There are any number of people within sports who heap shame upon their families every time they leave the house. This season, however, baseball more or less found itself in the clear: no high-profile steroid busts, no Clemens re-un-reverse-retirements, no players smacking around their wives in full view of 50 Red Sox fans.

Ah, but there's still despair and intellectual/moral/emotional rot for those who dare to track it down. The race for sixth place starts behind these five entities.

The Seattle Mariners
You can almost—almost—forgive the Yankees this year's failure; they can blame a chunk of it on injuries and the rest on A-Rod. But the Mariners opened the season with a $118 million payroll, including $22.5 million in commitments to the since-released Richie Sexson and Jose Vidro. Along the way, they axed their manager and GM, and finished 61–101 (.377). Seattle boasts tasty seafood and gentile citizens who, charmingly, stop when the street signal starts blinking, but the city has become the Baltimore of professional sports.

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Maybe it’s the summer heat, or maybe they figure that we’re all too revved up about fantasy football to concern ourselves with baseball silliness. But man, this was the dumbest week for baseball dummies in some dumb time. Here are your most flagrant offenders.

Melky Cabrera, New York Yankees
There's plenty to dislike about Yankees fans: the sense of entitlement, the pink replica caps and jerseys, the stubborn refusal to admit that A-Rod is 32 times the player Derek Jeter is, etc. But one of the truly great Yankee Stadium traditions is the first-inning “roll call": fans in Section 39 chant each starter’s name, followed by a quick wave from said starter. On Tuesday night, Melky Cabrera took this tradition a bit too seriously, responding to the fans during a play and promptly kicking the ball for an error. IDJIT.

Jim Bowden, Washington Nationals
As the July 31 trade deadline approached, it seemed there would be a mere three or four legit relievers on the market: Colorado’s Brian Fuentes (zesty!), Pittsburgh’s Damaso Marte (mysterious!), Atlanta’s Will Ohman (oh-some!), and Washington’s Jon Rauch (tall!). Bowden, who controlled the destiny of the latter, didn’t see it this way. He struck way early, sending Rauch, his top-20-reliever bona fides, and his cheapie-pants contract to Arizona for minor-leaguer Emilio Bonifacio, who ain’t especially young (23) or proficient at any one thing (he’s fast, yet has been thrown out on eight of his 25 steal attempts... in triple-friggin’-A). Why can’t we lure guys like Bowden into our big-money rotisserie leagues? Every cellar needs a dweller. MORON.

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