ESPN Blogger Should Aplogize for Linking George Brett and Cocaine

By CHRIS RASMUSSEN

You really want to mess with Brett?

ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer posted this piece on George Brett yesterday, attempting to link the former Royals star to coke (in order to read Neyer’s writing, click here):

“In the early 1980s, many baseball players were using cocaine. Some of them got into trouble, and a few of Brett’s Kansas City teammates went to prison. Now, I’m not going to suggest that Brett was using cocaine, but I do know he was considered one of the hardest partiers in the Midwest at that time. Funny thing, though … Brett never got into any trouble. None that made the papers, anyway.”

Rob Neyer is Big Media, although he won’t admit it. He is a published author and a frequent contributor to what is as close as we’re going to come to a monopoly in sports journalism. He, like Bill James when he mused that Gaetti and Puckett might have used steroids, should give us all an explanation.

Look, I know that with a blog it is easy to publish un-vetted musings. That said, Neyer presumably has an editor and Neyer (with a column and a book or two under his belt) knows better.

He should explain himself, apologize and preferably both.