No Name Given: I know it was a long weekend, but NOTHING to say about one of the most exciting Indy 500s in years? Nothing? Come on . . .

Indy 500: Tragically undercovered sports event. Bonds' 715th: Ditto.

I'm a one-person sports department. I'm sorry but I can't cover everything. I also didn't write about the college lacrosse final four or the NHL playoffs this weekend. Also, there were many baseball games.

I don't mean to sound defensive, but you can't look to this column as your sports page, with complete coverage. Michael Wilbon wrote about basketball yesterday. Did you write him and ask why nothing on the Indy 500?

Joe Smith real name I had been eagerly awaiting your usual brand of sly, incisive commentary regarding this "milestone" in baseball history [Barry Bonds' 715th] upon your return today. Why no comment?

Everyone's an assignment editor.

Because I felt like I said my piece on it last week and didn't have anything to add. I live by a creed I picked up from a Tom Lehrer record: If you don't have anything to say, the least you can do is to shut up.

I am operating under the assumption that you are physically based in San Francisco at the Salon head office down in Legoland on Spear Street, and/or work from home somewhere in the Bay Area - please correct me if I'm wrong.

As another letter writer pointed out, you're wrong. I lived in San Francisco for a long time, but I now live and work in St. Louis.

I can only assume that your corporate overlords (mostly refugees from the late, lamented, pre-Fang SF Examiner, as I recall) have issued the order to muzzle Salon's writers regarding negative commentary on Mr. Bonds' latest, um, achievement

No. The boss, Joan Walsh, has no connection to the old Examiner other than having written a few freelance pieces for the magazine I think, not that that the old Examiner has anything to do with anything, and while she's a Giants fan (as am I) and has her own conflicted feelings about Bonds and the whole deal, she has not ordered me to do or not do anything on the subject. Nor has anyone else. Neither have any other corporate overlords, at least as far as I know. One of the corporate overlords lent me a playpen a few weeks ago when the family visited S.F. They're a pretty ruthless bunch.

And despite being located mere steps from Your Call Is Very Important to Us Please Hold Park, Salon has no corporate interest in Barry Bonds or the Giants, one way or the other.

that, or you, too, have ingested the grape Flav-R-Aid and gone native with the rest of today's San Franciscans, whose loyalties shift with the breezes off the Bay and where the moral soil is a mile wide and an inch long (oops! I mean "deep").

Well that's true. As regular readers know, I am a straight-up Bonds apologist who never has anything negative to say about him.

No worries.

You know, five years in the STL and I've still never been to Branson.

You're thinking of Joan Ryan writing a sports column at the Ex, not Joan Walsh. Ryan is still a columnist, though no longer writing sports. I believe she went to the Chronicle before the merger, but I don't remember.

was that if you can't communicate, the least you could do is shut up.

Shut up, he explained.

True. Well, I adopted my philosophy from it all the same.

That the first letter today would be a complaint about no mention of the basketball game. I just knew. Thanks for the great sarcastic (I hope) letter, JiD.

Lyle Bateman These are professional atheletes we are talking about here, men who have spent decades of their lives learning to control that puck with their sticks at the highest level. In nearly every case, unless the puck hits another player, it goes precisely where the player inteneded it to go.

And that, folks, is why shots never go wide of the net!

David from Raleigh Edmonton had the 14th best record in the league (or so they said on OLN), and the Canes had the 3rd best. So instead of West Coast bias, why not pick the Canes cuz, you know, they're better?

Why would I pick someone just because they're better? No fun. Besides, I'm not sure they are. Edmonton's playing really well right now. They also come from a much tougher conference and played a much tougher schedule than Carolina. I'm not saying Carolina's not better. I'm just saying I'm not impressed by their superior regular-season record.

And in fact, neither should you be. Weren't you the one who ran down the list of all the upsets in these playoffs? Isn't a logical conclusion that regular-season records are not a great predictor of postseason success?

Speaking of bias, am I paranoid, or were the OLN announcers Buffalo homers?

They didn't strike me that way. Anyone? The Sabres were kind of the more interesting story for the night, because they were so short-handed.