Who Wants to Talk to Morgan Ensberg?

With November comes several certainties...Ichiro Suzuki will bring home another Gold Glove, bad Thanksgiving Day football and thousands of men across the country grow out their upper lip garments to help raise money and awareness for prostate cancer.

Now, you might be thinking..."I get the lame Ichiro and football references, but what's the deal with the 'lip garment' mention".

In short, it's Movember.

Last week, good friend of The Hall, Dr. Aaron Perlut of the esteemed American Mustache Institute caught up with Washington Nationals pitcher Collin Balester and shouted from the mountain top his Movember efforts.

Another big leaguer taking part in the annual celebration of the 'stache is former All Star Morgan Ensberg.  The former Houston Astros third baseman laid out a proposition to his more than three thousand followers on Twitter.

Anyone who donates a $100 bucks or more gets a phone call! Any takers?

Within minutes, Ensberg had a taker.  But who knows...drop by his Mo Space page and donate another Franklin and see what happens.

I mean, donating to a great cause and getting a call from a Morgan Ensberg has to be better than dropping money calling Jose Canseco and hearing him flex and name drop his girlfriend for twenty minutes.

Alex Rodriguez and "The Unwritten Rulebook"

There's been way too much talk about Alex Rodriguez breaking one of baseball's "unwritten rule" the other night when, after a long foul ball, he crossed the diamond, walked over the mound and stepped on the pitching rubber.

Was it intentional?

Probably.

Was he trying to intimidate Oakland pitcher Dallas Braden?

Maybe...who knows.

Truth is, you can never be sure with Rodriguez. This is the same guy who, during Game Six of the 2004 American League Championship Series swatted away Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo's mitt and played it off like it never happened.

Three years later, he made noise again (literally) in Toronto when, during an infield pop up, he shouted in the direction of the Blue Jays infielder who was trying to make the play.

What were his intentions with all of that? I'm not sure.

Thanks to Selena Roberts and her 2009 Sports Illustrated story, we know that Rodriguez is a guy who will do anything he can to gain an edge on his opponent. And here's one thing I know for sure, when "A-Rod" is involved...the shortest distance between two points isn't always a straight line.

Former All-Star third baseman and friend of The Hall Morgan Ensberg took to his website recently to clue readers in on the so-called "unwritten rules" of baseball.

"Understand that what I am doing is going to bother a lot of players. But it is time for you to see this," Ensberg wrote for his readers. "You will notice that the rules are presented in outline form."

Take a gander at the "The Unwritten Rulebook" HERE.

Former All-Star Talks Steroids, "Greenies"

Thanks to Jose Canseco’s bestselling book Juiced and its follow up “The Mitchell Report”, Major League Baseball may never get out from under the steroid cloud.

It seems that virtually every lengthy discussion about baseball ends up touching upon performance enhancing drugs.

That being said…I’ve never had the cajones to, in all my dealings with baseball players (past and present), ask anyone flat out if THEY did anything illegal.

I guess that’s where the anonymity of the internet comes in.

Over at Morgan Ensberg’s blog, “Stuart” threw out the following question: “Did you use PED’s and did you see others using them? A simple yes or no will not do.”

Yikes! Pretty ballsy “Stuart”.

More ballsy however…the former All-Star’s reply.

Stuart I am pumped up that you asked me that! I didn’t use steroids or anything else that helped build muscle.

The only thing I saw in the clubhouse was “greenies” which I have done about 10 times. Greenies are basically “uppers” and they didn’t do anything to me. I am not sure if that is a good thing.

I drink a ton of coffee and would drink something like 2 redbulls before a game if I felt sluggish.

I always use this analogy. In Hermosa Beach, where I grew up, there were a bunch of kids who smoked weed. I was asked if I wanted to smoke, but I said no and that was the end of it.

I eventually smoked in college about 30 times and I liked it. But I noticed that it made me eat a lot and I didn’t need any help in that department.

Back to the point, I didn’t smoke so I wasn’t in “that club”. If you are not in the group then you have no idea what guys are doing it. The same thing happened in college with cocaine. I have never done cocaine, but some of my buddies did and I had no idea. I just thought that they were really hyper.

My opinion is this. I can’t fault anyone for doing steroids because they are trying to do everything they can to get to the big leagues. I played in the Dominican and Venezuela and nothing you say will change my opinion on a guy making a decision to feed his family. This isn’t apples and apples.

I don’t even think that those guys who did do steroids pushed me out of the game. I had the ability to play the game at the highest level and that is really cool to me.

Amazing. An honest reply from a Major Leaguer to a fan.

In a time where agents and career politicking sometimes gets in the way…it’s refreshing to see Ensberg’s opinion on things.

Plus, dude’s got the makings of a decent site.

Check it out!