GIANTS 77-60 ... Dropped an eminently winnable series.
Los Angeles 73-65 4.5 GB How long can this charity go on?
Yesterday
Giants lost to Arizona again, 6-2.
LA "kept pace" by losing to San Diego again, 4-3.
Today
Both teams have the day off as the Dodgers fly north to begin a three-game series at the 'Bell starting tomorrow night.
Last Night's Game
"Losing ugly" comes in many forms, and last night the Giants did their best to offer as much variety as they could. We had the normally jolly Pablo Sandoval exploding in confrontational rage after a tight play at third. Xavier Nady limped off the field with a hamstring injury that may land him on the DL. Trevor Cahill no-hit the Giants through six. Madison Bumgarner turned in the team's fourth straight substandard start, and lost his tenth decision. It all added up to a series lost that ought to have been won. Highlights were few; Brandon Belt drove in both runs with one of the Giants' two hits, but ultimately all that did was get Cahill out of there in favor of three relievers who gave us bupkus. Bumgarner, for his part, wasn't awful, although he wasn't all that good either. Trailing 2-0 in the seventh, he allowed two one-out hits and another run, and was pulled in favor of Jean Machi, who surrendered three runs on three straight hits to decide the ballgame.
Notes
Joaquin Arias, Ryan Theriot, and Belt have all been mentioned as replacement left fielders with Nady sidelined. Using Belt might get Hector Sanchez in on a regular basis, with Buster Posey likely to man first base... Angel Pagan is hitting .200 with four walks in 45 at-bats (.265 OBP) over the last ten games. It may be time to move him down to sixth again; that's where he was when he got hot... Over the same period Belt is at .379, though he's only drawn one walk, but who bats their first baseman leadoff? Gotta love that peer pressure... Aubrey Huff also might see a larger role if Belt moves to left, and how great would it be if he had a memorable September after all that's happened to him since 2010... We still think Gregor Blanco can play, but it's what Bruce Bochy thinks that counts.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
GIANTS 77-59 ... Last three starts a worrying trend.
Los Angeles 73-64 4.5 GB Haven't gained a game in weeks.
Yesterday
Giants lost to Arizona, 8-6, in eleven innings.
LA obligingly lost to San Diego, 6-3, also in 11 innings.
Today
Giants finish up with Arizona; 7:15 start. Madison Bumgarner takes the baton in search of his fifteenth win.
LA conclude the San Diego series, then get ready to fly north.
Last Night's Game
Bruce Bochy's pitching merry-go-'round may have reached its apotheosis last night, or more likely that's just wishful thinking. Ten-- count 'em, ten-- relievers paraded across the stage in support of Ryan Vogelsong, who surrendered six runs before being yanked with one out in the fourth. Three names you may not know-- Dan Otero, Shane Loux, and Jose Mijares-- safely guided the way through the seventh, giving the Giants a chance to rally and tie it up. But in the can't-stand-prosperity department, it took three more pitchers-- Jean Machi, Jeremy Affeldt, and finally Santiago Casilla-- just to get through the eighth. Then Sergio Romo was Da Man in the ninth and tenth, getting six straight outs, but in the tenth it fell upon Javier Lopez, whose whole season has been a struggle. Coming in with one on and one out, facing Jason Kubel in one of those lefty-lefty situations "Boch" loves, Lopez gave up a triple and, later, an RBI single for insurance. The last cast member to take a bow was Guillermo Mota, who successfully closed the barn door after the horse had bolted. Bright moments? Mostly on offense, where Brandon Belt capped a three-hit night with a monster two-run homer into McCovey Cove in the sixth, making it a one-run game. An inning later, Pablo Sandoval, who had opened that sixth-inning rally with a double, singled to tie the game. In the weirdness department, both teams loaded the bases with one out in the eighth and didn't score. This was a fine moment for Casilla, who came in with the sacks clogged and got two popups to end it, and a not-so-fine one for Hector Sanchez, who grounded into a double play in the bottom of the frame to kill the Giants' threat.
Notes
It's Fat City for a change here in the mid-Atlantic, where the perennially-awful Washington Nationals have morphed into Murderers' Row, leading the NL East by seven and a half games. And last night the Baltimore Orioles beat the Yankees to tie for first in the AL East, having gained five games in ten days. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, lurks just a game and a half behind. The AL Central also has a real pennant race, with Detroit a game behind the White Sox, and in the AL West the Texas Rangers have yet to shake off the Oakland A's and the distant-but-dangerous L.A. Angels. As for the National League, the Giants and Dodgers are it for pennant-race aficionados, since Cincinnati has sewed up the Central much as Washington has the East.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
GIANTS 77-58 ... Rallies in eighth, ninth, and tenth to win it.
Los Angeles 73-63 4.5 GB 'Doctor Longball' prescribes a win.
Yesterday
Giants defeated Arizona, 9-8, in ten innings.
LA beat San Diego, 4-3, in 11 innings.
Today
Giants host Arizona; 7:15 at the 'Bell;. Ryan Vogelsong goes for his 13th win against Ian Kennedy, also seeking his 13th win.
LA's at home against San Diego again, with Clayton Kershaw on the mound.
Last Night's Game
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are the kind of games that pennant-winning teams tend to pull out at this time of year. Barry Zito, given a 4-0 first inning lead, imploded in the sixth along with his bullpen mates, to the tune of four runs allowed and a 7-4 deficit. The Giants then resolutely chipped away. Five ground balls in the seventh-- the first of them a pinch single by 2012's Forgotten Man, Aubrey Huff-- brought one run across. Arizona answered back in the eighth, but a big inning was averted when a series of sharp relays between catcher Hector Sanchez and third baseman Pablo Sandoval resulted in our old friend, Cody Ransom, being tagged out at the plate. In the bottom of the frame, after two were out, three straight hits by Sanchez, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt made it 8-7. Then it was the ninth, and Marco Scutaro's leadoff double followed by Buster Posey's 85th RBI to tie the game. And after winning pitcher Sergio Romo's perfect top of the tenth, it was small-ball all the way: Crawford's single, runner-advancing outs by Brett Pill and Angel Pagan, and then Scutaro coming through with the walk-off grounder through the hole and into left.
Los Angeles 73-63 4.5 GB 'Doctor Longball' prescribes a win.
Yesterday
Giants defeated Arizona, 9-8, in ten innings.
LA beat San Diego, 4-3, in 11 innings.
Today
Giants host Arizona; 7:15 at the 'Bell;. Ryan Vogelsong goes for his 13th win against Ian Kennedy, also seeking his 13th win.
LA's at home against San Diego again, with Clayton Kershaw on the mound.
Last Night's Game
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are the kind of games that pennant-winning teams tend to pull out at this time of year. Barry Zito, given a 4-0 first inning lead, imploded in the sixth along with his bullpen mates, to the tune of four runs allowed and a 7-4 deficit. The Giants then resolutely chipped away. Five ground balls in the seventh-- the first of them a pinch single by 2012's Forgotten Man, Aubrey Huff-- brought one run across. Arizona answered back in the eighth, but a big inning was averted when a series of sharp relays between catcher Hector Sanchez and third baseman Pablo Sandoval resulted in our old friend, Cody Ransom, being tagged out at the plate. In the bottom of the frame, after two were out, three straight hits by Sanchez, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt made it 8-7. Then it was the ninth, and Marco Scutaro's leadoff double followed by Buster Posey's 85th RBI to tie the game. And after winning pitcher Sergio Romo's perfect top of the tenth, it was small-ball all the way: Crawford's single, runner-advancing outs by Brett Pill and Angel Pagan, and then Scutaro coming through with the walk-off grounder through the hole and into left.
Monday, September 3, 2012
The Race Is On
Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. With 28 games left to play in the season, the San Francisco Giants lead the NL West by four and a half games over their great rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Last year's champions, the Arizona Diamondbacks, have faded back, fallen below .500, and trail by ten and a half. If there's gonna be a race, folks, it'll be a two-team sprint to the finish, like 1951 and 1962 and 1965 and 1966 and 1971 and 1997 and 2004. Fear not, O faint of heart: the Giants won four of those races and they can with this one, too, if they keep doing what they're doing right now.
Just about three weeks ago, the Giants' leading hitter and the subject of what looked like one of the all-time-great 'steal' trades, Melky Cabrera, was suspended for violating the league rule against illegal supplementary drugs. In the wake of the wailing and gnashing of teeth and self-righteous finger-waggling which followed, the Giants have won 12, lost 4, and taken and then widened the division lead. Playing .750 ball without the "cheater", as opposed to .542 with him, leads us to suggest that those who bray about forfeiting team wins as a further penalty for harboring "cheaters" now own up and award the Giants 24 extra wins, since evidently Cabrera's PED-besotted presence in the lineup was a handicap, not an advantage.
OK, enough of that. The real point here is that the Giants are as resilient and mature a team as there is in baseball, and this reflects not only on the roster but especially on manager Bruce Bochy. In those 16 games the Giants have scored 80 runs, five per game, where they averaged 4.2 before. Bochy's handling of the lineup, and his day-to-day decisions as to who will start and where, have not only camouflaged a weakness but actually drawn strength from it. No manager can do more.
The Giants' Pythagorean won-lost projection has them dead-even with LA at 72-62, which means they are about four games to the good. They're eighth in the league in runs scored, which is a major improvement over last year, and fifth in runs allowed, which is a slight slip. Their unusually high ratio of unearned runs to overall runs, which we documented back in May, has flattened out to league average, thank goodness. AT&T Park continues to be a huge help to the pitchers: the Giants lead the league in fewest runs allowed at home, while on the road they are thirteenth. On the offensive side, it will come as no surprise to anyone that the Giants have scored fewer runs at home than any team, but get this: on the road, the San Francisco Giants lead the league in runs scored with 357. Overall, their home record projects to 36-29, their road record to 36-33.
What does all this tell us? The Giants do not have the dominating pitching that carried them to the championship in 2010; instead they are a more balanced ballclub overall. How this affects their chances in the postseason, presuming they get to the postseason, is anyone's guess.
Speaking of trades, the "other" offseason trade, the one that brought Angel Pagan in exchange for Ramon Ramirez and Andres Torres, is looking better and better all the time. We excoriated Bochy early in the season for batting Pagan leadoff, because it seemed apparent the decision was made only because he looked like a leadoff hitter, in the grand manner of Dusty ("My Centerfielder Bats Leadoff") Baker. When his .284 OBP and the Giants' inability to score enough runs became brutally obvious, "Boch" inserted Gregor Blanco into the spot, and for two months it was a genius move. Then Blanco stopped hitting, to the point where his one-walk-per-game habit could no longer prop up his OBP, and back went Pagan into the top spot. Since then he has been a bonafide leadoff man. His OBP has reached .344 overall and is close to .400 since July. He has hit 30 doubles and ten triples and seems likely to be the first Giant to reach double-digit totals in all extra-base-hit categories since-- oh, shoot, we don't know, you look it up. Point is, Pagan has taken the baton and made a real difference for this team over the past month. And then we see our old buddy Ramon, having walked 30 men in 54 innnings for the Mets, and Torres, with a .650 OPS in 105 games. Good trade?
Bochy's judicious use of Ryan Theriot, recently-acquired Marco Scutaro, Brandon Crawford, and Joaquin (.417 in August) Arias throughout the middle infield is reminiscent of 2010, when he artfully juggled third basemen and shortstops all the way to the World Series. Draft-deadline pickup Hunter Pence and the newest Giant, Xavier "I Got Something To Prove" Nady, are candidates for the Cody Ross Lookalike sweepstakes; yes, we'd like to see Pence do more than he has, but we're sure happy with Nady's three-game stint so far. At first base, Brandon Belt, one of the few who will regularly take a walk, is up to .267/.360/.404, just enough to keep the job. Across the infield, Pablo Sandoval is still able to slug .443, though it's obvious to just about everyone he's still feeling the effects of two injuries that have obliged him to miss 51 games already.
That leaves the team MVP, Buster Posey (.329, .405, .530, all tops on the club) who could be the league MVP, too. He, along with Pagan and Sandoval and, lately, Belt, are the only sure everyday starters. The rest depends on "Boch", and when you consider this crew is, again, leading the league in runs scored on the road, depend we will.
Anyone who's fought their way through this wordy thicket this far probably knows that the reason the Giants are thirteenth in pitching in neutral parks is because of one guy, Tim Lincecum, and his 5.21 ERA. It balloons up to 6.63 on the road, where the league is hitting .283 against him, and frankly his 5-6 away record is a lot better thn it deserves to be. At the 'Bell, he's still a "good" pitcher (4.01, .245) but sports a 3-8 mark. Then again, the overall season home/road split is so severe-- 6.6 total runs per game at AT&T, 9.8 on the road, a whopping 48% difference-- one could make the argument that he's actually pitched better away from home. In any case, Lincecum's well-documented struggles are the Giants' biggest challenge as the stretch drive begins. He's simply too talented to consider not starting him, and he has been somewhat better since the All-Star break, but a September surge such as he had two years ago is simply too much to expect right now. We'd settle for a .500 month.
The triumvirate of Matt Cain (13-5, 2.98), Madison Bumgarner (14-9, 3.07) and Ryan Vogelsong (12-7, 3.02) has kept the Giants' starting pitching on track all year. If we win, Cain will get serious Cy Young consideration, for his perfect game and his years of unrequited excellence as well as his stats. Barry Zito, despite a WHIP almost as high as Lincecum's, has fared better in the decision department (10-8), and he's logged 149 innings coming back from last year's injury. As a fourth or fifth starter, he's perfectly adequate.
In the bullpen, the Giants have used fifteen different relievers so far, with familiar names Jeremy Affeldt, Santiago Casilla, and Sergio Romo getting much of the work. Less-familiar names Clay Hensley and George Kontos have made 87 appearances between them, picking up in part for Javier Lopez, who is not having a particularly good season. Hensley has been the weakest link, and as a result our old friend Brad Penny has joined the group. Meanwhile, Casilla has 24 saves and also six blown saves, while Romo has been the best of the bunch if you go by numbers alone. Lately both he and Lopez have been summoned in "save" situations, to the point where it looks like closer-by-committee for the first time in years.
The remaining 28 games of the season all are against NL West division opponents: nine against Arizona, seven against Colorado, six each against the Dodgers and Padres. 16 are at home, twelve away. It all starts tonight with the Diamondbacks in town for three, followed by three against LA next weekend. It ends with three in Chavez Ravine beginning on October 1. With their recent surge the Giants also remain contenders for either of the two wild-card spots if LA should suddenly get red-hot-- as long as they don't stumble too badly down the stretch. But with a 27-17 mark against their division rivals going into this month, the NL West pennant is there for the Giants' taking. It's time to take it!
Just about three weeks ago, the Giants' leading hitter and the subject of what looked like one of the all-time-great 'steal' trades, Melky Cabrera, was suspended for violating the league rule against illegal supplementary drugs. In the wake of the wailing and gnashing of teeth and self-righteous finger-waggling which followed, the Giants have won 12, lost 4, and taken and then widened the division lead. Playing .750 ball without the "cheater", as opposed to .542 with him, leads us to suggest that those who bray about forfeiting team wins as a further penalty for harboring "cheaters" now own up and award the Giants 24 extra wins, since evidently Cabrera's PED-besotted presence in the lineup was a handicap, not an advantage.
OK, enough of that. The real point here is that the Giants are as resilient and mature a team as there is in baseball, and this reflects not only on the roster but especially on manager Bruce Bochy. In those 16 games the Giants have scored 80 runs, five per game, where they averaged 4.2 before. Bochy's handling of the lineup, and his day-to-day decisions as to who will start and where, have not only camouflaged a weakness but actually drawn strength from it. No manager can do more.
The Giants' Pythagorean won-lost projection has them dead-even with LA at 72-62, which means they are about four games to the good. They're eighth in the league in runs scored, which is a major improvement over last year, and fifth in runs allowed, which is a slight slip. Their unusually high ratio of unearned runs to overall runs, which we documented back in May, has flattened out to league average, thank goodness. AT&T Park continues to be a huge help to the pitchers: the Giants lead the league in fewest runs allowed at home, while on the road they are thirteenth. On the offensive side, it will come as no surprise to anyone that the Giants have scored fewer runs at home than any team, but get this: on the road, the San Francisco Giants lead the league in runs scored with 357. Overall, their home record projects to 36-29, their road record to 36-33.
What does all this tell us? The Giants do not have the dominating pitching that carried them to the championship in 2010; instead they are a more balanced ballclub overall. How this affects their chances in the postseason, presuming they get to the postseason, is anyone's guess.
Speaking of trades, the "other" offseason trade, the one that brought Angel Pagan in exchange for Ramon Ramirez and Andres Torres, is looking better and better all the time. We excoriated Bochy early in the season for batting Pagan leadoff, because it seemed apparent the decision was made only because he looked like a leadoff hitter, in the grand manner of Dusty ("My Centerfielder Bats Leadoff") Baker. When his .284 OBP and the Giants' inability to score enough runs became brutally obvious, "Boch" inserted Gregor Blanco into the spot, and for two months it was a genius move. Then Blanco stopped hitting, to the point where his one-walk-per-game habit could no longer prop up his OBP, and back went Pagan into the top spot. Since then he has been a bonafide leadoff man. His OBP has reached .344 overall and is close to .400 since July. He has hit 30 doubles and ten triples and seems likely to be the first Giant to reach double-digit totals in all extra-base-hit categories since-- oh, shoot, we don't know, you look it up. Point is, Pagan has taken the baton and made a real difference for this team over the past month. And then we see our old buddy Ramon, having walked 30 men in 54 innnings for the Mets, and Torres, with a .650 OPS in 105 games. Good trade?
Bochy's judicious use of Ryan Theriot, recently-acquired Marco Scutaro, Brandon Crawford, and Joaquin (.417 in August) Arias throughout the middle infield is reminiscent of 2010, when he artfully juggled third basemen and shortstops all the way to the World Series. Draft-deadline pickup Hunter Pence and the newest Giant, Xavier "I Got Something To Prove" Nady, are candidates for the Cody Ross Lookalike sweepstakes; yes, we'd like to see Pence do more than he has, but we're sure happy with Nady's three-game stint so far. At first base, Brandon Belt, one of the few who will regularly take a walk, is up to .267/.360/.404, just enough to keep the job. Across the infield, Pablo Sandoval is still able to slug .443, though it's obvious to just about everyone he's still feeling the effects of two injuries that have obliged him to miss 51 games already.
That leaves the team MVP, Buster Posey (.329, .405, .530, all tops on the club) who could be the league MVP, too. He, along with Pagan and Sandoval and, lately, Belt, are the only sure everyday starters. The rest depends on "Boch", and when you consider this crew is, again, leading the league in runs scored on the road, depend we will.
Anyone who's fought their way through this wordy thicket this far probably knows that the reason the Giants are thirteenth in pitching in neutral parks is because of one guy, Tim Lincecum, and his 5.21 ERA. It balloons up to 6.63 on the road, where the league is hitting .283 against him, and frankly his 5-6 away record is a lot better thn it deserves to be. At the 'Bell, he's still a "good" pitcher (4.01, .245) but sports a 3-8 mark. Then again, the overall season home/road split is so severe-- 6.6 total runs per game at AT&T, 9.8 on the road, a whopping 48% difference-- one could make the argument that he's actually pitched better away from home. In any case, Lincecum's well-documented struggles are the Giants' biggest challenge as the stretch drive begins. He's simply too talented to consider not starting him, and he has been somewhat better since the All-Star break, but a September surge such as he had two years ago is simply too much to expect right now. We'd settle for a .500 month.
The triumvirate of Matt Cain (13-5, 2.98), Madison Bumgarner (14-9, 3.07) and Ryan Vogelsong (12-7, 3.02) has kept the Giants' starting pitching on track all year. If we win, Cain will get serious Cy Young consideration, for his perfect game and his years of unrequited excellence as well as his stats. Barry Zito, despite a WHIP almost as high as Lincecum's, has fared better in the decision department (10-8), and he's logged 149 innings coming back from last year's injury. As a fourth or fifth starter, he's perfectly adequate.
In the bullpen, the Giants have used fifteen different relievers so far, with familiar names Jeremy Affeldt, Santiago Casilla, and Sergio Romo getting much of the work. Less-familiar names Clay Hensley and George Kontos have made 87 appearances between them, picking up in part for Javier Lopez, who is not having a particularly good season. Hensley has been the weakest link, and as a result our old friend Brad Penny has joined the group. Meanwhile, Casilla has 24 saves and also six blown saves, while Romo has been the best of the bunch if you go by numbers alone. Lately both he and Lopez have been summoned in "save" situations, to the point where it looks like closer-by-committee for the first time in years.
The remaining 28 games of the season all are against NL West division opponents: nine against Arizona, seven against Colorado, six each against the Dodgers and Padres. 16 are at home, twelve away. It all starts tonight with the Diamondbacks in town for three, followed by three against LA next weekend. It ends with three in Chavez Ravine beginning on October 1. With their recent surge the Giants also remain contenders for either of the two wild-card spots if LA should suddenly get red-hot-- as long as they don't stumble too badly down the stretch. But with a 27-17 mark against their division rivals going into this month, the NL West pennant is there for the Giants' taking. It's time to take it!
Friday, August 31, 2012
Y'all Gonna Be an American (League, That Is)
Today's heaping helping of deathless prose goes out to the worst team in baseball, the team whom the Giants just swept on their home field, who play in the ballpark Barry Bonds called "Arena Baseball," whose uniforms once upon a time resembled a Fruit Whirl popsicle... yes, those zany, unpredictable, thoroughly transferable Houston Astros, who, after 51 seasons in the National League, have agreed to, or anyway have been obliged to, move to the American League next year in order to balance everything out and restore justice to the universe.
With interleague play now firmly entrenched in the schedule, the leagues now will contain fifteen teams each, five teams in each division, eliminating that unsightly six-team NL Central and its equally tawdry four-team cousin, the AL West. Though we remain immune to the charms of regular-season interleague play, we actually applaud the idea behind this move. If you're gonna have it, have a little bit of it spread out all year long, and by all means do balance the divisions to give every team an equal shot. It's not as inspired as the second wild-card team (yes, we love that, too, and we'll explain why in a future screed) but it's a good idea-- at least in theory.
It's not so good in practice. Why the Astros, f'revvinsakes? Why not the Arizona Diamondbacks?
Although on the face of it the move could create a lively intrastate division rivalry between the 'Stros and the Texas Rangers, it also cedes the entire Lone Star State to the AL, which is a bit wacky (they went to some trouble to prevent the same thing from happening in Florida back in '92, after all), and it places the Astros some 1500, 1900, and 2300 miles-- not to mention two time zones-- away from their other division rivals. No other team will play so many division games which the bulk of their fans will be unable to watch live. Well, except the Rangers, that is. Okay, it's kind of like the old NFC West in football, when the 49ers and Rams were constantly traveling across the country to play the Falcons and Saints, and vice versa.
Evidently the Diamondbacks still have some pull with the MLB HQ. We remember Jerry Colangelo, the team's original owner (is he still? We're too lazy to check) paying a premium to play in the National League from the start. The Astros have 36 years of NL seniority on the 'Snakes', and in our opinion it would have been the better move, in terms of justice as well as practicality, to shift Arizona to the AL West and Houston to the NL West. But what's done is done.
What will Giants fans remember about the Astros? Here are a few blasts-from-the-past kicking around in the cobwebbed recesses of our mind this morning:
So it's goodbye and Godspeed to the Houston Astros, who will become the second team in the last fifteen years to switch from one league to another, after the AL and NL had enjoyed 97 years of relative stability. What's next?
With interleague play now firmly entrenched in the schedule, the leagues now will contain fifteen teams each, five teams in each division, eliminating that unsightly six-team NL Central and its equally tawdry four-team cousin, the AL West. Though we remain immune to the charms of regular-season interleague play, we actually applaud the idea behind this move. If you're gonna have it, have a little bit of it spread out all year long, and by all means do balance the divisions to give every team an equal shot. It's not as inspired as the second wild-card team (yes, we love that, too, and we'll explain why in a future screed) but it's a good idea-- at least in theory.
It's not so good in practice. Why the Astros, f'revvinsakes? Why not the Arizona Diamondbacks?
Although on the face of it the move could create a lively intrastate division rivalry between the 'Stros and the Texas Rangers, it also cedes the entire Lone Star State to the AL, which is a bit wacky (they went to some trouble to prevent the same thing from happening in Florida back in '92, after all), and it places the Astros some 1500, 1900, and 2300 miles-- not to mention two time zones-- away from their other division rivals. No other team will play so many division games which the bulk of their fans will be unable to watch live. Well, except the Rangers, that is. Okay, it's kind of like the old NFC West in football, when the 49ers and Rams were constantly traveling across the country to play the Falcons and Saints, and vice versa.
Evidently the Diamondbacks still have some pull with the MLB HQ. We remember Jerry Colangelo, the team's original owner (is he still? We're too lazy to check) paying a premium to play in the National League from the start. The Astros have 36 years of NL seniority on the 'Snakes', and in our opinion it would have been the better move, in terms of justice as well as practicality, to shift Arizona to the AL West and Houston to the NL West. But what's done is done.
What will Giants fans remember about the Astros? Here are a few blasts-from-the-past kicking around in the cobwebbed recesses of our mind this morning:
- The Astros were originally called the Houston Colt .45s. The name was changed in 1965 not out of some cowardly politically-correct hoplophobia, but because the American space program's Mission Control had just relocated to Houston, as had the original Mercury astronauts. Presumably "Astros" was short for "Astronauts", though taken by itself the Latin translation scans better as "Stars."
- September 14, 1965 in the Astrodome. Willie Mays comes up in the top of the ninth with one on, two out, and the Giants trailing by two runs. Battling against Houston relief ace Claude Raymond, Willie fouls off six straight 99-MPH fastballs, then belts his 501st career home run to tie the game (the Giants eventually won in ten innings.) Nobody who heard it will forget Russ Hodges' call of that titanic moment. "It was the greatest at-bat and batter-pitcher confrontation I have ever seen," recalled Hall-of-Famer Joe Morgan, second baseman for Houston at the time.
- June 6, 1980, also in the 'Dome. The legendary James Rodney Richard, 6-foot-8-inch ace pitcher on Houston's first division champion, strikes out 13 Giants in a dazzling complete-game three-hit shutout. Every single Giant bats the breeze at least once. It's the last time "J.R." will face the Giants. Less than two months later he will collapse during a workout after suffering a stroke, his career over at age 30.
- September 8, 1987, once again in the Astrodome. Roger Craig has a regular conniption fit as Houston ace Mike Scott shakes off a bad start and retires 26 Giants in a row, thanks to the "scuffball" he made famous (or infamous). Craig claims he actually saw the sandpaper in Scott's hand, but the umpires by rule aren't allowed to search a player on the field. The Giants dugout is still simmering over Scott's scuffball-induced no-hitter at Candlestick the previous year, which cinched the pennant for the 'Stros; Craig's repeated play stoppages and protests rile up the fans but have little effect on the game. (Winning is the best revenge; the Giants clnch the pennant exactly three weeks later.)
- October 4, 2001, at "Enron Field" (remember?). Houston manager Larry Dierker has his pitchers walk Barry Bonds eight times in three games rather than risk giving up a home run. The strategy is questionable as Bonds scores six runs in the three games anyway and the Giants sweep the series. Finally, in the ninth inning of the third game, a 9-2 rout, the Astros challenge Barry-- and there it goes, homer number 70 to tie Mark McGwire's record. It was on or about this date that Bonds reviewed Houston's new, picturesque park with its colorful features and short dimensions, and said hitting there was like playing "Arena Baseball."
- September 23, 2004, at Pacific Bell Park. With ace Jason Schmidt on the mound, the Giants go for a three-game sweep that will all but eliminate the Astros from contention. Schmidt does his part and leaves with a 3-2 lead after eight... only to see Houston explode for five runs in the ninth after Jeff Bagwell beats out a twenty-foot dribbler down the third-base line. The Giants never recover. Ten days later, Steve Finley destroys their season and the Astros clinch the wild-card spot.
So it's goodbye and Godspeed to the Houston Astros, who will become the second team in the last fifteen years to switch from one league to another, after the AL and NL had enjoyed 97 years of relative stability. What's next?
Friday, August 17, 2012
StuPED Is as StuPED Does
Well, let's get the basics out of the way first. Melky Cabrera deserves his 50-game suspension. He broke the rules, he admitted he broke the rules, he got caught breaking the rules, and he knew the punishment for breaking the rules. No need to feel especially sorry for him.
As for the Giants, well, they certainly can recover from this. The best estimates show that losing a star player is worth perhaps five or six games over the course of a full season. So losing Melky might cost the club two or three games down the stretch. Given that the Giants have spent much of the season only one or two games ahead of or behind L.A., of course, means this still could cost them the division pennant. And what can't be quantified is the psychological factor. If a team starts to believe that an incident like this proves they are snakebit, it's awfully hard to stop that train once it gets rolling. Under Bruce Bochy, the Giants have shown tremendous resiliency in the past. A year ago, they held first place for six weeks after Buster Posey's injury. Six weeks from today, where will the Giants be?
Anyway, given the title of this screed, you all knew that today's installment of deathless prose wasn't going to be about Melky Cabrera or the Giants' pennant chances. Here we give you fair warning: in our "Word About Content" intro page, we mentioned that we "don't discuss off-field stuff." Today, we do. There simply is so much thoughtless, destructive, mean-spirited, wasteful behavior and commentary regarding the whole subject of "performance-enhancing drugs" going around these days that we now are obliged, in our contrarian manner, to post and defend a series of statements which many of you will find outrageous and offensive. Here we go, in no particular order:
The collective public response to baseball players' use of so-called PEDs is more of a threat to the game than is the use of PEDs themselves.
It's not a novel concept.... "the cure is worse than the disease." Some of the proposed "remedies" to what is perceived as the "on-going" problem of PED use are so wrong, so evil, so indicative of a warped and vindictive mentality, that it makes us wonder whether the people suggesting them have ever opened a history book, managed even a small group of people, or, heaven forbid, actually played the game themselves even at the amateur level.
First, precisely what did people expect the new, or recent, rules and penalties regarding PED use to accomplish? Did they really expect no one would continue to break, bend, or otherwise try to evade the rules? Did anyone honestly expect that because certain drugs are now officially outlawed, that no player ever would get caught again? The point of rules and laws is to establish boundaries, and to punish those who break those boundaries. There is a word for those who believe laws and rules will completely eliminate all rule-breaking. That word is "Fool."
Yet that's what we hear: "Further change is needed.... a harsher penalty.... this cheating must end..." Folks, what color is the sky in your world? Murder is against the law, and has been for millennia. The death penalty has been in, then out, then in again. Yet murders still occur. What do we do? We punish the offenders harshly, just as we've been doing for decades, even centuries. Do we keep trying newer and more exotic punishments in the hope that one day, by doing so, we'll eliminate all murders? Do we consider executing the murderer's family, too, as a deterrent? Do we erase his name from the public record and make his children nameless wards of the state? Think about what you're suggesting, people.
We'll have more specific indictments of this twisted mentality a little farther along. Now consider:
There is no evidence whatsoever that so-called performance-enhancing drugs actually enhance performance.
This should be obvious to anyone who has ever played baseball in a competitive situation. Anabolic steroids, which promote the rapid growth of muscle mass and may speed the healing of damaged tissue, cannot possibly improve hand-eye coordination, eyesight, mental concentration, or focus, which are the most essential components for hitting a pitched ball successfully.
If there is a benefit to PEDs in baseball, it may be that they enable a player to recover more quickly from injury and thus stay in the lineup longer. Such a conclusion would at least proceed from the available evidence. But there is also the real possibility that excessively rapid muscle growth might lead to stress-related injury to tendons and ligaments which are not yet capable of supporting the additional mass. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence-- which is the only type of evidence the PED fanatics understand, so we'll play in their ballpark for a moment-- about football players who bulk up on steroids but can't seem to stay on the field without pulling or straining something.
Why, then, do athletes use the PEDs? The stark truth may be that 'bulking up' gets you noticed. Consider two prospects in any team sport: same age, same position, similar game stats. Both run the 40-yard dash in 4.8. One is 6-2, 245, the other is 6-2, 290. What scout wouldn't, at least subconsciously, look at the bigger kid first? "Wow, I've never seen a kid his size with that kind of speed!" Of course, the cat is out of the bag these days, and a savvy scout might say, "Hmmmmm... bet that big boy's on the 'roids." But if you've got a stat sheet with 100 similar athletes on it and little time to cut it down to say, 20 prospects-- well, all else being equal, the bigger kid will likely get the longer look.
So, it's a sports-culture thing. "Bigger is better." It's like a confidence game: it may not help you perform, but it may get you noticed. It's a peer-pressure thing: they say it worked for so-and-so, it'll work for me.
Look, people, we ourselves struggled with drug abuse for 20 years. There's no way anyone is going to twist our words to claim we're laissez-faire about the whole thing. The plague of PEDs has reached the high-school level and that's a national scandal and a national shame. But the tragedy of PEDs is what they do to the people who take them-- the rage, the injuries, the side effects, the long-term issues which remain unknown-- and to those they encounter in real life. What they do to the game itself is, in a word, unknown. We don't know, and you don't know either.
The first lesson of logic is, "correlation is not causation." There is absolutely no evidence-- none!-- that anyone has ever hit a home run, struck out a batter, stolen a base, or made a catch because of PEDs. You show me guys who 'bulked up' and increased their home run totals, and I'll show you guys who lost weight and got lean, and increased their home run totals.
This leads us to the topic of "cheating". The truth is:
Ballplayers have always tried to bend the rules to their advantage, and they always will.
Ecclesiastes tells us, "There is nothing new under the sun." How true this is when it comes to ballplayers trying to get an advantage, legal or otherwise. It's been part of the game since there was a game.
"When I broke in the big leagues we only had one umpire in a game... and you know that umpire can't see everything at once... Say, a man on second base and the batter would get a hit out to right field. Well, the umpire would be watching the ball and the batter... Meanwhile, the guy who was on second would cut third base wide by fifteen feet on his way home... We'd run with one eye on the ball and the other on the umpire!"
Okay, how many of Sam Crawford's 1,391 runs shall we take away because he cheated? Who wants to put an asterisk next to his name in the record book?
How many of Gaylord Perry's 314 wins shall we "vacate" because he threw an illegal pitch? He identifies 1966 as the season he turned to the spitter as his "out" pitch. He won 21 games that year. Shall we adjust the Giants' 93-68 mark to 72-60, as if Gaylord had never existed? Or do we compute a win-shares adjustment at replacement level? C'mon, all you self-righteous geniuses, what shall we do?
For we must do something, right? We can't let these guys get away with it! Even if the PEDs don't actually enhance performance, those cheaters thought they did! And intentions are what counts, since we're too stupid to quantify results!
Okay, we'll admit, the anger is boiling over a bit. Deep breath, and next guaranteed-to-offend claim:
Neither Roger Maris nor Maury Wills ever had an asterisk next to their record in the record book.
We suppose it's baseball's most enduring urban legend. Usually the reference is to Maris, and people forget about Wills. The home-run record was more iconic, of course, and Babe Ruth was a lot more popular than Ty Cobb, too.
Anyway, the legend has been repeated enough now that for most people it's become fact. It was repeated on the USA Network drama "Suits" last night. A fine movie ("61*") was made about it. The term "asterisk" gets thrown around so much now it's become part of baseball jargon; we guarantee you that when Melky Cabrera gets his first hit of 2013, whether for the Giants or for someone else, at least one wise guy will turn to his buddies and say, "Get out the asterisk," and everyone will know what he's talking about.
Too bad it never happened.
What did happen is that in 1961, when Maris was closing in on Ruth's record, baseball commissioner Ford Frick (who just happened to be Babe Ruth's former publicist) wondered aloud, and publicly, about the 154-game versus 162-game season, and suggested that perhaps Maris' record, if he tied or broke Ruth's, be noted with an asterisk and footnote ("162-game season"). To be fair, it's clear Frick was simply thinking out loud, and hardly making an official pronouncement. To be honest, he had no authority to make any official pronouncement because, for one thing, there was no Official Record of Major-League Baseball (TM). In fact, there was no Major League Baseball (TM), at least not as a recognized corporate entity. There were the two leagues, American and National, and there was The Sporting News ("The Bible of Baseball") which claimed to have the authoritative record of major-league baseball, but there was no "MLB" and there was no Baseball Encyclopedia and there were other guys, like the Hall of Fame's Joe Reichler, who kept their own records, and nobody could claim those weren't just as official as TSN's.
No asterisk. Never happened. We have a fine baseball book from 1964 which lists some records in the back. There, both Ruth ("154-game season") and Maris ("162-game season") are listed side by side. It's interesting, and indicative of the times and the fact that there was a controversy, but it's no more "official" than is this blog. When "MLB Inc." was organized in 1968 and the first official record book (the 1969 Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia) published, there was Maris, asterisk-free, atop the list.
No asterisk. Never happened. Case closed. On to the heart of the matter:
Those who advocate placing asterisks next to records, erasing records, or vacating team wins or accomplishments, are all Communists who ought to be deported and put on the next boat to Castro's Cuba.
Back in the day, the Soviet Union's Central Committee, known as the "Politburo", regularly edited out people and events from history when those people and events conflicted with or contradicted the latest official Party line.
Today we see their spiritual brethren making comments like these on the Giants' website:
"The players union and all GM's need to agree on a harsher penalty...How about an 80 game suspension, annul their contract and vacate 25 wins. Maybe if there is more at stake not only for the player but also for the team they play for this cheating will end sooner than later."
"Maybe the next thing that should be done is chop 10-20 wins off their team's record and see how that sits."
What kind of person actually believes that you can un-do something that has been done?
Evidently the scurrilous example of the NCAA ("National Communists Against Athletics," Brian Bosworth called them, and while 'The Boz' was annoying, he was also right) has caught on among the more rabidly self-righteous among us.
Not content with having ruined college football, perhaps forever, these modern Bolsheviks have set their sights on baseball.
You know... we're a wordy sort, as evidenced by this blog. Words are the local currency. And, yet, right now, words simply fail us.
If you have to have it explained to you why it is morally wrong to go into the past and erase events and people as if they never happened, then you will never understand.
But if that's you, please check your American card at the door. You're a Communist. The leaky boat to Cuba awaits. No, we're not speaking figuratively. No, we're not exaggerating. No, we're not kidding. Take a hike. It's not about baseball. It's about you, and your deep-seated need to get even with everyone who ever done ya wrong. That's what Communism is, the ultimate get-even game, and that's what you are.
Capiche?
Now, to wrap it all up, we'll take out the old crystal ball and gaze into the near future:
What constitutes an unfair advantage? (Whatcha gonna do when the Bionic Man suits up?)
Usually the heart of the "cheater" argument falls back on the old "unnatural" claim: "He didn't use the natural ability God gave him! No! He had to go and put a bunch of artificial stuff into his body! Off with his head, and put an asterisk next to it!"
We'll confess right now: in our last few years of semi-pro baseball, we too used an artificial enhancement to keep us in the game after our God-given physical abilities had declined. We still use it today. We're not sure of the technical term, but colloquially it's called a "pair of eyeglasses," and it enabled us to see the ball better than we would have otherwise, and thus stay in the game longer. Yes! It feels so good to come clean after all these years!
Spare us the ridicule ("Can you believe that freakin' idiot! He's comparing glasses and contact lenses to effin' steroids! Somebody should lock that guy up in a rubber room! With an asterisk!")-- and tell us the difference.
Now consider.
It is likely to happen within the next decade. A player will take the field with an artificially-enhanced body part. Not "Tommy John surgery", although by some of y'all's standards, that is "cheating", too, but more like a pitching arm, say, which has been artificially enhanced to where the pitcher can throw, say, 110 miles per hour, game after game, without undue risk of injury.
As Karl Malden used to say, "What will you do? What will you do?"
O ye self-righteous self-appointed guardians of baseball purity, will you let Steve Austin play?
Why, or why not?
As for the Giants, well, they certainly can recover from this. The best estimates show that losing a star player is worth perhaps five or six games over the course of a full season. So losing Melky might cost the club two or three games down the stretch. Given that the Giants have spent much of the season only one or two games ahead of or behind L.A., of course, means this still could cost them the division pennant. And what can't be quantified is the psychological factor. If a team starts to believe that an incident like this proves they are snakebit, it's awfully hard to stop that train once it gets rolling. Under Bruce Bochy, the Giants have shown tremendous resiliency in the past. A year ago, they held first place for six weeks after Buster Posey's injury. Six weeks from today, where will the Giants be?
Anyway, given the title of this screed, you all knew that today's installment of deathless prose wasn't going to be about Melky Cabrera or the Giants' pennant chances. Here we give you fair warning: in our "Word About Content" intro page, we mentioned that we "don't discuss off-field stuff." Today, we do. There simply is so much thoughtless, destructive, mean-spirited, wasteful behavior and commentary regarding the whole subject of "performance-enhancing drugs" going around these days that we now are obliged, in our contrarian manner, to post and defend a series of statements which many of you will find outrageous and offensive. Here we go, in no particular order:
The collective public response to baseball players' use of so-called PEDs is more of a threat to the game than is the use of PEDs themselves.
It's not a novel concept.... "the cure is worse than the disease." Some of the proposed "remedies" to what is perceived as the "on-going" problem of PED use are so wrong, so evil, so indicative of a warped and vindictive mentality, that it makes us wonder whether the people suggesting them have ever opened a history book, managed even a small group of people, or, heaven forbid, actually played the game themselves even at the amateur level.
First, precisely what did people expect the new, or recent, rules and penalties regarding PED use to accomplish? Did they really expect no one would continue to break, bend, or otherwise try to evade the rules? Did anyone honestly expect that because certain drugs are now officially outlawed, that no player ever would get caught again? The point of rules and laws is to establish boundaries, and to punish those who break those boundaries. There is a word for those who believe laws and rules will completely eliminate all rule-breaking. That word is "Fool."
Yet that's what we hear: "Further change is needed.... a harsher penalty.... this cheating must end..." Folks, what color is the sky in your world? Murder is against the law, and has been for millennia. The death penalty has been in, then out, then in again. Yet murders still occur. What do we do? We punish the offenders harshly, just as we've been doing for decades, even centuries. Do we keep trying newer and more exotic punishments in the hope that one day, by doing so, we'll eliminate all murders? Do we consider executing the murderer's family, too, as a deterrent? Do we erase his name from the public record and make his children nameless wards of the state? Think about what you're suggesting, people.
We'll have more specific indictments of this twisted mentality a little farther along. Now consider:
There is no evidence whatsoever that so-called performance-enhancing drugs actually enhance performance.
This should be obvious to anyone who has ever played baseball in a competitive situation. Anabolic steroids, which promote the rapid growth of muscle mass and may speed the healing of damaged tissue, cannot possibly improve hand-eye coordination, eyesight, mental concentration, or focus, which are the most essential components for hitting a pitched ball successfully.
If there is a benefit to PEDs in baseball, it may be that they enable a player to recover more quickly from injury and thus stay in the lineup longer. Such a conclusion would at least proceed from the available evidence. But there is also the real possibility that excessively rapid muscle growth might lead to stress-related injury to tendons and ligaments which are not yet capable of supporting the additional mass. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence-- which is the only type of evidence the PED fanatics understand, so we'll play in their ballpark for a moment-- about football players who bulk up on steroids but can't seem to stay on the field without pulling or straining something.
Why, then, do athletes use the PEDs? The stark truth may be that 'bulking up' gets you noticed. Consider two prospects in any team sport: same age, same position, similar game stats. Both run the 40-yard dash in 4.8. One is 6-2, 245, the other is 6-2, 290. What scout wouldn't, at least subconsciously, look at the bigger kid first? "Wow, I've never seen a kid his size with that kind of speed!" Of course, the cat is out of the bag these days, and a savvy scout might say, "Hmmmmm... bet that big boy's on the 'roids." But if you've got a stat sheet with 100 similar athletes on it and little time to cut it down to say, 20 prospects-- well, all else being equal, the bigger kid will likely get the longer look.
So, it's a sports-culture thing. "Bigger is better." It's like a confidence game: it may not help you perform, but it may get you noticed. It's a peer-pressure thing: they say it worked for so-and-so, it'll work for me.
Look, people, we ourselves struggled with drug abuse for 20 years. There's no way anyone is going to twist our words to claim we're laissez-faire about the whole thing. The plague of PEDs has reached the high-school level and that's a national scandal and a national shame. But the tragedy of PEDs is what they do to the people who take them-- the rage, the injuries, the side effects, the long-term issues which remain unknown-- and to those they encounter in real life. What they do to the game itself is, in a word, unknown. We don't know, and you don't know either.
The first lesson of logic is, "correlation is not causation." There is absolutely no evidence-- none!-- that anyone has ever hit a home run, struck out a batter, stolen a base, or made a catch because of PEDs. You show me guys who 'bulked up' and increased their home run totals, and I'll show you guys who lost weight and got lean, and increased their home run totals.
This leads us to the topic of "cheating". The truth is:
Ballplayers have always tried to bend the rules to their advantage, and they always will.
Ecclesiastes tells us, "There is nothing new under the sun." How true this is when it comes to ballplayers trying to get an advantage, legal or otherwise. It's been part of the game since there was a game.
"When I broke in the big leagues we only had one umpire in a game... and you know that umpire can't see everything at once... Say, a man on second base and the batter would get a hit out to right field. Well, the umpire would be watching the ball and the batter... Meanwhile, the guy who was on second would cut third base wide by fifteen feet on his way home... We'd run with one eye on the ball and the other on the umpire!"
-- Hall of Famer Sam Crawford in The Glory of Their Times
Okay, how many of Sam Crawford's 1,391 runs shall we take away because he cheated? Who wants to put an asterisk next to his name in the record book?
How many of Gaylord Perry's 314 wins shall we "vacate" because he threw an illegal pitch? He identifies 1966 as the season he turned to the spitter as his "out" pitch. He won 21 games that year. Shall we adjust the Giants' 93-68 mark to 72-60, as if Gaylord had never existed? Or do we compute a win-shares adjustment at replacement level? C'mon, all you self-righteous geniuses, what shall we do?
For we must do something, right? We can't let these guys get away with it! Even if the PEDs don't actually enhance performance, those cheaters thought they did! And intentions are what counts, since we're too stupid to quantify results!
Okay, we'll admit, the anger is boiling over a bit. Deep breath, and next guaranteed-to-offend claim:
Neither Roger Maris nor Maury Wills ever had an asterisk next to their record in the record book.
We suppose it's baseball's most enduring urban legend. Usually the reference is to Maris, and people forget about Wills. The home-run record was more iconic, of course, and Babe Ruth was a lot more popular than Ty Cobb, too.
Anyway, the legend has been repeated enough now that for most people it's become fact. It was repeated on the USA Network drama "Suits" last night. A fine movie ("61*") was made about it. The term "asterisk" gets thrown around so much now it's become part of baseball jargon; we guarantee you that when Melky Cabrera gets his first hit of 2013, whether for the Giants or for someone else, at least one wise guy will turn to his buddies and say, "Get out the asterisk," and everyone will know what he's talking about.
Too bad it never happened.
What did happen is that in 1961, when Maris was closing in on Ruth's record, baseball commissioner Ford Frick (who just happened to be Babe Ruth's former publicist) wondered aloud, and publicly, about the 154-game versus 162-game season, and suggested that perhaps Maris' record, if he tied or broke Ruth's, be noted with an asterisk and footnote ("162-game season"). To be fair, it's clear Frick was simply thinking out loud, and hardly making an official pronouncement. To be honest, he had no authority to make any official pronouncement because, for one thing, there was no Official Record of Major-League Baseball (TM). In fact, there was no Major League Baseball (TM), at least not as a recognized corporate entity. There were the two leagues, American and National, and there was The Sporting News ("The Bible of Baseball") which claimed to have the authoritative record of major-league baseball, but there was no "MLB" and there was no Baseball Encyclopedia and there were other guys, like the Hall of Fame's Joe Reichler, who kept their own records, and nobody could claim those weren't just as official as TSN's.
No asterisk. Never happened. We have a fine baseball book from 1964 which lists some records in the back. There, both Ruth ("154-game season") and Maris ("162-game season") are listed side by side. It's interesting, and indicative of the times and the fact that there was a controversy, but it's no more "official" than is this blog. When "MLB Inc." was organized in 1968 and the first official record book (the 1969 Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia) published, there was Maris, asterisk-free, atop the list.
No asterisk. Never happened. Case closed. On to the heart of the matter:
Those who advocate placing asterisks next to records, erasing records, or vacating team wins or accomplishments, are all Communists who ought to be deported and put on the next boat to Castro's Cuba.
Back in the day, the Soviet Union's Central Committee, known as the "Politburo", regularly edited out people and events from history when those people and events conflicted with or contradicted the latest official Party line.
Today we see their spiritual brethren making comments like these on the Giants' website:
"The players union and all GM's need to agree on a harsher penalty...How about an 80 game suspension, annul their contract and vacate 25 wins. Maybe if there is more at stake not only for the player but also for the team they play for this cheating will end sooner than later."
"Maybe the next thing that should be done is chop 10-20 wins off their team's record and see how that sits."
What kind of person actually believes that you can un-do something that has been done?
Evidently the scurrilous example of the NCAA ("National Communists Against Athletics," Brian Bosworth called them, and while 'The Boz' was annoying, he was also right) has caught on among the more rabidly self-righteous among us.
Not content with having ruined college football, perhaps forever, these modern Bolsheviks have set their sights on baseball.
You know... we're a wordy sort, as evidenced by this blog. Words are the local currency. And, yet, right now, words simply fail us.
If you have to have it explained to you why it is morally wrong to go into the past and erase events and people as if they never happened, then you will never understand.
But if that's you, please check your American card at the door. You're a Communist. The leaky boat to Cuba awaits. No, we're not speaking figuratively. No, we're not exaggerating. No, we're not kidding. Take a hike. It's not about baseball. It's about you, and your deep-seated need to get even with everyone who ever done ya wrong. That's what Communism is, the ultimate get-even game, and that's what you are.
Capiche?
Now, to wrap it all up, we'll take out the old crystal ball and gaze into the near future:
What constitutes an unfair advantage? (Whatcha gonna do when the Bionic Man suits up?)
Usually the heart of the "cheater" argument falls back on the old "unnatural" claim: "He didn't use the natural ability God gave him! No! He had to go and put a bunch of artificial stuff into his body! Off with his head, and put an asterisk next to it!"
We'll confess right now: in our last few years of semi-pro baseball, we too used an artificial enhancement to keep us in the game after our God-given physical abilities had declined. We still use it today. We're not sure of the technical term, but colloquially it's called a "pair of eyeglasses," and it enabled us to see the ball better than we would have otherwise, and thus stay in the game longer. Yes! It feels so good to come clean after all these years!
Spare us the ridicule ("Can you believe that freakin' idiot! He's comparing glasses and contact lenses to effin' steroids! Somebody should lock that guy up in a rubber room! With an asterisk!")-- and tell us the difference.
Now consider.
It is likely to happen within the next decade. A player will take the field with an artificially-enhanced body part. Not "Tommy John surgery", although by some of y'all's standards, that is "cheating", too, but more like a pitching arm, say, which has been artificially enhanced to where the pitcher can throw, say, 110 miles per hour, game after game, without undue risk of injury.
As Karl Malden used to say, "What will you do? What will you do?"
O ye self-righteous self-appointed guardians of baseball purity, will you let Steve Austin play?
Why, or why not?
Thursday, July 19, 2012
A Midsummer Night's Team
Well, that was sure something, wasn't it? Your basic four-hour-and-eight-minute exhaust-o-rama, replete with heroic homers, egregious errors, twelve pitchers, twenty-seven position players, and no less than eleven runs scored in two ridiculously frantic extra innings on a sloppy slippery field, turning what began as a tight pitchers' duel into something resembling the finale of a slow-pitch softball tournament. All in all, it had to be even more exhausting than was composing that last sentence.
And as the mist clears the San Francisco Giants stand atop the National League West, three games ahead of the Hated Rivals, having won five straight since the All-Star Break-- which, if you'll remember, followed a disastrous road trip in which the Giants lost five of six and, it appeared, most of their momentum. Now, even with Hector Sanchez worryingly injured and Eli Whiteside our backup catcher, and even with Tim Lincecum as yet unable to put two quality starts back-to-back, the Giants are red-hot and rolling, with a chance tonight to sweep a quality team in their home park.
Big Mo certainly made his presence felt in the tenth and eleventh innings last night. It was 1-1 after nine, Ryan Vogelsong having done his part and then some, and when the Giants broke out with two in the top of the tenth, featuring a most uncharacteristic throwing error by the Cooperstown-bound Chipper Jones, it felt like earned reward for hard work. But the fun was only starting. Santiago Casilla, who has blown more saves in the past three weeks than in the previous three months, retired the first two batters, and just as most of you got ready to switch your RealPlayer app back to "Living Things" or "American Idiot", bang-bang, here's a double, here's a two-run shot, here's a tie game again, and here's a hundred-odd website comments demanding we trade our next eight first-round picks for Jonathan Papelbon.
Then we had Brandon Crawford, of whom we've been somewhat critical in the recent past, fouling a nasty cutter off his knee in the 11th and hitting the deck in pain, as Bruce Bochy reviewed the lineup card-- which must have looked like a West Virginia road map by that time-- and realized he had no more position players left. While "Boch" was considering Matt Cain as pinch-hitter and emergency outfielder, Crawford got up, dusted himself off, and pulled the next pitch into the right-field seats for just his second homer of the year, Eli Whiteside and Brandon Belt scoring ahead of him. After Jones' second error in two innings and a fielder's choice, the Braves then walked Melky Cabrera-- hey, can you blame 'em?-- to get to Blanco, who launched Number Five halfway to Marietta, and there's your basic six-run top of the eleventh.
Having blown the save, Casilla got the win, naturally, when good ol' Brad Penny finished off the affair. Of course, he opened by allowing the obligatory run on a too-little too-late leadoff blast by Chipper, but he got three fly balls to the outfield before the Braves could score anybody else, and though it wasn't a save situation, we guarantee you if a poll were held this morning, a substantial plurality would favor the big guy to be immediately installed as our new closer.
Whether or not Bochy and Dave Righetti are ready to throw Casilla under the bus at this point is an open question. Clearly, we can't let him venture into full Matt Herges mode if we expect to stay in first place down the stretch, but neither do we need to push the panic button, especially since said button has dollar signs and draft choices painted all over it. This morning on the Giants' website a commenter stated, "A championship team needs a star closer." We emphatically disagree-- a championship team needs an effective closer, a solid and dependable closer, but not necessarily a star closer. The matched set: Tim Worrell, 2003, and Armando Benitez, 2005. What we definitely don't need is to trade half a dozen draft picks, half our top prospects, or half a billion dollars for a "name." Some have suggested that if Casilla can't get it done, Sergio Romo should take the baton. Frankly, we admit we don't know the answer to that one. We do believe there is somebody on this staff who can take the role and run with it, but we have to trust that "Boch" and "Rags" know who he is, because we don't.
Belated shout-outs to Pablo Sandoval, Buster Posey, Melky "MVP" Cabrera, and, of course, Matt "Mister Perfect" Cain for banding together to ensure the seventh game of the World Series will be played at AT&T Park. (Hey, we're fans, remember? Take it easy!) Certainly this was the most memorable All-Star Game since, oh, about 1989 or so, and the signature moment for us was Panda's bases-loaded triple off Justin Verlander, which put the National League in the driver's seat for good.
And did anyone else see that Jonathan Sanchez was DFA'd by the Royals last week? The former "No-Hit" Giants' hero not only saw his feat upstaged this year by Cain, he also saw his WHIP soar to a gargantuan two-plus, with more walks than strikeouts. After his last start-- five straight hits, including two homers, by the first five batters-- clearly KC believed they had to pull the cord. (And we thought the Giants were notorious for excruciatingly one-sided trades.) Now, does anyone think the Giants might take a flyer on their former phenom and try to pull another "Ryan Vogelsong"? Fine with us-- as long as they don't make him the closer!
And as the mist clears the San Francisco Giants stand atop the National League West, three games ahead of the Hated Rivals, having won five straight since the All-Star Break-- which, if you'll remember, followed a disastrous road trip in which the Giants lost five of six and, it appeared, most of their momentum. Now, even with Hector Sanchez worryingly injured and Eli Whiteside our backup catcher, and even with Tim Lincecum as yet unable to put two quality starts back-to-back, the Giants are red-hot and rolling, with a chance tonight to sweep a quality team in their home park.
Big Mo certainly made his presence felt in the tenth and eleventh innings last night. It was 1-1 after nine, Ryan Vogelsong having done his part and then some, and when the Giants broke out with two in the top of the tenth, featuring a most uncharacteristic throwing error by the Cooperstown-bound Chipper Jones, it felt like earned reward for hard work. But the fun was only starting. Santiago Casilla, who has blown more saves in the past three weeks than in the previous three months, retired the first two batters, and just as most of you got ready to switch your RealPlayer app back to "Living Things" or "American Idiot", bang-bang, here's a double, here's a two-run shot, here's a tie game again, and here's a hundred-odd website comments demanding we trade our next eight first-round picks for Jonathan Papelbon.
Then we had Brandon Crawford, of whom we've been somewhat critical in the recent past, fouling a nasty cutter off his knee in the 11th and hitting the deck in pain, as Bruce Bochy reviewed the lineup card-- which must have looked like a West Virginia road map by that time-- and realized he had no more position players left. While "Boch" was considering Matt Cain as pinch-hitter and emergency outfielder, Crawford got up, dusted himself off, and pulled the next pitch into the right-field seats for just his second homer of the year, Eli Whiteside and Brandon Belt scoring ahead of him. After Jones' second error in two innings and a fielder's choice, the Braves then walked Melky Cabrera-- hey, can you blame 'em?-- to get to Blanco, who launched Number Five halfway to Marietta, and there's your basic six-run top of the eleventh.
Having blown the save, Casilla got the win, naturally, when good ol' Brad Penny finished off the affair. Of course, he opened by allowing the obligatory run on a too-little too-late leadoff blast by Chipper, but he got three fly balls to the outfield before the Braves could score anybody else, and though it wasn't a save situation, we guarantee you if a poll were held this morning, a substantial plurality would favor the big guy to be immediately installed as our new closer.
Whether or not Bochy and Dave Righetti are ready to throw Casilla under the bus at this point is an open question. Clearly, we can't let him venture into full Matt Herges mode if we expect to stay in first place down the stretch, but neither do we need to push the panic button, especially since said button has dollar signs and draft choices painted all over it. This morning on the Giants' website a commenter stated, "A championship team needs a star closer." We emphatically disagree-- a championship team needs an effective closer, a solid and dependable closer, but not necessarily a star closer. The matched set: Tim Worrell, 2003, and Armando Benitez, 2005. What we definitely don't need is to trade half a dozen draft picks, half our top prospects, or half a billion dollars for a "name." Some have suggested that if Casilla can't get it done, Sergio Romo should take the baton. Frankly, we admit we don't know the answer to that one. We do believe there is somebody on this staff who can take the role and run with it, but we have to trust that "Boch" and "Rags" know who he is, because we don't.
Belated shout-outs to Pablo Sandoval, Buster Posey, Melky "MVP" Cabrera, and, of course, Matt "Mister Perfect" Cain for banding together to ensure the seventh game of the World Series will be played at AT&T Park. (Hey, we're fans, remember? Take it easy!) Certainly this was the most memorable All-Star Game since, oh, about 1989 or so, and the signature moment for us was Panda's bases-loaded triple off Justin Verlander, which put the National League in the driver's seat for good.
And did anyone else see that Jonathan Sanchez was DFA'd by the Royals last week? The former "No-Hit" Giants' hero not only saw his feat upstaged this year by Cain, he also saw his WHIP soar to a gargantuan two-plus, with more walks than strikeouts. After his last start-- five straight hits, including two homers, by the first five batters-- clearly KC believed they had to pull the cord. (And we thought the Giants were notorious for excruciatingly one-sided trades.) Now, does anyone think the Giants might take a flyer on their former phenom and try to pull another "Ryan Vogelsong"? Fine with us-- as long as they don't make him the closer!
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