When Truth Outstrips Fiction

This was a week when, in a couple instances, fact truly was stranger than fiction.

Following is a compendium of things that defy laws of common sense.

Gas prices

As I am writing this, gas prices are right around $2.25 per gallon. And it's not even the expensive, vacation gas time of year.

I hear people complaining.

You know, I think people in America need a simple economics lesson.

Let's discuss the law of supply and demand, for example. The more demand there is for something, the more difficult it is to supply. The more difficult it is to supply something, the more it costs.

So, at a time when there are tight supplies of oil, Americans should be reducing their demand for gasoline.

Is that what we're doing?

Oh no, we're breaking records in demand for gasoline. Therefore, prices will rise.

Decrease demand, prices will fall.

I understand the concepts of comfort, convenience and safety. I understand that the current crop of enormous SUVs are comfortable. Heck, they've practically got La-Z-Boys for seats. I know you can haul lots of stuff in them. I know they're pretty safe.

But there is a price to be paid. And we're paying it at the pump.

You could drill holes all over the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and all up and down the Gulf Coast and still not produce enough petroleum to satisfy the American motoring public.

I overheard a guy talking the other day while filling up his pickup.

It was a Ford F250 4x4. It had four doors. Aftermarket window tint. A modest lift kit, cool chrome wheels, brush guard, fog lights, stainless exhaust with some kind of mufflers that made it growl a little bit.

It was absolutely awesome.

The owner was complaining about gas prices. It made me chuckle.

It's like complaining about the price of milk while you're pouring it down the drain.

Baseball

I don't know which is worse, Major League Baseball's pathetic attempt to police itself when it comes to illegal drug use, or the U.S. Congress getting involved.

I mean, who does Congress think it is?

I get congressional hearings when it comes to government-related things like Whitewater or Iran-Contra or Watergate.

But steroids in mlb?

I take this to mean that Congress could call me to Washington to testify.

Then they could ask me if I've ever done anything illegal. It's like some fishing expedition.

What did they hope to accomplish?

If Mark McGuire had said, "Yeah, I did a bunch of steroids and so did everybody I knew in baseball," what would Congress have done about it?

And then there's Major League Baseball.

I don't believe for a minute that coaches, managers and owners were all clueless about the abuse of steroids.

They probably all knew what was going on.

My sense is that the "testing" by the league is so lax that you'd have to be an idiot to get caught.

Bottom line is there is no way the same group that promotes the sport should police the sport. It's the equivalent of the fox guarding the henhouse.

The Olympics figured this out. They've got the World Doping Committee, a special, autonomous outfit, to do their testing.

Olympic athletes know they are going to get tested, and, with a few notable exceptions, have remained doping-free.

That's what MLB needs to do. MLB needs to get out of the policing business. Farm it out. Make somebody else do it and then hold them accountable.

Then, when baseball players live in fear of the independent testing outfit, they (well, most of them, anyway) will stop using illegal substances.

Robert Blake

It took a California jury nine days to figure out that Robert Blake didn't kill his wife.

I heard one of the jurors talking about the case afterward. He said Blake may have killed his wife, but the prosecutor didn't prove it.

OK, he's gotta live with that.

Blake was accused of shooting his wife. She was found dead in a car in front of a restaurant. Blake said he left her in the car for a minute to go in the restaurant and retrieve a gun he forgot inside.

His defense team convinced the jury that an unknown assailant shot his wife while he was inside and Blake was shocked to find his dead wife.

The prosecutor had a couple drug- and booze-abusing stuntmen who testified that Blake attempted to hire them to kill his wife.

The prosecutor said that when the stuntmen turned Blake down, he finished the job himself.

Well, believe who you will, that's California justice for you. It's almost like California is a different country or something.

But one thing's for sure.

Blake's acquittal provided the top quotes of the week.

"I'm going to go out and do a little cowboyin'," Blake said. "You know what that is? Cowboyin' is getting in a motor home or a van or something like that and you just let the air blow in your hair and you wind up in some little bar in Arizona someplace. ... You shoot one-handed nine-ball with some 90-year-old Portuguese woman who beats the hell out of you, and the next day you wind up in a park someplace playing chess with somebody, and you go see a high school play where they're doing 'West Side Story.'"

And my favorite:

"If you want to know how to go through $10 million in five years, ask me," he said. "I'm broke. I need a job. What did Johnny Cochran say? 'You're innocent until proven broke.'"