A weekend of bad sports, from baseball to NASCAR

We began the weekend with a Major League manager belittling and berating the media. We finished it with furious race fans throwing beer cans onto a NASCAR race winner.

Fittingly, in between, NFL teams were digging into their wallets and preparing to pay mega-salaries to top draft picks who at some point be subject to being raked over the coals by fans, coaches, media and others who don't know when or how to hold back for the good of sports.

Tony La Russa's tirade against the Post-Dispatch over its critique of the Cubs was silly at best, shameful at worst. La Russa's been around the block. He's felt the heat of the media, and he's heard its praises. But to express outrage when the media portrays a rival baseball franchise with pin-point accuracy borders on hysteria. Maybe it's just his way of getting the media ready for dealing with new St. Louis University coach Rick Majerus.

At the other end of the spectrum were scores of NASCAR fans who showed the class of Liverpool soccer hooligans when Jeff Gordon won Sunday at Talladega, a victory that gave him one more win on NASCAR's victory list than the late Dale Earnhardt. The pro-Earnhardt fans' angry reaction: pelt the track and Gordon's car with hundreds, maybe thousands, of beer cans.

Blame it on the Bud if you want, but fan reaction like Sunday's will cost everybody in the long run, from local grassroots racing to the highest level of NASCAR. Sponsors cringe when they see fans chuck beer cans onto the track in front of a national audience. Families think twice about buying race tickets. From there, the dominoes begin to fall.

It was hard to imagine that such a big sports weekend would produce such poor sportsmanship and lack of class. Even worse, both were on a national stage for the world to see.

In retrospect, the solution looks easy. La Russa actually needed a beer to settle down, and NASCAR fans in Talladega each needed one less.