By Jeff Moss and Justin Spiro
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
April 27, 2016

If you have been a reader of this website for any period of time, you have probably noticed that it’s not like many other places on the Internet. Hell, I am not sure there is anything quite like it in any other sports town in America.

It’s run by two people who basically don’t give two fucks, Justin Spiro and myself. It wasn’t created so we could get a real gig in the media. We don’t make cash on it and, in fact, it’s a real money pit. For 13 years we have reported on the Detroit sports teams and the people who cover them in an uncompromising way in a city that really doesn’t care for our overall tone.

I’ve been told personally by everyone from Mike Valenti to Tom Kowalski to Michael Stone that if I just became more mainstream and softened the edges that the DSR could be huge. I have completely ignored that advice because that is neither who I am nor what I want this place to be about.

I’d die hungry before compromising on what I feel is the integrity of the DetroitSportsRag. I am not looking to make friends. The site attempts to keep the four professional sports teams in Detroit accountable while birddogging the mostly horrendous media assigned, or, in some cases, paid to report on them.

By entering this bargain, I knew, and to this day STILL know that most people are going to despise the DSR and hate me personally. I don’t give a flying fuck if 85% of this city wants me dead while the other 15% who even know this website exists hang on our every word.

If I wanted everyone in this ass-backward provincial town to love me, I could have either created a superfluous website like Bless You Boys that slurped up the Detroit Tigers or become a cheerleading fanboy like George Malik with the Wings.

I could have sold my soul to the devil over a decade ago and changed my persona to get an actual radio gig so I could spew nonsense on the radio like “the Red Wings should trade for Connor McDavid“; defend Jonathan Ericsson; and label Justin Abdelkader “untouchable” like that walking, talking coronary Scott “The Virgin Manatee” Anderson did on his show last week.

But that ain’t me, folks. I fully accept the criticism I receive on various social media platforms from people who are WILLING TO PUT THEIR OWN NAME on the crap they say about this website.

What we will not tolerate is the cowardly attacks we receive on a daily basis from ANONYMOUS piles of horse shit who create fake accounts and aliases to rip on the DSR.

So consider this article to be both a cautionary tale and a warning to anyone who would like to continue lying about our work on this website or anyone who decides it’s a good idea to take personal jabs at Spiro or me while cloaked in a veil of anonymity.

We aren’t going to tolerate it and we will use all our contributors to seek you out and humiliate you if you decide to fuck with us. As I said the other night on Twitter, if you come at us, you had better be prepared to get hit back 1,000 times harder because I went to the Howard Stern and state of Israel school of retaliation.

Anonymously throw a rock at the DSR and expect to get a nuclear bomb dropped on your head in return.

And if you don’t think we are serious, here are a couple of RECENT examples of our insanity.

Hell, the first example didn’t even directly involve the DSR — and it wasn’t really anonymous — but we went into attack mode anyway. Some shitbag in St. Louis decided it would be a good idea to respond to a national reporter’s Tweet that former Red Wing Vladimir Konstantinov was watching his old team take warmups before a recent playoff game.

This is what some dipshit Blues fan posted in response ….

Forget for a moment that Vlady is neither paralyzed nor an invalid, he’s suffering from brain damage due to the limousine accident that took place almost 19 years ago. But this wasn’t Allen Schneider’s only post on the subject. He doubled down moments later by saying Konstantinov deserved the accident because he was a dirty hockey player and that Richard Gnida entering his life was KARMA.

Within minutes, the DSR tracked down this imbecile’s Facebook account and discovered where he worked. Well, Allen Schneider just happened to be employed as a medical staff supervisor at CHRISTIAN HOSPITAL in St. Louis.

Yep, a supervisor at a hospital was hopeful that #16 would “remain a paralyzed invalid” for the rest of his life. You can’t make this shit up.

So we decided to out this asshat by posting both his place of employment and his contact information. It didn’t take five minutes for him to switch his Twitter account to “protected” and to change his avatar to a picture of a dog instead of him and his son. Oh, he also took down his Facebook page.

And like all of the losers we eventually out, to get the hounds to cease their attack, he claimed it was a joke. Let’s just say I am very happy to take credit for Allen Schneider from St. Louis having a 48-hour rough patch.

What occurred over the weekend was more representative of the anonymous bullshit that we will not tolerate. Over the weekend, Spiro was in contact with his Tigers source and discovered that Mike Ilitch is already losing patience with Brad Ausmus.

Spiro was basically told that if this team continues to flounder and falls four or five games under .500, the plug that Ilitch wanted to pull last summer will be yanked and Al Avila will no longer be able to keep Ausmus employed.

So Spiro Tweeted that information out which, predictably, was met with retorts that Spiro was making things up because his original report last August that Ausmus was gone didn’t come to fruition.

Never mind that the Freep and WDIV had reported the same thing weeks later, which would tell anyone with intelligence that Spiro’s original story wasn’t wrong but that THINGS HAD CHANGED.

Anyway, some anonymous jerkoff starts accusing the DSR of always being wrong and claims that we delete erroneous reports. Which of course has NEVER occurred in the thirteen year history of the website.

When Spiro asked for an example of a deleted DSR article, the cowardly critic ignored the question and proceeded to call @DarkoStateNews a barrage of names. Of course, the issue is not the name calling but the false accusations of editorial impropriety by an anonymous moron. Spiro began ripping the guy for his embarrassingly pussy-whipped Tweets about his wife, which was quickly interpreted as an attack on the wife herself, and we were off.

Soon, the anonymous critic was joined by a parade of like-minded DSR haters, NONE of whom used their actual names in the various exchanges. One of them was “@MorningClinkers”, later revealed to be 23-year-old Jeff Sparks of Grosse Pointe, who posted a picture of Spiro’s wife and insulted her physical appearance.

Spiro politely requested the real name of “MorningClinkers”, but was mocked by Sparks for asking. Had Sparks revealed his true identity to Spiro, the DSR’s Managing Editor would have simply blasted the guy in the conversation and moved on. Sparks’ decision to taunt Spiro about the former’s anonymity launched a DSR investigation that revealed much about Sparks.

We present some of Sparks’ social media behavior without comment. You can judge the content from this Detroit Tigers grounds crew member on your own:

And this deleted Vine ……

Keep in mind that the Vine was up until the DSR discovered it.

So after this dipshit taunted Spiro about his anonymity and was discovered to have posted EXTREMELY racially offensive social media missives, he contacted Justin with the following message:

And then this …..

Suicide threats? Come on, man. What happened to the tough guy who was mocking my physical appearance and ridiculing Spiro’s WIFE when he thought nobody would identify him as Jeff Sparks?

Lastly, I received the very rare apology/threat of litigation from Sparks — which was obviously ghost-written by an attorney. I doubt this social media warrior has LexisNexis and is familiar with case law ….

We have been threatened with litigation by the DETROIT NEWS and other powerful people. Does this douche bag really think that I am going to be scared off by this email?

And if he didn’t do anything wrong, why has he since deleted his social media footprint?

We have five attorneys reviewing everything we do — some at the most prestigious law firms in the state — which is how we have been doing this for 13 years without having been sued. Ever.

It’s amazing how these DSR haters all of a sudden discover contrition when they are no longer Internet Ghosts. And trust me, if Sparks were still invisible, he’d still be bombing us under the veil of secrecy just like this lunatic …..

This insane EGG’s Tweets about my wife’s fallopian tubes do not bother me. Even if they did I would not address it. And how the fuck does anyone know about this issue in the first place? Oh right, because I have mentioned it both in my articles and on the podcast. I am guessing that if it bothered me I wouldn’t have mentioned it to my audience.

But this particular coward’s Tweets directed at Terry Foster are disgusting and abhorrent.

Now, we don’t like Terry Foster. We’ve spent two decades mocking this moron because of his awful sports takes and failed business ventures. But what we haven’t done is target his UNDERAGED daughter with sexually suggestive texts …..

Keep in mind that Foster’s daughter is in HIGH SCHOOL and like 16 or 17 years old. What kind of sick pederast Tweets crap in this fashion about a teenager?

Well, hopefully we will find out. The DSR is offering a $1,000.00 reward to any reader who provides us with definitive evidence of this psychopath’s identity.

And if we ever discover who “JeffMossCantHaveKids” is, it will get very ugly for this shitbag.

And if this gutless wonder doesn’t believe us …. just ask Jeff Sparks.

$1,000.00.

Bounty.

Where’s Boba Fett when you need him?

This website has been around since 2003 and we’ve bombed people, said nasty shit and offended plenty of people.

But we’ve ALWAYS done it under our OWN NAMES and faced the music in person to some of those we have attacked.

Time to crack these eggs wide open.