Here there be weasels

I've got plenty of Weasel of the Week awards to hand out today, so bear with me.

We'll start with high school tennis. In New Hampshire, Bow High School's Sunday Swett won a state championship-----via forfeit----over Briana Leonard, representing Bishop Guerin High in Nashua. Swett won the first set, but when officials decided to move the match to another court, Leonard and her parents bailed, claiming the crowd was too partisan against Leonard.

SAY WHAT?

This is because Leonard, even though she's enrolled at Bishop Guerin, actually lives in Massachusetts. How they allow this to happen in the New England states, I don't know, but I think it has to do with open enrollment. The problem the Leonards had was that they felt the crowd simply hated their daughter just because she's not a New Hampshire native. What about the support from Bishop Guerin? Yahoo! doesn't report anything on this matter.

The bottom line is this. The audience is supposed to remain silent, offering polite applause when necessary, during a tennis match. It's not the fault of Briana Leonard that she had gotten as far as she did, but she did let Bishop Guerin down when they needed her the most. She took the coward's way out by forfeiting. She left the match and just gave up, unable to channel out the heckling from the partisan crowd.

The fans in attendance will also get Weasel ears, along with Ms. Leonard, because of violating tennis protocols. If you've got a problem with a kid who is essentially "carpetbagging" by coming across state lines to attend one of your schools, bugging her during an important match isn't a proper way of expressing your anger. If parents knew before this that Briana was not a New Hampshire resident, then that should've been brought to the attention of the school board in the city of Nashua, or state authorities.

Let me stress this. In New York, there are open enrollment schools in Section II that admit kids from outside the school's home district. I cannot be certain if that open enrollment includes admitting students from Vermont, New Hampshire, et al, as if this was a college. I cannot be certain, either, if that same policy is expanded at Bishop Guerin.

Now, on to baseball.

The Biogenesis scandal just won't end. ESPN's Outside The Lines had a report on Tuesday which claimed Major League Baseball would suspend at least 20 players, including Ryan Braun (Milwaukee) and Alex Rodriguez (currently on the DL with the Yankees) for 100 games. This wouldn't be about positive drug tests, but rather that the players somehow perjured themselves in earlier cases. Toronto's Melky Cabrera, whose season with San Francisco ended last year with a 50 game ban, has been mentioned as well.

What brought this about? How about Anthony Bosch, the head of Biogenesis, cutting a deal with MLB to essentially turn state's evidence against the players who'd been at his clinic. Braun, you'll remember, fought off a 50 game ban last year, but has been struggling this season. Rodriguez, of course, has yet to take the field for the Yanks as he recovers from hip surgery, and wouldn't be back until next month at the earliest. The NY tabloids made it clear on Wednesday where they stood. The Daily News splashed A-Rod on their front page, and the talk started again about whether or not the Yankees can void his contract. Good luck with that. It's understood that the Players Association would appeal the suspensions because of excessive length and whether or not MLB is overstepping its bounds by dropping the hammer without sufficient evidence.

Three months ago, MLB filed suit against Bosch for interfering with their internal investigation. Now, Bud Selig's office is working with Bosch, basically betraying the players if only to make an example of certain ones who've defied the rules on performance enhancing drugs (PED's), with Rodriguez the most high profile of the lot. The suit has apparently been dropped, but that gets Selig a set of Weasel ears for essentially getting in bed with Bosch. Rodriguez, according to today's Daily News, supposedly refused to pay Bosch, who was supposedly in financial distress himself. Bosch, of course, gets a pair of ears, and so does Rodriguez for deceiving the public when he claimed he was off the garbage. And it could go on and on..........