Our new athletic motto: Bigger, dirtier, nastier

Well, this week, we softy West Coasters showed 'em.

The rest of the country thinks all we do is sit on the beach, sipping drinks and working on our tan.

Laid-back, they call it.

Was Kobe's elbow to the chest of Ron Artest on Wednesday night laid-back?

How about Derek Fisher's cheap-shot, kamikaze takedown of Luis Scola? Put that in your pipe and smoke it back in Houston.

Our Ducks were ready for more against those Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night at the Honda Center. Tuesday night, one of the Detroit guys, Tomas Holmstrom, skated past a bent-over James Wisniewski, who had just taken a puck to the lung, and unloaded an elbow to his head. Just for good measure, apparently.

Well, our Ducks kicked some butt the rest of the way, won the game and were still fighting the Red Wings after the game ended. Gloves and sticks littered the ice as fans filtered out.

Then, about five minutes into Thursday night's game, Bobby Ryan found Detroit's Marian Hossa lingering behind the Ducks' net and lit him up. Hossa spent some time flat on his back and the Ducks' Chris Pronger got a penalty. Go figure. That's hockey.

All this makes us beach bums in the land of fruits and nuts proud. We get it.

Sports is no longer about flow or finesse. It's about flex. Show 'em your biceps and then use 'em. Our macho guys are more macho than yours. Thank heavens we don't have to watch wimps like Bob Cousy and Wayne Gretzky anymore.

This is the prickly time of the year in sports. Playoffs, baby. Nothing else matters but winning. The announcers talk about games "getting chippy," and "time to get physical" is just another way of saying it's the playoffs. Teams don't just play. They "send a message."

Sports can't just be competition, anymore. None of this may-the-best-team-win stuff. Forget shake-hands-when-it's-over. It needs to be nasty and noisy -- kind of like sports talk radio -- before the fans will buy it.

Some places want athletes. We want gladiators. This isn't a game. This is the Lions and the Christians. We've got a rallying cry: Bigger, Badder, Dirtier.

And guess what else? We can now cheat with the best, too. Sports used to be about talent. Now, it's about testosterone. And Thursday, we found out our Manny was being Manny around the pharmacy.

No way are we going to let guys like A-Rod dominate the headlines. Heck, our drugstores have ocean views. Take that, Big Apple.