Nothin' like a scotch-on-the-rocks to make up for a hard day at the office. On second thought, there isn't anything like it if you aren't drinking at a T.G.I. Fridays (or an establishment of similar repute) in New Jersey. If that is where you drink your scotch, there is indeed something like it, according to state officials: rubbing alcohol, caramel color, and water.

Bogus booze evidently flowed all over Jersey, straight from top-shelf bottles into the highballs and tumblers of investigators. Here's the A.P.:

At one bar, a mixture that included rubbing alcohol and caramel coloring was sold as scotch. In another, premium liquor bottles were refilled with water—and apparently not even clean water at that.

...

Operation Swill started after the state began receiving more complaints than usual about possibly mislabeled drinks, said the director of the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Michael Halfacre. An informant with knowledge of the industry contacted the agency in the fall to help in the investigation, he said.

In January and February, investigators went to 63 establishments they suspected were scamming liquor customers. They ordered drinks neat—that is, without ice or mixers—and then covertly took samples for testing.

Of 150 samples collected, 30 were not the brand as which they were being sold.

We'd say this is a good reason not to order premium liquor at T.G.I. Fridays, but, then again, if you were the type of person who needed a particularly compelling, government-endorsed data point to know not to order premium liquor at T.G.I. Fridays, you're probably not a person we can help.

[AP]

Image: stockcreations/Shutterstock.

Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Sean will join you shortly to talk about the baseball and hockey. Gab away.

H/T Joel.

The Jets lost running back Shonn Greene in free agency—he signed a three-year, $10 million contract in Tennessee—but they imagined they had found a perfect under-the-radar replacement, in the Raiders' Mike Goodson. Playing every so often, Goodson averaged 6.3 yards per carry. What's not to like? Plenty, actually, according to the New Jersey state police.

Goodson was stopped early this morning on I-80 West, where he was a passenger in an SUV. Police said he and the driver were intoxicated, evidently sufficiently enough that both were sent to a hospital before police processed them. Later, Goodson was hit with a bundle of charges: unlawful possession of a handgun, possession of a loaded handgun, possession of a hollow-point round, possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia. He's presently in jail in Morris County.

Will the Jets cut Goodson? Maybe. He's replaceable, and the team recently dumped two non-roster rookies who were arrested on simple marijuana possession charges. Hope Goodson hasn't already spent that $1.925 million signing bonus.

[@SethWalderNYDN]

When the Jets drafted Geno Smith, it gave them a whopping six quarterbacks. Six, in the absence of some uncharacteristic once-in-a-generation innovation springing forth from the mind of Marty Mornhinweg, was too many quarterbacks. So, to get to five, the Jets dumped Tim Tebow. And today there are four.

Veteran David Garrard told reporters and teammates today that he planned to depart the Jets; Garrard, who texted with SNY's Adam Schein, blamed his knee and says retirement will come shortly. Garrard had signed with the Jets—and passed a physical—in March. He was planning to compete for the starting job against Mark Sanchez and rookie Geno Smith, with Greg McElroy and Matt Simms around as possible backups.

While Garrard's departure does clear up the Jets' logjam, he's probably not the one the team wanted to lose. Garrard made his first NFL roster in 2002, so he had years of film study and game experience under his belt. With Garrard out, the most senior Jets quarterback is—ugh? really?—Sanchez.

Image via AP.

23-year-old Ravens linebacker Rolando McClain retired from the NFL today, general manager Ozzie Newsome announced. But McClain will not be known as a Raven. He signed there just a little more than a month ago. He will instead be remembered as one of the Raideriest Raiders that ever Raidered.

The Raiders picked McClain—a Crimson Tide standout who decided to forgo his senior year—eighth overall in the 2010 draft, right between Joe Haden and C.J. Spiller. The pick, wrote Mel Kiper then, was a slight reach, but McClain would be ready to play right away. "I love his instincts," Kiper wrote.

Those instincts! His first season passed without incident; he played in all but one game, racking up 73 tackles and helping Tom Cable's Raiders to an 8-8 finish. But then, a little less than a month after the final game, Rolando McClain's life back home took a strange turn. Here's the Decatur (Ala.) Daily:

Former University of Alabama football star Rolando McClain called Morgan County 911 to report being shot at while driving Thursday evening in Southwest Decatur, according to transcripts of the phone call and police.

"Someone shot at my car," he said in the 6:56 p.m. call. "Still got the bullet hole in it."

During the call, McClain, 21, said the shooters were "one of the families or whatever on Eighth (Avenue)," and that they were standing outside, not in a vehicle, when they shot at him.

This incident would soon become quaint by Rolando McClain standards, thanks to the pretty perp walk (above) in November 2011. McClain, police said, got in a fight with another man in Decatur. He allegedly aimed a gun at his counterpart's head, then—upon being begged not to shoot—pointed it another direction and fired. When police came to arrest him, he made that face. (Our readers later made fine Photoshops from it.) He had eight tackles in a game against Miami three days later.

What came next in McClainLand? Surprisingly, a bit of a quiet spell. The Raiders had brought in a defense-first coach, Dennis Allen, to replace Hue Jackson, who had replaced Tom Cable. (Nothing like Raider continuity!) Maybe McClain was trying to stay on Allen's good side and out of public attention? If that was his mission, it, uh, didn't really work. McClain squabbled with Allen at a practice in November 2012, and then he left the team's complex in a huff. He posted on Facebook, with glee, "Officially no longer an Oakland Raider!!" But it turned out he was still officially an Oakland Raider, albeit one who would be suspended for the next two games, and would not play in any of the team's final five.

Then another sublime arrest came in January 2013. McClain's old friends, the Decatur police, pulled him over for an illegal window tint. He produced a doctor's note to justify the tint, but they didn't buy it, and gave him a $187 ticket. He took the ticket and signed it, "Fuck Y'all." Police asked if that was his real name. He said yes, and they threw him in jail for providing a false name to an officer. A judge has since dismissed those charges.

In early April, the Raiders decided they were done with McClain. The team had signed former Dolphin Kevin Burnett, and, besides, Allen's 4-3 defense didn't call for a slow-footed situational run stopper. So they cut him. McClain soon signed with the Ravens, a team that just lost its slow run-stopper to retirement.

But McClain decided to get arrested once more for good measure: Decatur cops hit him with disorderly-conduct and resisting-arrest charges for screaming "Fuck the police!" in a crowd. Now he's decamping to Decatur for good, evidently so he can commit year-round to his feud with the police. He doesn't appear to realize he can't win, but, then again, he's 23. He's too young to give up on his dreams.

Jordany "Took a Spring Training Fastball Right To The Dick" Valdespin doesn't do a whole lot on the Mets. He doesn't walk, he can't play much defense, and he's hitting .235. He pinch-hits, with a start in center or at second every so often. He'll steal a base or hit a home run on a special day. But because these are the Mets, he is now the team's center of attention.

It all started on Friday night, after Shaun Marcum—as is his wont—had pitched the Mets into a deep hole against the Pirates. When Valdespin, who had entered the game as a defensive replacement, came up for his first at-bat in the ninth, the Mets trailed Pittsburgh 7-1. Then Valdespin did this, against Jose Contreras:

The consensus among the Pirates was that Valdespin stood there and admired his home run a bit too much for a five-run game. Why this is the Pirates' call to make mostly eludes me—they were, after Valdespin's moonshot, winning by five runs. One cannot really show one's opponent up when having one's snot kicked out by said opponent. But evidently they were mad.

So Saturday's game rolled around. Because the Mets' starting pitcher that day was not named Matt Harvey, as just one of the Mets' five starters is, the Mets trailed Pittsburgh 10-1 in the seventh inning. Manager Terry Collins was looking for someone to bat for LaTroy Hawkins (who happens to be, if you haven't followed this clusterfuck of a season, the team's best setup man, despite being 40 years old and having an 89 mile-per-hour fastball straighter than Warren Beatty). Collins chose Valdespin.

Valdespin, according to Andy Martino's Tuesday dispatch for the Daily News, told the team's trainer to tell Collins that he wasn't healthy enough to hit, presumably because he didn't want to get hit. When he finally stepped to the plate, he wore a new piece of elbow padding. And, sure enough, a Pirate pitcher drilled him in the forearm. Valdespin stared down the pitcher, then went to first. Once he was back in the dugout, he threw his helmet and looked around for support from his teammates (GIF here). He didn't get any. Then he declined to speak to the media after the game, which just prompted the media to chase him further. And so Martino nabbed this bit from a not-so-felicitous clubhouse source:

Oh, and there was one more thing. Before Valdespin left the ballpark on Saturday, teammate Juan Lagares asked him for a ride home, according to a clubhouse source. Ever since Lagares arrived from the minor leagues on April 23, Valdespin has tried to force the outfielder to fetch him coffee and run other minor errands that rookies are often asked to perform for veterans, according to that same source (last year, Valdespin made enemies by demanding, unsuccessfully, that veterans buy him clothing).

Because Valdespin has himself only been in the major leagues since 2012, Lagares has at times refused to comply with his demands. So on Saturday, Valdespin said no, he would not give Lagares a ride home. Fortunately, Ruben Tejada volunteered.

Yes, you read that correctly. Where the Mets of recent history had rookie-veteran debates between super-phenom Lastings Milledge and all-star closer Billy Wagner, these Mets have the same fights between Jordany Valdespin, a part-time outfielder hitting .235, and Juan Lagares, a part-time outfielder hitting .139.

Valdespin's only support came from fans, who—understandably—thought there was something wicked in Collins sending him up on Saturday to get plunked. But Collins doesn't listen to fans! “I don’t answer to fans. They don’t play this game,” he said Tuesday night. "They have no idea what goes on. They have no idea what goes on in there. They have absolutely no idea what it means to be a professional teammate at this level." (Does Collins? He never made the bigs. And his last winning season as a manager came in 1998.)

So why not cut Valdespin, then? Well, the team is on a 4-13 skid, fielding a bad lineup—think "John Buck, who is hitting .125/.222/.219 in his last nine games, and Ike Davis, who is hitting .169/.261/.288 overall, sharing the cleanup spot" bad—and enraging any fan docile enough to keep watching its games. Valdespin is, remarkably, one of the team's better hitters, and one of its most exciting presences. Maybe the kid is a distraction, but he's distracting from a tire fire. Did we mention top pitching prospect Zack Wheeler flew to New York yesterday? A call-up, perhaps? Not quite. He's there to undergo a doctor's evaluation after soreness in his clavicle. Another great day in the great history of a great franchise.

New details of weekend drama involving NY Mets' Jordany Valdespin [Daily News]

So we know who made up the class of 2013 at the Baseball Hall of Fame: no one. Well, OK, the veterans committee voted in Hank O'Day, Col. Jacob Ruppert, and Deacon White. But they all died in the 1930s; we wouldn't expect much in the way of induction speeches.

But the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals, the next best thing, did induct a handful of new members. On this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, Stefan Fatsis runs down the incoming class (Manny Mota, a member, is pictured above) and its qualifications.

You can listen to the full podcast here or subscribe on iTunes.

Columbia football appears to be way worse than we all thought it was.

Students at Columbia long ago came to understand that the school's football team would not win. The Lions lost 44 straight games in the 1980s. In their last seven seasons, they have gone 15-45, with a 10-32 record in the Ivy League. That is awful.

The team's losing tendencies, though, had an oddly reassuring effect: Columbia appeared as though it had buried itself too deep in its books to fret about football. Football seemed to be, rather amazingly, not cool enough for school. The Lions had presumably surrendered the Ivy League arms race to Harvard and Penn to focus on The Republic.

Events late Tuesday, though, began to pop this happy delusion. NBC broke the news that New York police had charged sophomore defensive end Chad Washington with aggravated harassment as a hate crime. According to police, Washington and a group of friends taunted an Asian student with racial slurs before Washington pinned the victim against a wall.

The charges against Washington didn't sting the team as much as did a gaggle of player tweets unearthed on Wednesday by WKCR, the campus radio station. (Those charged with crimes are innocent until proven guilty, after all, and one allegedly wayward football player does not necessarily condemn the whole team.) Lots of team members tweeted lots of stupid, bigoted things, on accounts that have since been deleted or made private. Many of these accounts, naturally, were followed by the official team account, which has been silent since Tuesday.

You can read WKCR's whole Twitter collection here, if you're so inclined, but we'll pass along a few representative hits. An offensive lineman retweeted an article about New York's growing Jewish population with the hashtag "fuckkkkkk." A running back tweeted, "You show me a nigga that takes a bath and I'll show you a faggot." The former quarterback and team captain replied to another with "shut up fagasaurus rex." And Washington himself tweeted, "When Asian ppl fall alseep in class the teachers can't tell! Lol." Lol indeed. The lesson here, as always: People, even—or especially?—bad Ivy League football players, can be terrible and dumb.

Image from Getty c. 1950, which was the last time a national photography service bothered to send anyone to a Columbia football game.

Saturday's UFC card featured one helluva beatdown: Jon "Bones" Jones turned Chael Sonnen into a bloody mess. But at least Sonnen was ready for what eventually hit him.

On this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, Josh Levin tells the story of Fred Ettish, a novice who had to step in and fight at UFC 2 in 1994. It did not go well. (He is, for example, not the black guy in the above photo.) But Ettish eventually redeemed himself.

You can listen to the full podcast here or subscribe on iTunes.

It's been nearly a week since the Jets selected Geno Smith in the second round of the draft. I bet it's been a sleepy seven days for him, as it would be for any other quarterback who joined the Jets. Let's check today's press clippings:

At least one quarterback-needy team in the top 10 passed on him because of the diva attitude he displayed in a pre-draft visit, according to a league source.

After falling out of the first round, the former West Virginia star threatened to leave the draft and go home. He dropped to the second round and responded by firing his agents, sparking another firestorm of criticism.

"He's going to have a tough time in New York," an NFC scout said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Right now, he's coming off as a spoiled, pampered brat."

Let's pause here to note this: An NFL scout—who is tasked with watching tape and timing 40-yard dashes and measuring 22-year-olds' arms to determine their future potential—is delivering the same assessment of Geno Smith because he fired his agents and thought about leaving New York after a particularly upsetting night. (Please: one who has never thought about leaving New York after a particularly upsetting night has never really been to New York.) Good work, guy. Moving on.

Leading into the draft, word spread that Smith was preoccupied with his cell phone during pre-draft visits, texting friends and checking Twitter during meetings with team officials, as first reported by Yahoo! Sports. ...

A league source confirmed the report. In fact, an official from one team — not a team that visited with Smith — said the cell-phone episode was mentioned and discussed in its draft room while evaluating Smith.

You got that? Competing NFL teams were apparently so spellbound by Smith's cellphone-related aloofness that they had to call each other and talk about it. Scouting reports and interviews are secret, except this one.

Surely the Jets did not get that call. If they had, they would have stayed miles and miles away from Smith, the scoundrel who dared check his phone during long interviews with sweaty, bellowing, inarticulate men. Maybe they misfiled something in the computer system and assumed they had drafted a leader, one who could marshal his superior physical gifts and mental dexterity into football success. Maybe they were reading these scouting reports:

Is regarded as an excellent leader who takes command of the team and leaves no doubt he's in charge. Shows maturity, confidence and intelligence.

Ascending talent whose intangibles for the position are just as impressive as his physical tools. Cerebral player. ... Team captain. Blue-collar work ethic...

An outstanding competitor and has been his whole life. ... He is a tremendous team player who does a great job of leading his teammates and keeping everyone involved. Mental game is outstanding; he prepares well and reads defenses exceptionally.

In other words, the 2009 scouting reports for Mark Sanchez. Who ranked 36th out of 36 quarterbacks in Total QBR in 2012. Something tells me Geno Smith will be just fine.

Geno Smith's maturity questioned [ESPN New York]

Uh, that's the point, guys. The AP story also contains this quote:

Sarah Lee, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mom from Osceola, Ind., [said]: "I think we as a people make race out to be a bigger issue than it is."

[ESPN]

What should you do when your employers basically make it apparent that you are unqualified to hold the job you currently have? (The Jets have unquestionably done this, by drafting Geno Smith, and signing David Garrard, and starting Greg McElroy, and generally by treating Sanchez like a lingering fart.) Dress like you have another job, of course.

Sanchez, with his long hair and headband tying it all back, could easily be a whiny midfielder somewhere. Heck, I know where. Red Bull Arena's just a quick ride on I-280 from Florham Park, where the Jets train. John Idzik might even spring for cab fare.

Photo via Kristian Dyer.

Move over, Robert Swift! There's a new ex-NBA big man in... a house he probably shouldn't be in. Today's is Chris Gatling, who played for eight teams from 1991 to 2002, and was even an all-star in 1997 with the Mavericks.

He is apparently living, such as it is, in Paradise Valley, Ariz., now. We'll let the Arizona Republic take over from here:

A former NBA All-Star is facing several criminal charges after police said he squatted in a Paradise Valley home and then tried to list the place for rent on Craigslist.

Chris Gatling is accused of breaking into a key box and living in the home from July 2010 to August 2011. A police report says the homeowners lived in California but had left the power on.

The TV station reports that he later listed the four-bedroom house for rent for $800 and called it an “Ex-NBA” home online.

Gatling's lawyer told the paper it was all a misunderstanding, and we're inclined to believe him. After all, if Gatling had been behind the listing, he obviously would have mentioned his all-star appearance. "Ex-NBA" could basically be anyone.

Ex-NBA All-Star accused of squatting in Paradise Valley home [Arizona Republic, h/t Brad]