first brush with infamy. Chicago lore has it that the reason the Cubs traded Raffy, rather than Mark Grace, when both were young, slap-hitting first basemen, was that Palmeiro had been getting slap-happy with Mrs. Ryne Sandberg. From (allegedly) picking hos before bros at the beginning of his career to squealing like a dirty rat at the end of it, Palmeiro has earned a spot in the Douchebag Hall of Fame-the only one in which he'll ever be enshrined, we reckon.

-Daniel Stern