Infinitive Splitter

The Pittsburgh Steelers cut trash-talking, heavy-hitting linebacker Joey Porter yesterday, in an apparent attempt to avert potential leadership problems for newly appointed head coach Mike Tomlin.

Porter, perhaps the Steelers’ best overall defensive player in the 21st century whose play helped win them a Super Bowl 13 months ago, was due a $1 million roster bonus by Tuesday and a $4 million salary in the final year of his contract. That, and other factors, prompted the Steelers to release him.

“Unfortunately, sometimes you have to terminate a good player, just to make it all work,'’ said Kevin Colbert, the team’s director of football operations.

Although no one on the Steelers would say so, the threat by Porter to hold out last summer played a factor in his release. Team officials did not want to burden new head coach Mike Tomlin with that kind of threat to his authority. Even though Porter was scheduled to make $5 million in the final year of his deal, he was unhappy with his contract and there was a chance he might boycott some of the minicamps and then training camp had he remained with the team.

If you don’t recognize his name, Porter made headlines last year on these memorable occasions:

• In September, two of his dogs got loose and killed a neighbor’s miniature horse.
• In December, he called Cleveland Browns receiver Kellen Winslow a “fag” (some initial news reports about it were unclear), an insult for which he clumsily apologized thus: “I didn’t mean to offend anybody but Kellen Winslow.”

Not really a guy I’d want to get too close to, but he was always fun to watch on the field.

This is the kind of thing I normally post to the Quick Hits on the sidebar (and if you haven’t been following them, you’re missing most of the best content on this website), but I couldn’t find an excerpt short and relevant enough.

Elton Beard, “Polite Fiction”:

I got this email a while back promising a nice sum of money if I just helped this Nigerian government official move his inheritance to an American bank and to make a long story short, it hasn’t work out so well for me money-wise. So my neighbor Brett said I told you so, I told you if you believe this guy you’ll be wasting your money. And I said back no way, dude! I did not waste that money! To say the money was wasted is an insult to the money, which had nothing to do with the decision that resulted in its loss! I demand you apologize for denigrating innocent money I said, emphatically.

There’s more; read the rest.

(If you haven’t been following the news recently: there’s a war going on in Iraq; Sen. Barack Obama, a candidate for president, said it has resulted in “over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted”; when his political opponents howled, Obama said he regretted his choice of words; several days later Sen. John McCain, a candidate for president, said, “We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives”; when his political opponents howled, McCain said he regretted his choice of words; and today the war continues.)