Here, courtesy of Rick Telander and his colleagues in the Chicago sports media, is a nice little primer on how to whip up a good old-fashioned hysteria out of nothing whatsoever.

Follow the bouncing ball: In his column today, Rick Telander defends wee Chicago Cub Ryan Theriot against totally nonexistent suspicions of 'roiding, just so he can mewl inanely about a culture ("this is what baseball has wrought") in which even wee Ryan Theriot is a suspect, even though wee Ryan Theriot wasn't a suspect until Rick Telander said he was. And then the bloodhounds in the Chicago sporting press have to go and ask Theriot about being a suspect, which he wasn't until Rick Telander said he was. And then Theriot has to deny everything and pronounce himself "disappointed" with the column, which of course just makes him look all the more suspicious, something he wasn't until Rick Telander said he was.

What has Rick Telander wrought?

(And, yes, yes, there's this, which is headslappingly stupid and which any professional sportswriter worth his collection of Polo shirts would treat as the equivalent of a YouTube comment. Right, Rick? Right??)

Small hitter, big problem [Chicago Sun-Times]
Theriot ‘disappointed' with Telander's steroid column [Chicago Sun-Times]
Theriot responds to being named steroids 'suspect' [Chicago Tribune]

Send an email to Tommy Craggs, the author of this post, at craggs@deadspin.com.