Baseball '09, Volume XIII: The Thursdays of August

Thursday, August 27th.

BALL ONE: A warm night by the bay, clear skies, green grass beneath the lights, good beer, good garlic fries. There is nothing like a good game of baseball on such a night.

STRIKE ONE: And that was nothing like a good game of baseball. At least not for the Giants.

STRIKE TWO: To put it another way, as I commented to Vaughn, I sure do love watching baseball. It would have been nifty if the Giants had felt like playing some.

So, I'm just going to draw a curtain over the (in)action on the field in the Giants' 11-0 burst of generosity to the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks. We'll pretend Fred Lewis never slid down to make a catch, only for the ball to sail over his head, to name one instance of Murphy's Law in action that shall be ignored here.

Instead, there's this:

FOUL BALL: The garlic fries at the club level concourse seemed to be much less soggy than the garlic fries up on the view reserved level. This must irk the people up above, which explains the constant, gentle snowfall of peanut- and sunflower seed shells.

BALL TWO: The hot chocolate was really quite delightful.

BALL THREE: After the game, we walked from AT & T Park along the waterfront to the Embarcadero BART Station, watching the moon hang in the sky behind the skyline of the Financial District, watching the lights of the Bay Bridge arc over the Bay, enjoying the mild summer air at 11 p.m.

STRIKE THREE: The first Giants game of the year was a loss to the Diamondbacks. One of the last games of the year is a loss to the same Arizona Diamondbacks by a much worse margin. There is a pessimistic metaphor for life to be found in that, I think.

But then, just to keep me guessing, just when I figured the Giants didn't have the depth to compete for the playoffs after all, when I thought their frailties had finally been exposed, they turn around and sweep the Rockies, simultaneously tying them in the wild card race.

Baseball is a funny thing that way.

Following The Money

The International Olympic Committee has rejected a bid to reinstate softball into the Summer Olympics in time for the 2016 Games. Instead, it is considering rugby, which I can support, and . . . golf.

Now, I've never played golf other than the mini- or computerized version, but it seems to me that golf would not really be in keeping with the Olympic spirit, at least not in terms of equal opportunity for athletes.

This is not even taking into the account that golf is really, really boring to watch, and softball isn't.

Golf is money and privilege. Softball isn't. The Olympics are supposedly a celebration of amateur athletics, even if that distinction has definitely been blurred with the inclusion of NHL, MLB and NBA players. Golf is decidedly not amateur.

Yes, golf does offer chances for women, as well as men. But look at the list of top money winners. For the men, Tiger Woods has earned more than $6 million. Tiger is obviously an exceptionally dominant player, but even the second placed earner is earning over $4 million. The leading earner on the LPGA has earned $1.3 million. Nothing to sneeze at, but proportionally, come on.

When you consider the fact that golf's 'hallowed ground' at Augusta, Georgia, is a club that is closed to women, I think there is not much more that needs to be said. Golf is a country club sport for wealthy men. I think even aesthetically speaking, it has no place in the Olympics.

Softball, on the other hand, does not get the professional rewards or sponsorship deals that the golf tours offer. Doesn't softball make more sense for inclusion in the Olympics than does golf?

Of course, there might be more money to be made from including golf, but I would require proof of that. And even if that were the case, it wouldn't make me happy.

Baseball '09, Volume XII: Because It's What Men Do

The Giants' playoff hopes, if not necessarily diminished, recently encountered new obstacles after a weak home stand in which the Giants barely staved off sweeps from the lowly Reds and the morally-repugnant Dodgers, matched with another late-season surge from the Rockies.

It's tough to say at this point if they will keep up the challenge. But they have at least provided the drama of hit-by-pitch vendettas with the Dodgers and Mets.

Against the Dodgers last Wednesday, it appears that James McDonald threw at Pablo Sandoval, presumably for the purposes of intimidation. And then yesterday, after Matt Cain hit David Wright of the Mets in the head (on an 0-2 count, when logic dictates he would be going for an out), Johan Santana threw behind Pablo Sandoval, clearly in retaliation, and then, after both benches were warned, hit Bengie Molina, ostensibly unintentionally and without punishment.

Pablo and Bengie both hit key home runs in the Giants' extra-innings victory.

Here's my question about these sorts of tactics and retaliations: why?

The first instance, that of intimidation, if it is done for that reason, that's just bad sportsmanship. And in the question of retaliation, eye-for-an-eye justice, the argument is that pitchers have to protect their teammates, both psychologically and physically, as part of a code.

It's just stupid. You're playing a game. What part of playing a game should involve attempting to hit the other team's best players, with the obvious exceptions of football and hockey? This isn't exactly dodgeball or kickball in the playground when you play with big red foam-rubber balls.

Furthermore, the idea of baseball is to get the other side out. Hitting a batter gives them a free base runner, and, because baseball officially frowns on retaliation, it can lead to ejections of a manager and/or pitcher. Call me crazy, but that seems like it would be at best a Pyrrhic victory to hit the other team's batter, give them a baserunner, and get yourself ejected from a game.

People will argue that it is part of the game; that it is part of being a man and sticking up for your team; that it is an intangible element that can truly impact the course of a game and a season, and therefore must be utilized for the Machiavellian pursuit of success.

This is stupid. True, probably, but still stupid.

It's an outmoded notion that speaks to the visceral hatred of the other side, regardless of all the talk about codes and honor. Codes and honor, by the way, are often predicated on stupid premises themselves.

I think the people who regard this code of manly behavior as being the right thing to do are the same people who consider Born In The USA to be a completely patriotic, uncomplicated 4th of July Bar-B-Que-and-beach anthem.

The argument will be that sports are passion, that this aspect of baseball will never go away, that I'm being overly idealistic and naive to argue against it. Yes, and? Just because there is an evil in the game, that doesn't mean I have to accept it as necessary.

A Tale Of Two Contract Disputes

Ah, Labor: the virtue of the working class; the sufferings of a mother bringing another future worker into the world to compete for resources; the source of hundreds of thousands of sports fanatics around the world. And typically, the side I would choose in any dispute.

A Bay Area Rapid Transit Union is calling a strike as of the end of service on Sunday night, which would shut down the central spine of the local public transit hub, overloading the other transit agencies and leaving thousands of workers free to worry less about whether their own jobs are secure, because they will be worrying about just how they will get to those jobs in the first place.

Keep in mind, we are also approaching the Labor Day weekend, when the Bay Bridge will be shut down for construction efforts. That could be interesting.

Why am I talking about a labor strike in a sports blog? Well, every story of a dispute needs a good cop/bad cop angle, and in this case, the BART union is the good cop. Even though the average BART worker salary is more than twice what I make.

The bad cop, sadly, comes from the world of sports.

The bad cop is San Francisco 49ers top draft pick, Michael Crabtree, who is threatening to hold out for an entire season. He wants to be paid 'top 5' money, commensurate with what someone drafted among the top five selections would earn, even though he was drafted at number 10.

A few disclaimers on this before people doubt my sympathy for the 'laborer': yes, as far as the BART union goes, it would be a hard job; they deserve to be well paid; and historically, management has been known to use economic downturns to stick it to the worker. As far as an athlete goes, yes, they can be considered labor, and have had legitimate labor issues over the decades--watch certain episodes of Ken Burns' excellent Baseball documentary; and yes, sports are physically demanding, with many consequences for the athlete in later years, so they do need to be well paid to take care of themselves and their family in later years.

But Michael Crabtree, regardless of wanting top five money without the rationale of, you know, actually being in the top five, seriously, can you really not live with whatever you are certain to earn as a top draft pick in the NFL? Every year the trend has been for players and agents to ask for more and more money. This is not a cost-of-living sort of trend; this is nothing to do with inflation. If Crabtree gets the sort of money he is looking for, according to SI.com's John Lopez, he would earn $3 million more per season than Jerry Rice ever made. Michael Crabtree is not yet Jerry Rice.

Michael, if you think you're going to struggle to make it in this admittedly expensive city, I can tell you where the cheap sushi and the good happy hour deals can be found.

Here's the thing: Crabtree's holdout may be a negotiating ploy, but it sure seems tactless, to say the least. Assuming you want to be a success at the game, and assuming you want fans to love you, don't you think you should avoid pissing everyone off as to how much money you think you deserve?

Sports are simply sports. This is a country where socialism is considered a dirty word--it's considered this mostly by people who don't pay attention to what socialism really is and whether it might be beneficial to them, instead relying on the advice of people with a vested interest in capitalistic trends. Nevertheless, until our currency becomes useless for anything except kindling, I don't think athletes should take our 'free market' spirit for granted, because it isn't like they are short of cash.

How much do you really need to live well?

Lights, Camera, Action!

So yesterday I watched two Mexican soccer games, Cruz Azul-Pumas and Morelia-America, sandwiched around a Major League Soccer game between San Jose and Seattle. I found them all entertaining, even though I understood very little of what the announcers were saying. I had difficulty following the announcers in the Mexican games, too.

Kidding. Mostly. American sportscasters tend to make me sneeze with their inevitably inane comments, especially when they aren't precisely unbiased and feel the need to proclaim that Seattle came to town to get rough with San Jose, speaking in the contemptuous tones that indicate just what they think of the Pacific Northwest and its fog-drenched immorality.

On the other hand, I sometimes find this less annoying than the atmospheric-and-passionate-yet-persistently-clanging cries of "Goooll, goooooool, goooool" from the Mexican announcers, trying to be a verbal version of the goal-siren in hockey games. They do the same thing with awarded penalty kicks: "Penaaal, penaaaal, penaaal." I don't mind that as much as the goals themselves. Yes, we can see it is a goal, thank you very much.

To be fair to the American announcers, there were a lot of cards in the Seattle-San Jose game, including a deserved red card for James Riley of Seattle. It was a choppy, bad tempered match-up, livened up by some nice individual efforts and some well-taken goals for San Jose's 4-0 victory.

Artistically speaking, though, the Mexican games were much more pleasing to the eye. Maybe it was because I wasn't distracted by listening to the sportscasters--though I was proud to pick out a few words here and there, like "of course", "Torado", and "goal"--but I managed to focus on the play, and the quality of the play on the field seemed much more dynamic, more fluid. It looked like they were playing on a much larger pitch; the local broadcast of the Earthquakes made it look like they were playing on a rough, narrower field, kind of like comparing a high school field with the Estadio Azteca, which, coincidentally, is where the Club America-Morelia game was played. In fact, when I was working out the premise for this blog, I was going to write that US soccer needs larger fields to work with, to improve the quality of play, or at least the presentation of the game. Then I did some pesky fact-checking, and if Wikipedia is correct, Buck Shaw Stadium's pitch actually has more generous dimensions than does Mexico's national stadium.

Which means Major League Soccer doesn't have that excuse for not matching the same fluidity of play.

I think there are two possible factors at play: technical skill, and the quality of the television broadcast. Both are key to the development and advancement of the MLS in the public's eye.

As a general rule, I think it is accepted that the level of technical skill for the individual player is better in the Mexican League than in Major League Soccer. This is also a problem with the US national team, which relies on organization and athletic ability, which are indeed strengths, but which are not enough. However, I would say this gap is closing, both with the young American players coming up and with the trend in Major League Soccer to recruit more and more young players from Latin America.

The camera work, though, that could stand some improvement. A lot of the time, I felt that the camera work made the field look cramped, and it was too focused on the ball, with none of the broader views of the geometry of the runs players make when they don't have the ball, the broader views that I love so much in the Mexican telecasts, and in ESPN's coverage of the UEFA Champions League.

Image is important in this country; let's polish up the broadcast of Major League Soccer matches, and maybe you will see even more interest from the public.

Kicking Off The Season

I have picked a team. Sort of.

The poll results were small, but useful. Three votes for Arsenal, two for Manchester United, one for Everton, one for Liverpool, one for Aston Villa.

When I registered for a fantasy soccer league, it asked for my favorite team, and I selected Newcastle United. They are going through chaos, an unpopular owner unable to sell the team, the new season a week away and no decision made on a manager, some players have left, and poor results in exhibition matches.

But I picked them in my younger days, so I will stay with them now, for better or for worse. For some people, after all, a relationship with a sports team is like a marriage, only it is harder to divorce your favorite sports team.

This comparison is an exaggeration, perhaps, but there is a real significance to your allegiance to a sports team, because we all, deep down, think that it makes a difference in the world that we root for a certain team, a certain organization, that we can will success. For some reason, it just feels right to me to continue to root for Newcastle.

Also, this will give me incentive to follow EVEN MORE soccer, as I will want to see Newcastle win promotion back to the Premiership.

It also makes me feel better, because I was leaning towards rooting for Manchester United, which would be like rooting for AC Milan in Italy, simply because they signed American defender Oguchi Onyewu, disregarding the taint of their affiliation with Silvio Berlusconi.

I will, however, root for Michael Owen to hit a ton of goals, because I picked him for my fantasy team. And I will root for Manchester United to win the Champions League, because they have the best shot, I think.

As for the Premier League, I will root for Liverpool, even though a recent scandal involving Steven Gerrard and a brawl in a pub has tarnished my affection; therefore, Arsenal will be my co-favorites in the Premiership.

Who says you can't have your cake and eat it to?