DALLAS (105.3 THE FAN) Leading off Today's "Jock Itch:" A hot new rumor swirling about Major League Baseball is that the league is actually using doctored baseballs to get more fans into the seats at ballparks across the country and one guy REALLY thinks this could be the case!

Braves beat writer David O'Brien says that a bullpen catcher (not from Atlanta) told him that the baseballs used this year are harder than the ones being used in recent years and he absolutely believes that they've been juiced to bolster attendance in the bad economy!

Yowza! I guess we'll see if this is the case, if the whole Houston Astros lineup is suddenly batting above .400 this year...http://benmaller.com/2011/04/baseball-suspected-of-using-juiced-balls/

And in OTHER "itch" worthy news...

It's just NOT a good week for the LA Dodgers! First, there was that horrific stadium brawl that left a Giants fan in a medically-induced coma and NOW lawyers for the team are filing a motion to have a lawsuit against them thrown out!

The suit stems as a result of a broken neck that a fan got when a fellow drunk fan actually fell onto him from the stadium's upper deck! This was back in 2008 in the NLCS game between the Dodgers and the Phillies and this is how it went down:

Two brothers (Stephen and Alex Suarez) sat in the field box section and the drunk Phillies fan in question (Pete La Rosa) was in the section above them, "severely inebriated and showing signs of intoxication throughout the game, as a result of a marijuana cigarette, 10 beers and six shots of tequila prior to and during the game." Pete starts yelling, swearing, and taunting the Dodger fans in his own section throughout the game, and in return, the Dodger fans started cussing at him and throwing peanut shells at him! Pete ends up walking to the edge of the railing to proudly wave his Phillies baseball cap in the air in defiance, lost his balance, and fell down below, crushing Stephen Suarez and breaking his fourth and sixth vertebrae!

The other brother who didn't get crushed is getting in on the lawsuit action too, citing that he suffered emotional distress from witnessing his brother get hurt.

Whatever happened to, "There's no crying in baseball!" http://benmaller.com/2011/04/dodgers-try-to-get-fans-lawsuit-dismissed/

Rockies ace pitcher Ubaldo Jiminez is using antibiotic soap to keep him off the DL! He's hoping that by soaking his right thumb at least twice a day in soap will speed up the healing of the thumb he injured.

Forget medication! I guess Dial is the new wonder drug? http://benmaller.com/2011/04/mlb-pitcher-using-soap-to-avoid-dl/

Derek Jeter is spending $15,000 bucks a month to get some sleep!

He just put up his $20 million dollar New York City apartment up for sale, prompting rumors that he was going to move in with his girlfriend, but NOW we know the reason why! Apparently, there was some seriously loud construction work going on in his neighborhood that was keeping him from getting his beauty sleep! So, needing a place to live, he's throwing down just over $15,000 grand a month for a two-thousand square foot, two-bedroom, three-bath rental at the same Trump World Tower he'd been living in before...

Wouldn't ear plugs from Walgreen's have been A LOT cheaper? http://benmaller.com/2011/04/mlb-star-spending-15k-per-month-to-avoid-noise/

A Kansas City Royals fan who was hit in the face by a broken bat on Opening Day is gonna need surgery! (As if it's bad enough this woman was a Royals fan, she also had to get beaned in the face too??)

Anyway, it all happened in the Royal's opening day game at Kauffman Stadium in the fifth inning when the sawed-off barrel of Angels outfielder Torii Hunter's maple bat helicoptered into the stands and hit Sue Cooney in the face! Not only did she suffer facial fractures that'll require surgery, but the Royals initially said that she was fine and remained at the game! Her boyfriend said that help was "painfully" slow to arrive but officials are saying that the delay was caused by paramedics determining the safest way to get her from her seat to an ambulance.

When paramedics finally arrived, they couldn't even get a stretcher to her, so they had to carry her from the stands in a wheelchair.

A Royals representative called her after the whole ordeal to apologize.

Despite having to have her orbital socket actually rebuilt again, Sue she says that she's still going to go to Royals games because she supports her team!

If this was me, I'd be demanding endless amounts of garlic cheesy fries and ballpark hotdogs for LIFE http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/01/2770070/royals-fan-hit-in-face-by-broken.html

Poor Tampa Bay Rays. On top of having a health hazard of a stadium with Tropicana Field, a report by Forbes is saying that the organization could soon just become a memory. Major League Baseball is closer to contracting the franchise after the 2014 season (meaning that they would cease to exist and probably leaving a LOT of blue-haireds pretty angry!) The Rays have a lease at Tropicana Field that runs through 2027, but Bud Selig doesn't even care about that at this point. The league feels like the Rays just don't have enough fan support, even though they won the AL East two times in recent years, and they're ready to just cut their losses... http://benmaller.com/2011/04/mlb-plans-to-contract-al-east-team/

When baseball, alcohol, and technology meet, you get a brilliant new idea that the Seattle Mariners are trying out! There's a beer vendor named Kevin Zelko at Safeco Field who is taking orders from fans in the stands via Twitter!

Basically, fans would send a message to @Msbeervendor, giving him their seat number and order, and he pops over as fast as he can!

He says that the logic behind this is that he hopes taking his vending to Twitter will take some of the guesswork out of his game by making his routes more direct. Not only will an ordered beer likely mean a better tip, but he also says that fans with smartphones, who are already tweeting away during the game, are more likely to have more money and therefore have more money to spend.

He says that it's very important to establish a connection with your beer vendor, because it's more than just about selling the beer; it's about a relationship. (Yeah, and tips have NOTHING to do with it)  He' got 224 followers as of now and says that throughout the season, he hopes to do something that no other beer vendor has done before: Grow a following, let fans into his life as a beer vendor and communicate with fans even when he isn't selling beer to them.

On a side note, Kevin says he normally sells about 80 beers during an average home game from the beginning of the game until the first pitch of 8^th inning, when he has to stop. On those days he pulls in about $125. On weekends, he can sell more than 100 beers and pull in closer to $200 — even more if the Yankees are in town.

Hey! I've got Twitter, a loud annoying voice, and a rent payment to make! Let's do this, Rangers Ballpark! http://www.cnbc.com/id/42415542

As if I already don't feel like a total loser for having a completely busted bracket early into the March Madness Tournament this year, I felt worse after finding out that a 2-year-old from Keller actually ended up smoking my bracket!

Sweet little Lola Henry picked UCONN to beat Butler in the Finals on her Yahoo! bracket. Her prediction put her at 619th best overall performance out of 2 million or so people nationwide who played the Yahoo! bracket as well.

Kudos to Lola though, for employing quite the complex method for making her selections--"potty humor picks," this, according to her mom. Lola was adamant on sticking with Butler because the name made her giggle.

Now, when it came down to picking last night's final? Lola scanned the bracket, which included little pictures of each team's logo, and went with UCONN because the Husky dog looked friendlier than the Bulldog.

See, mom and dad! Remember all of those times you used to tell me that potty humor would get me nowhere in life? You guys CLEARLY never filled out a March Madness bracket!

Thanks, kiddo! I'm already marking down this tactic for my bracket next year. http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/2-Year-Old-Smokes-NCAA-Bracket-119270829.html

Shaq's ex-mistress Vanessa Lopez is filing a harassment lawsuit against him, claiming that he had his sister and a friend "terrorize" her (and also trying to pad her defense by adding that he carries guns), all of this, a motion that Shaq is trying to have thrown out of court!

Vanessa is claiming that Shaq harassed her via "you better watch your back" kinda phone calls and text messages through his buddy Justin Zormelo and Shaq's 6'6" sister, Ayesha who threatened to get their other 6'8" sister, Latifah involved in a physical altercation with Vanessa! She says that all of this started after she threatened to actually tell Shaq's (then wife) Shaunie about the two of them, if the menacing phone calls did not stop!

She cites that the harassment began at the end of September 2009 when she told Shaq that she might be pregnant and continued into December 2009, so she filed her complaint in January 2010.  She's asking for damages in an unspecified amount

Per the official documents that were filed, Vanessa is claiming that Shaq used some extremely sophisticated software and proceeded to hack into her text messages and voice mails without her knowledge or consent. She says that not only did he know of the contents of private communications to and from Vanessa, but he also used spy technology to delete incriminating voice mails and text messages from her cell phone.

She claims that at that point, he was afraid that he couldn't control or trust her anymore, so that's when Shaq allegedly text messaged his "henchman" Justin Zormelo, saying (oh so eloquently), "'dis is da numba shut dat bitch up!'" providing Justin with her cell phone number.

"Mr. Zormelo responded by texting to O'Neal, 'consider it done famo.'"

The documents also claim that Shaq carries guns stating: "O'Neal is a large, powerful, wealthy man and a professional athlete and that he carries firearms from time to time." http://benmaller.com/2011/04/nba-star-accused-of-having-ex-mistress-terrorized/

The Houston Rockets' swingman Kevin Martin (and ninth leading scorer in the NBA right now) had his mansion repo-ed! His 5,000 square foot Sacramento area home was taken back by the bank after he failed to reach a deal on a short sale, since he went into default on his $1.5 million dollar home loan since back in June!

Kevin! You're making nearly $11,000,000 million this season in Houston, with salaries of over $11,500,000 and $12,400,000-ish coming your way through the 2012-2013 season! WTH!? Cut a mortgage payment check already, son! http://benmaller.com/2011/04/nba-stars-home-repossessed/

Boy, they're not kidding when they say that the "P" will cost a fella! The full cost of Tiger Woods' string of affairs has been revealed at more than $1,000,000 per mistress!

The Daily Record analyzed what Tiger's total losses have been from his whole scandal and this is what they found: He's lost about $36,000,000 as a direct result of losing his deal with Gatorade, AT&T, Gillette, and Tag. He's even had to (GASP) start paying for his own cars after GM pulled the plug on an agreement which allowed him free use of their cars! Add in the price tag for Tiger's divorce at just under $100,000,000 million, and that makes a total of about $136,000,000 million dollars—all for the sake of the "P."

And if you do the math with the above said number, divide it by all of the women, roughly 120 of them, that means each notch on his bed post cost him just over $1.1 million bucks!

But, don't worry about having to see Tiger under a highway overpass anytime soon. At $90,000,000 a year in income, he's still the highest-earning sportsman on the planet, despite sitting lower in golf's world rankings, and the only person from the world of any sport to make the top 10 of Forbes magazine's highest-earning celebrities… http://asia.eurosport.com/golf/%271m-a-mistress%27-for-tiger_sto2735176/story.shtml

And finally…

The ex-wife of pro golfer John Daly has released a new memoir, detailing everything that she saw as a golf wife and adamantly stating, "I HATE golf," after everything it put her through. (It looks like her and Elin REALLY need to get together and talk about this over some martinis or something)

Anyway, things are so racy in Sherrie's book, entitled, "Teed Off: My Life as a Player's Wife on the PGA Tour" that by page five, she's already talking about a charity golf event where she describes the last thing she expected to see in the golf world: two naked women prancing on the greens!

She said, "I thought I was marrying into a world of neatly pressed collared shirts when I married in the PGA; more like a world of dirty laundry. I thought I needed to be all prim and proper, but then I found out that this one used to be a stripper. Well, this one used to do this. Or this is the fifth wife or this is the third wife."

In a chapter called, "The 16^th Hole," she talks about how there were a couple cart girls who sold drinks and snacks to the members, all the while offering beejies in the bushes nearby.

Apparently, not all is lost though. She said she wrote the book for three reasons. 

The first was to clear her name for the day John accused her of stabbing him and then hit the golf course with marks on his face. Secondly, she goes into what really happened when she went to prison on a money laundering conviction, claiming, she did not know she was doing anything wrong. And she also wrote the book so her children could find peace, knowing that she really is a good mother at heart…

And oh yeah, and don't forget to thumb through the book's eight-page photo album spread of her life of private plane rides and 20-karat diamonds as well… http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=14381960

And THAT'S my "Jock Itch!"

 J