We’re already a day beyond the time frame for “second day” stories — those ostensibly deeper, more analytical reactions to already-broken news — on the Sammy Sosa steroid deal. There have been a lot of them since the Sosa story emerged on Tuesday, some good, some bad, but mostly rote recitations of the usual outraged lines. (I did a roundup of these in my gig at the Daily Fix on Wednesday, including a link back to the very excellent post by the Cubs-affiliated co-head of CSTB’s Chicago Bureau) So Yahoo’s Tim Brown had his work cut out for him in writing yet another column about Sosa’s alleged juicery.

But Brown is a professional columnist and presumably also a newshound who knows that we as a nation have lately had no problems at all with well-armed lone wolf vigilantes doing dumb shit, so it probably wasn’t much work for him to find a new angle on this one. Yeah, his broader point — the players deserve this, so don’t give him any weepy pussy ACLU shit about their right to privacy — isn’t new. But as far as I can tell, he’s the only columnist to 1) describe the guy leaking confidential personal information from within the US Attorney’s office as a “hero” and 2) to then pick the appropriately heroic metaphor of a fucking vigilante sniper picking people off on the ground below. “We got somebody on the roof,” he writes, “and personally I hope he stays up there awhile.”

Along comes Sosa. First, of course, he™d testified before Congress that he™d never taken performance-enhancing drugs. That was four years ago. OK, fine. He retired, for good this time, and went away. Then, this, according to ESPN, barely more than a week ago: œEverything I achieved, I did it thanks to my perseverance, which is why I never had any long, difficult moments [as a baseball player]. ¦ I will calmly wait for my induction to the baseball Hall of Fame. Don™t I have the numbers to be inducted?

Apparently, the last part was more than our snitch was willing to bear.

Bang.

…The next 102 names “ revealed in one big splash or over five years or longer “ aren™t the whole list of drug users, of course, not even close. But, they™d do, no different than the Mitchell Report, no different than the random drug test that nabbed Manny Ramirez. Taken one at a time, they™re mostly meaningless. Put them together and we get a little closer.

I don™t know why our hero took up a position in the clock tower. Maybe to defend the game. Maybe just for the sport of it. The players on the list surely can appreciate that. They were sportsmen once, before they found their chemical shortcuts.

And now they are targets for headshots. You know who writes things like “our hero took up a position in the clock tower?” Nobody. Or nobody who doesn’t want to seem like a scary kook.