Last night the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league affiliate of the New York Mets, transformed into the "Baracklyn Cyclones" to honor Barack Obama in "a night of patriotic partying at the ballpark." Some Cyclone fans were not pleased.

Columbia Pictures was aghast when the latest script for the adaptation of Michael Lewis' Moneyball arrived. So much so that they've put the project in turnaround. Oh, and: production was supposed to start next week.

The outlook wasn't brilliant for Young Sulzberger that day; His stories had been boring, tho' his wit's on full display; But then an editor cried out, "AG! Come earn your pay!"; "Your presence is required at the baseball game—hey hey!"

In your suddenly Tuesday media column: Conde Nast moves its B-team, Larry Hackett despises humanity, and print is dead, along with baseball and apple pie and puppies:

Media minutiae feud alert! The combatants: Selena Roberts, former star NYT sports reporter now at Sports Illustrated; and her former paper. Did the Times try, and fail, to take her down, journalistically? Details! [UPDATED]:

The Way We Live Now: In rubble, soaked in our own urine. Americans are giving up on baseball. Iraqis are giving up on jobs. And entire cities are giving up on existence and bulldozing themselves.

Jim Bunning, who is a Senator pretty much because he was once a major league pitcher, is the Senate's biggest prick.

• Fourth-quarter profits at the New York Times Co. were down nearly 50 percent compared to a year ago; the company also announced that it has retained Goldman Sachs to sell its 17 percent stake in the Red Sox. [NYT]
• More on Condé Nast's decision to close Domino. [NYT]
• Because there isn't enough choice with the 364 different iterations of HBO you already have, another premium cable channel is headed your way. [WSJ]
• How al-Arabiya got the first post-inauguration interview with Obama. [Time]
• Hurry up! There are only two spots left for the Super Bowl on Sunday. You can make the $2.4 million check payable to NBC. [THR]

Should the New York Times Co. sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox? Some people say yes. But this clever Monopoly metaphor says NO:

Tech billionaire, anger-driven blogger, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has just been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The (civil, not criminal) charges center on an incident in 2004 in which Cuban allegedly got early insider information about a company he had an ownership stake in, and used that info to avoid a loss of $750,000. We have no idea whether the charges are true, but if they are, it's a foolish business move by a guy who's already been fined more than twice that much by the NBA just for running his mouth. Though it is possible to formulate a wild conspiracy theory about this! Mark Cuban would be just another rich guy except for his penchant for saying whatever pops into his head. He constantly criticizes the NBA, which is a no-no by owners. The flipside is he gets great PR. Although half of it is bad! Oh well. He also has a blog that is sometimes hilarious and not well thought out a bit. At the moment, Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., which needs to sell the storied baseball franchise to raise cash, which it will burn in a vain attempt to save its newspapers. The idea of Cuban—a maverick—owning the Cubs absolutely kills traditionalists, who think he would totally ruin all the great Chicago traditions, such as having ivy on the outfield walls and losing constantly. So is it possible that there was some shady conspiracy that caused this allegation from 2004 to surface just in time to (likely) torpedo any chance Cuban has of buying the Cubs? You would have to be a crazy conspiracy freak to believe this, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, so please don't sue us.

New York Post sportswriter George King just can't get enough spanking! A tipster with plenty of time on his hands went back through King's baseball coverage and found that he takes every available opportunity to relate how the Yankees or Mets were "spanked." It's his favorite word! Just today King wrote about the "14-3 spanking administered by the Blue Jays." But that's just the beginning of his spankfest:

Wondering why there's a humongous red carpet running down the middle of Sixth Avenue? You can thank/blame Major League Baseball, which installed 95,000 square feet of the stuff for the All-Star game tonight at Yankee stadium. [Curbed]

Geez Roger Clemens, do you mind if we go a single day without being bombarded by news of yet another one of your past trysts with a Southern blond woman somehow vaguely connected to pop culture? Monday we learned that scowling baseball great Clemens, self-proclaimed paragon of family virtue, cheated on his wife with a continuously intoxicated country music star. More girlfriends came out in the subsequent days. And now we're battered with the news that the rich pitcher may have had a romance with the ex-wife of a fat, drunk professional golfer [NYDN]. Is nothing sacred?

Here on day two of the Roger Clemens Infidelity Scandal And Schadenfreude Festival Of '08, it's becoming more clear that the brawny former Yankees ace pitcher and full time jerk did in fact cheat on his wife with the wild country singer Mindy McCready. Because now she's admitted it! McCready said the two did have an ongoing affair, although the sex didn't start until she was of legal age. They first met when she was only 15, (Miley Cyrus joke). But the most entertaining aspect of this scandal is how Clemens—heroic, honored, self-righteous, dismissive of critics, a King of New York—is turning into an uncanny baseball version of another recently fallen hero: Eliot Spitzer.

Roger Clemens, the recently retired former Yankees ace pitcher and full time Class A jerk, has used his commitment to his wife (pictured) and family as a defense of his own character, which has been impugned by steroid allegations. And, you know, by his own general asshole demeanor that causes him to do things like throw a fastball at his own son. But today the Daily News says that Clemens carried on a ten year affair with train wreck country singer Mindy McCready—although they never trot out any real proof. And their lead, which seems to imply Clemens is a statutory rapist, is a little problematic:

Improv Everywhere is the cosmic balance to Gawker: a group of real-world performance artists who generally make people feel like the world is a magical place. And in this clip that's been making the rounds, they turn a little league baseball game into a major league match, with an NBC sportscaster, a Jumbotron, and I won't ruin the rest. See below.

Some AP photographer was roaming around Yankee stadium during the rain delay, and who did he stumble upon but overweight deceased SNL comedic maniac Chris Farley! Farley, who passed away in 1997, apparently assumed human form once again in order to take in the historic final opening day in the classic ballpark. The identity of his female companion remains unknown. Click to enlarge the pic, via the WSJ.

It's opening day of baseball season at Yankee Stadium, y'all! And you know what that means: Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eyed Joe? Whether you KNOW, or you don't know, click through to watch the video, then buy your Yankees tickets before they tear down the House That Ruth And Cotton-Eyed Joe Built! Sports fandom minute over. (WATCH IT)

The shameful scandal that has engulfed New York over the past week to the outrage of one and all has finally come to a close. That's right: comedian Billy Crystal has now had his single at-bat in a Yankees spring training game. The ballclub's decision to offer Crystal a one-day contract as a promotional stunt threw a pall over the entire Empire State. Video from the stands of the funnyman's game appearance (not a bad swing!), which the New York Post suspects may have destroyed baseball's integrity, after the jump. Hopefully we can all now move forward with our lives.

Athlete and sportscaster Josh Booty thought he could drive just fine, even though he was drunk, and then he thought he could take on taser-wielding Orange County Sheriff's deputies, who of course tased him right before he cracked his head. But is it a surprise the 32-year-old thought he was invincible, or that he was acting out? First he was "the most highly recruited high school quarterback in the country," according to the New York Times. Then he drew a record-setting $1.6 million draft bonus to play for the Florida Marlins' minor league franchise. When he got bored of that, he went to college for a year, until he was drafted into the NFL. He was a quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, then the Cleveland Browns, then the Oakland Raiders. The free-agent quarterback parted ways with the Raiders in 2007 and has been killing time as a sportscaster for Fox, ESPN and the NFL Network. So why the self-destructive behavior? A possible answer, plus a larger shot of Booty's booking photo, after the jump.