Where Have You Gone Joe Has Moved Here.

Where Have You Gone Joe Is Here

Roll Call

Aaron Rowand	Ryan Garko
Aubrey Huff	Jose Castillo
Miguel Tejada	Dave Roberts
Freddy Sanchez	Ryan Klesko
Carlos Beltran	Mark Sweeney
Mark DeRosa	Steve Finley
Benji Molina	Moises Alou
Edgar Renteria	Omar Vizquel
Juan Uribe	Jose Viscaiano
Jose Guillen	Eliezer Alfonso
Rich Aurilia	Mike Matheny
Randy Winn	Barry Bonds

The average baseball career is 6 years; a generation if you will. 2011 marks the end of the generation from 2006 to 2011. Those 24 players were all signed as free agents or traded for by the Giants to be starters, and each of them was paid $ Millions to do so. Other than Bonds, can you find a player there who was not over-the-hill and/or beat-up when the Giants signed/re-signed them?

Just to point out the obvious, these are Giants rankings in On Base Percentage, Slugging, OPS and Runs scored during those years followed by their pitching rankings below.

2006 - 28/22/25 - Runs Scored - 24th 
2007 - 27/30/30 - Runs Scored - 29th
2008 - 24/28/28 - Runs Scored - 29th
2009 - 30/28/30 - Runs Scored - 26th
2010 - 19/13/17 - Runs Scored - 17th
2011 - 29/27/28 - Runs Scored - 29th

During this same period, Giants pitching rankings in ERA, Runs Allowed and OPS against.

2006 - 9/15/10
2007 - 9/6/10
2008 - 17/17/17
2009 - 2/1/2
2010 - 1/2/2
2011 - 2/2/1

The disconnect between hitting and pitching is dumbfounding. This disparity makes it impossible to believe that the same people responsible for building this pitching staff are the same people responsible for consistently assembling one of the worst hitting teams in the Major Leagues, year in and year out.


Whether it's as a pitcher who has his pockets picked every time he goes to the mound, or a position player who is on welfare while picking the pitchers' pockets, it is no fun managing/coaching a team like this. Remember, this is a pitching staff that has had the carcass of Barry Zito and his $126 Million contract run out to the mound every fifth day for the past four years to overcome while posting those numbers. That doesn't make it any easier to swallow if you're one of the guys doing all the lifting.


This is not a healthy situation for the long term. This is Marilyn Monroe's face on Roseanne Barr's body.

Last Night's Game

If the Giants were not matching up well against the Phils then there might be concern. But though they lost, the Giants still forced the Phils other number one guy to throw a shutout.

From the Phils perspective, I have to believe that my guy needs to throw a shut-out against the Giants to have a chance to win. When you factor in the Zito exception, this is a pretty accurate assessment of Giants pitchers dominating Phillies hitters.

That is a lot of weight for Phils pitchers. Most of the entire careers of Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner and Sanchez have been pitched under those difficult circumstances. Not the Phils, though. The Phillies score about 25 percent more runs than the Giants. This year the Phils are at 4.4 vs the Giants 3.5 runs per game. And that is not insignificant.  While this may seem like a big disadvantage during the season, and it is, the post-season really comes down to pitching under a lot of pressure when you know your hitters are in for a rough time. For Giants pitchers, this is an everyday thing, game-in, game-out, season-in, season-out. Last year, the Braves, Phils, and Rangers' pitchers were not up to the task. Though the scoring was close, the Giants were never really challenged except for the third inning of game 5 against the Phils.

The Phils position players have the big reputations, but they have built those reputations against the "Not-Giants". Except for Victorino, they have been pretty much helpless at worst, and sporadic at best against the Giants.

Its easy to fall into the trap of putting too much emphasis on the standings when evaluating a team's relative strength. We forget that by its very nature, baseball really is specific batters against specific pitchers, (yet one more reason for accurate strike-zone calls) and the Giants continue to match up well against Philadelphia.

I was reminded of that basic element of baseball, when reading Joe Posnanski's piece contrasting the careers of Matt Stairs and Randy Moss on the occasion of their mutual retirements.

Stairs owned David Cone and Roy Halladay , but couldn't hit Rick Helling. Matt Stairs, at age 40, came off the bench for these same Phils in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Dodgers' Jonathan Broxton in the 8th inning with a man on, score at 5-5. He promptly launched one into the cheap seats. Its not that Stairs was great or even having a great year. He was at exactly league average in OPS+ for the season. He just happened to hit a ball he picked up well out of Broxton's release point. It was no more complicated than that.

Drysdale owned Mays. McCovey owned Drysdale. Individual matchups. As a fan, I tend to overlook them, because I simply do not follow the game from that standpoint anymore. But matchups, and I do not mean the brain-dead absolutist approach to L vs R, are as integral to the game as the strikezone. Stats are certainly one element of evaluating matchups. But just as important if not more so, is observation and determining how well a hitter is picking up the pitcher's pitches and how deep in the zone he can let a pitch go before committing.

That takes a lot of eyeballing over a lot of years and some guys never do acquire that skill. Bochy has been pretty adept at this. Dusty Baker, Joe Girardi, Kirk Gibson and others seem to be very good at this. As a matter of speculation, I believe this to be a big element in the D-Backs success. Gibson's ability to determine  favorable matchups based upon his years of experience measuring up pitchers. I have no empirical evidence to support that, but it is certainly a plausible explanation, at least in part, for the D-Backs current run.

As Giants fans, one can only hope that I am dead wrong and that the D-backs are smoke, mirrors, and paper-clips.

The Strike Zone - I hate East German Ice Skaters

One of my favorite writers over at Giants watch, Steve Harmon was recapping the ambush of Matt Cain by the homeplate umpires' wandering, kaleidoscopic strike zone. Two innings of bad strike calls that could very well be the difference between a 1 game lead and a 3 game lead over Arizona.  And I got to thinking about the strike zone and some of the lore that surrounds it. This posted as a comment but was a little long to be a comment so its reposted with some editing here

Umpire strike zones have a disproportionate and inappropriate impact on game outcomes. You cited several questionable calls in just two innings that probably dictated the final results.

Much of baseball lore emanates from the bottom of the cliche bin, and the following makes me want to break large pieces of furniture.

"Pitchers and hitters don't care what the strike zone is as long as it is consistent".

No! No! Helllllllll NOOOOOOOOO!

I believe the mindless repetition of this concept is something so harmful to the real integrity of the game as to be a canard of the highest order. Baseball is predicated upon a strike zone. Without a strikezone, baseball does not exist. So it seems to me that the best strike zone is the most accurate one, not a wrong one that is declared acceptable because somebody subjectively deems it to be "consistent".

What the game needs and is entitled to is a strike zone as it is written in the rulebook without impeding the flow of the game such as the use of instant replay. The means to do this electronically and visually have been in place and available to TV viewers for years.

The process is simple. Add an electronic voice to the process and run it into the homeplate umpires' ear bud. Run it through an ipod if need be for goodness sakes. This simple process removes the single biggest flaw in sports officiating; the inevitable disasters that turn a game around because of bad strike zone calls.

What the rulebook clearly spells out to be an objective measurement (the strike zone) has been relegated to the same subjective judgment methods as ice dancing competitions. The only thing baseball is missing are the three  East German judges.

And unlike replay, the game never misses a beat with the aural-prompted strikezone. It is invisible to fan and player alike, and makes for 99.999 percent accuracy, allowing for the inevitable equipment failures along the way.

A collateral benefit would be the re-training of the eye by the electronic strike zone, so in the event of equipment failure, the ump's strike zone would have been retooled so that his strike zone would more likely replicate the electronic one.

It makes the game fairer, by far. And if there was ever a game that is meant to be measured objectively, it is baseball. Because it is in fact a game of inches, fairness demands as much accuracy as possible.

There is nothing fair about bad strike zone calls at all. Bad strike zones ruin innings, ruin games, ruin seasons, ruin careers. I see nothing endearing, whatsoever in any of that.

More tension and animosity have been created by bad strike zone calls than any other fixable officiating deficiency that I can recall. If you have your own favorite, speak up and we can debate it.

Refusing to change is not maintaining tradition. Using a rusty scalpel to render living flesh under General Anesthesia is not tradition either, particularly when arthroscopic surgery with a local is indicated.

And after far too many bad strike zone calls, I sometimes feel like I've been put under by General Anesthesia.

A Few Good Guys

I would have thought that the World Series and the ongoing failure and embarrassment of Zito and Rowand would have given the Giants front office enough cover to permit them to drop the charade. It doesn’t help the Giants cause and it doesn’t help Rowand nor Zito except in their personal piggybanks. Maybe in better times, that would have been enough. But Americans are too well aware that unchecked greed and selfishness by the few have ruined the economic lives of millions of hard-working folks. And baseball fans are no different

Watching Mays stumble around in the '73 series was bad enough, but the Mets didn’t have anybody less useless. It was embarrassing and humiliating for him and his fans, even though he eked out 3 singles in the postseason. 
Willie had the good grace to go home after the 73 season and call it a career after 23 years in centerfield. A 644 OPS was just not up to his standards. Aaron Rowand gets paid in one month to come off the bench and back up a centerfielder who has been a career minor leaguer, what Mays made in his entire career. Barry Zito makes more in about 24 innings of 4.50 to 6.00 ERA ball than Mays made in an entire career. There is no fraction small enough to express the ratio of DiMaggio's earnings to Rowand and Zito. Here's what Joe DiMaggio said when he announced his retirement in 1951, following the conclusion of the Yankees-Giants World Series. This was Mays rookie year and it would be the only time these two hall of fame centerfielders would ever oppose each other:
 "I feel like I have reached the stage where I can no longer produce for my club, my manager, and my teammates. I had a poor year, but even if I had hit .350, this would have been my last year. I was full of aches an pains and it had become a chore for me to play. When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game."
Former Giants pitcher and current Giants good guy broadcaster, Mike Krukow said it best when he spoke about why ballplayers play the game with the intensity that they do. He said, and I paraphrase: "Ballplayers play to be remembered. They want to be remembered by their peers as a competitor who played for the betterment of the team, and they want to play to be remembered by the fans as a good guy."
Again. Joe DiMaggio when asked why he dove hard for a ball possibly risking injury in a lopsided game:

"There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time, I owe him my best."

Aaron Rowand and Barry Zito have earned more money than they will ever need to live comfortably and lavishly for the rest of their lives. There really is not much left for them to accomplish that they are capable of accomplishing. Just the opposite really. They harm their team more than they help; on the field and on the budget. 

Zito is mentally done because he simply does not have the velocity or control necessary to avoid catastrophic mistakes on the pitching mound. Every batter who digs in against him is like a circling shark in bloody water. Conversely, every pitcher in the Bigs, knows that Rowand has no chance against a slider because he can no longer catch up to a major league fastball. His bat speed is too slow against the fastball to allow him to let a ball get deep into the zone before hitting. So he has to look fastball on every pitch. It sounds easy to change, but it is impossible once the hand speed is gone. Ask Mays. When you can't hit the fastball anymore, you're done, no matter how hard you try.

It happened to Mays. It happened to DiMaggio. They were hall-of-famers and everybody knew it years before they retired. They also knew that they were going to have to get a job to support themselves afterward. And they finally said good bye and are remembered fondly for their retirement in dignity and style.
Rowand and Zito could help themselves by taking the unusual step of retiring out of a lucrative contract, and take home more in buy-out money than what the typical neighborhood earns a year, but I doubt that they will.

They are still young guys in a world that is isolated from the rest of humanity. They are part of the upper 10 percent of MLB's wage earners, whose contracts dictate that they are different than other players. They have the money to insulate themselves from criticism and from true confrontation of their shortcomings. 
Fans see them as horrible disappointments at best, and selfish hangers-on at worst. It does not matter. They travel in the company of limos, bodyguards when needed, have preferred access to fine eating establishments, clubs, and other destination spots of the rich and famous.They are surrounded like all privileged people with sycophants who will say and do anything to curry favor with the privileged, otherwise known as jock sniffers and celebrity sluts. What we think does not matter right now. But in the end it will. Selfish people are not remembered well. 

Rowand and Zito could both settle out for mutually acceptable cents on the dollar with Giants management and call it a career. They would be remembered for that for a long time. They would be good guys. They would be fixtures around AT&T on old-timers days and Giants Good Guys days. The MLPA (Major League Players Association) wouldn't like it much, and certainly Scott Boras (Zito's agent} and Craig Landis (Rowand's agent} would be upset.
In case anybody has forgotten, the Giants are under contract to pay Barry Zito $18.5 million in 2011.They are under contract to give Barry Zito a $500,000 raise to $19.0 million in 2012. Starting in 2013, Barry Zito will be owed an additional $20.0 Million. And that is not the end. In the year 2014, in the highly unlikely event that the Giants want Barry Zito to stick around, it will cost them $18.0 Million. If they decide to send him home, it will cost them only $7.0 Million to have him clean out his locker. 
That is four more years including this season. The Giants are scheduled to play 648 games during that time not counting Spring Training and/or the Post-Season. 
That is somewhere between $64 and $75 Million of fan money paying a guy to keep a younger better player off the major league roster. So think about that the next time you roll your eyes when a beer vendor wants a $20 bill for a couple of tepid beers and $30.00 to park your ride in a dirt pit.
That is money that could be used to upgrade the roster and replace older players who are retiring or should be. These two who no longer can play are scheduled to make $32 Million this year, and $33 Million in 2012. Guys who have actually made it possible for fans to witness last year's team win a division, an LDS the NLCS, and the World Series ate up precious payroll dollars this year. Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff. Cody Ross and Andres Torres were arbitration eligible. That's four of your eight starters who had to have their contracts negotiated for this year or they would have been gone.The Giants are going to have some very serious and hard decisions to make.

This post season fantasy is evaporating rapidly in the wake of the beatings they took at the hands of Dusty Baker this weekend, with Zito adding the period by losing the game in the bottom of the first inning. Just like he did against San Diego last October.

Lots of money can make a man lazy intellectually.He is prey to all kinds of  wolves in sheep's clothing. They're the ones who will do everything and anything to make sure your agenda matches theirs. It makes it easy to surround one's self with only those who tell you what you want to hear. And sometimes they themselves are not even aware of it, such is the allure of  the riches of a young guy. That was the moral of the story "The Natural". Money and fame changes the way folks see themselves.

The gutters, jails and bankruptcy courts are filled with former athletes. Like this poor wretch

Its pretty easy to sit here and hand out advice. It's not my millions to be forfeited in the interest of legacy preservation. I don't know. I've seen Mike Hampton go down this road. I have no idea what he thinks about what people think about him. Whenever I see him, he always looks so unhappy at what he is doing.  Lenny Dykstra is going to prison. I really think, that if some of these guys, not all of them, had to do it all over again, it would have been done differently. Mays did. DiMaggio did.

Barry Zito by all accounts is a really good human being with a big heart, but not much direction right now. He could be in the forefront of the Wounded Warrior Project. (Ian Lennon is the current featured wounded vet) here. Barry Zito is a terrific and incredible trusted spokesmen for heroes like Ian Lennon who need our help. This goes back to his days with the A's in his "strikeout for troops" campaign when he was a real strikeout pitcher.

He is in fact the best spokesman they could ever have.It is the one unique thing that Barry Zito can do that no other ballplayer can do. Nobody hates Wounded Warriors. They of all are the forgotten Americans. And so many are hidden from view in plain sight. Wounded Warriors in the face of shrinking revenues from government and other sources needs an ever present spokesman now, more than ever. Those that can afford it the least are amongst the first to be forgotten in hard times.

He could do this.He has it in him. He has proved it before. He can be a good guy.

Ballplayers Just Want To Have Fun

Steve Harmon, who as a professional journalist for Bay Area News Group/Contra Costa Times, covers the comings and goings of California's trusted public servants in Sacramento, shares his not unsubstantial critical thinking process in his baseball blog Giant Watch.  Which you can surf to by hitting the link on the right side of this page. He concludes this morning's column (July 24) with the following opinion.

"This game should have room for colorful, offbeat characters, who, yes, can incite outrage but also back it up with exciting baseball."

There is one more thing that I want to add, and that is that guys like Morgan, have an uncanny ability to "laugh at themselves", and smile a lot. Even if it's grating sometimes. But Nyjer Morgan's style is just that. Its just about style and individualism. Something as American as apple pie. Morgan is a ballplayer first, foremost and always. He might even tell you that himself, I suspect.

Baseball is a craft that is apprenticed starting at around age ten I am sad to say.  And despite the spin from Little League, Inc. there is almost zero-tolerance for individual expression, and sometimes not much fun. If you don't believe me, go by the typical practice where one kid at a time stands at the plate, while a poorly dressed grown-up throws unhittable pitches to a scared or frustrated kid while 10 other kids stand around the field like so many tumble weeds, bored out of their skulls waiting their turn. This is followed by a day of highly controlled games or "Game Day". Game days generally include unhealthy snacks, overpriced poisonous energy drinks, a 50/50 raffle,  topped off by plaintive and sometimes combative parents blathering or texting on their i-phones when not yelling at some kid, whether their own or another's. The outcome of said game is too-often determined by 6 innings  comprised of 384,003 walks and 36 strike-outs, umpired by frustrated Joe West wannabees. And then its all supposed to be made good by declaring  "We don't keep score, we just want the kids to have fun." Right.

So guys like Nyjer Morgan are rare indeed. It is no accident that most of the so-called "fun guys" are from Latin America, where they learn how to throw and run and swing a bat in the streets and empty lots supervised by each other, and the older kids, not in manicured miniature stadiums, with MLB Properties-sanctioned replica uniforms, designer batting gloves, $500.00 titanium bats, customized wrist bands, and all the other fashion accouterments more in keeping with a costume party than honing skills, developing baseball instincts, and learning the fine line between  ragging and clever, good-natured heckling and personal attacks, and other forms of inciteful behavior. But thats what happens when you have too many grown ups taking the fun out of the game when their own personal agendas borne of some sort of frustration, become enmeshed with teaching kids and spoiling the party for everyone for no reason at all.

Occasionally, its as if a bunch of disillusioned little leaguers and their Klingon-like mentors appear in the bleachers when a guy like Morgan, or Shane Victorino plays in AT&T. They just don't know where that line that shall not be crossed lies. Because a guy like Morgan plays with flair and elan, it doesn't mean he is being disrespectful in the slightest. He's not spiking the ball like a Chad Qualls, or mocking Brian Wilson's cross like Casey Blake. He's enthusiastic like Rickey was, and Pete Rose was and doesn't deserve to be subjected to the kinds of personal attacks that spewed from the mouths of the few on Saturday night. Its at rare times like that, that the Giants' bleachers sound more like Philadelphia or New York than San Francisco.

Baseball is as much about razzing and ragging, as it is about cheering and high-fiving, while having a good time in the process. Fans can help themselves if they realize the old saw of "what-goes-around, comes around" is particularly true in MLB. The stakes are too high, the caliber of opposition too great for any one player to defy the laws of cosmic equilibrium.

If a player insists on drawing attention to himself, like all guys with individual styles do, eventually the baseball deities will have their way, as they did with Morgan last night. That's why most guys won't let loose. They know the game levels things out. Its a hard and difficult game pitting strong and skilled men against other strong and skilled men. Most do not want the additional burden of being a showman.

As for me, I'll take a Nyjer Morgan, and Rickey Henderson, and Reggie Jackson and Jeff Leonard and Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds all who liked to play to the crowd andl defy the baseball gods in the process. The same way Al Hrabosky and Turk Wendell and Rob Dibble did.They are risk-takers, and showmen. And when fans behave within the construct of common decency,  the game is better off because of them.  All of those guys including Morgan had a great respect for the game, for their opponents and for their talents. And when the game bit them back, they had a great way of accepting the consequences.

We ought not forget that

Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Can't Lose

I must be losing it; scribbling about a television series that I haven't watched with any regularity since the first season, some five years ago. I wasn't quite sure what the fascination was. Just like millions of others my age, I'd been to high school, played some ball, goofed off, chased girls, and graduated about the time Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were releasing their third album. Nothing special about that. A lot of time has passed since then. Like most, I had my own family including a son who went to high school, played some ball, goofed off, chased girls, and grew up. Just like millions of others his age.

So what was so special in this moving, but ratings-crippled TV series? At first it reminded me more of the old Friday night soaps, Dallas and Falcon Crest that featured preposterous characters with two-dimensional personalities, but little emotional investment required from the audience from their plastic characters and implausible storyline. Those series were not serious. Friday Night Lights, while still having to adhere to the requirements of serial television, was serious. The title suggested it was about the religion of Texas High School football. Many folks said it was not. Actually it really was and before you get mad, let me explain.

Friday Night Lights ran its last episode this season, and like any TV series that comes to an end, much of the character resolution remains unrevealed, while a lot of the audience experiences the bittersweet sadness that comes at the end of something special and shared. But so did graduation day in real life. Followers must imagine the rest of the characters lives for themselves. And that’s what a lot of high school was about as I recall. Imagining what life was like afterward. For myself as well as former teammates.

After high school and college and turning in my glove and cleats, helmet and pads for wings and a log book, and eventually those for a suit and tie, I didn't have much time nor interest for reflection. Later in life, after some very short-lived curiosity, I had to admit I really had not cared what life had held in store for former mates, and I felt bad about that. At the time, when the lights go out one last time, you swear that you will be there for each other forever. But it rarely if ever turns out that way. Life and you move on.

Looking back, I think leaving high school was a bit like going to a funeral. (Graduation parties notwithstanding) And despite mutually assuring words to the contrary, I was acutely aware that before 12 months would pass, I would relegate most of my teammates, friends and neighbors to the bins of selective recall and time-altered memory. And that thought disturbed me greatly because, even though, many were not my friends, they were part of the familiar landscape of routine and stability that the school day brings, no matter how stressful at times. Their presence provided a shared familiarity and acceptance that as high-schoolers, we seemed to possess so little. And there was comfort in that. But in the end, the 800 pound gorilla had its way, and we parted strangers.

The years passed. Some good, some bad, some eventful, and others not so much. Like you. Like everybody. Then a funny thing happened. Through a conflation of events and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I ended up back in high school at the age of forty-something. Only this time as a head coach. Mostly it felt weird having my own mail slot in the school office and a parking sticker that said "faculty" on it. Consider if you will, Ricky Vaughn sitting in the principle's chair, this time behind the desk, with his feet propped up on an ink blotter and you get the idea.

They gave me a lanyard full of keys marked gym, locker-room, faculty lounge, copier machine, equipment shed, field lights, and several others I never did figure out. I never understood why schools have so many different locks and keys. I'll bet that if you could melt them all down for scrap, you could pay off the federal debt. But after a period of several years of re-enmeshment in high-school follies, I turned in my keys and confined myself to the fringes of college and semi-pro ball for the next several years, as life and circumstances changed yet again. But before the high school lights went out for the second and last time, I came to appreciate and understand what so many were trying to tell me all those years ago.

As the title of this suggests, Friday Night Lights was about a shining ideal of "Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Can’t Lose". And for some reason when I heard it and saw it played out on the screen, it struck something in the way-back machine. It was really a vague feeling at first, then as the weeks went by and the characters were revealed, often in a very pointed and melancholy way, it became clear that much of what FNL ("Friday Night Lights") tried to convey was the depiction of the ideals of brotherhood, and sisterhood and the failures of betrayal and selfishness.

As much as it was about heroes and villains, it was just as often about really good people doing harmful things to themselves and it was about marginal personalities redeeming themselves in spite of their instincts. It was about forgiveness and perpetration and cash-register honesty walking in hand with self-seeking deception, and virtue and vice and just about everything else in life that we mortals struggle with on a daily basis. It was about noble and brave and silly acts done by imperfect, yet striven people, all just trying for their own little slice of happiness and acceptance.

Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose. That's how you aspired to play. How you put yourself to work. How you went about your day. What you wanted to believe about life. That it was good. That it was honorable. And things would always turn out for the best, not matter what. It was like hearing an old familiar hymn, but not being sure why it was special. Perhaps there are more antiquated clichés. Or less evocative ones for that matter. But for anybody who believes in believing in something, a lot of us need that creed. It is six words to hang onto when life presents danger and fear and the abyss stares back at us in black emptiness. Six words to still the heart stir the soul and fire the imagination.

Fictional characters like Rocky Balboa, Roy Hobbs, and Jake Taylor. Real life stories like Brian Piccolo, Lou Gehrig, and Jack Robinson. When I think of them, "Clear eyes, Full heart, Can't Lose doesn't seem quite so childish or naive or un-tough. And for every one of those publicly celebrated guys, there are a million others who we do not know, who have lived their lives with the same commitment to exceptionalism. Some of them in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. That is when we begin to see things in a different, much brighter light. And it's not so much self-reflective, as it is a beacon turned outward to the bigger world around us.

Now I am away from the game as a part of the game, I can reflect upon the simple honor and an overwhelming sense of humility and gratitude experienced when I watched those whom I had helped in some small way along their journey from adolescence to adulthood. To see them as young adults, actualize the dreams you had promised them if only they would choose to believe in what you believed. Work smart. Play against the game. Respect yourself. Respect your teammates. Respect your opponents. Respect the game. Appreciate and share everything good in life, on and off the field, with those who do not have what you have. And most of all, remember to smile and laugh and not to be afraid of the occasional tear, and if you do all these things all the time, you will win at life. You cannot lose.

"Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose. To have been even a small part of instilling that belief in another leaves an indelible mark on one's character I think. And I think this is why Giants fans love their team so much. They're relationship with them is personal. With each other. It is the belief that the team believes in them as much as they believe in the team though we know that to be mostly untrue in the long term when it comes to individual players. No matter. That part of the Giants that belongs to the fans is a manifestation of so much of what dreams are made of. The spirit of 2010 was not Clear eyes and full heart, but it was the same. "Don't stop believing"

Believing is an act of faith and an act of hope when you love your team. It is something seldom mentioned in public. It is a passionate virtue.

And whoever thought the simple act of being a baller or a beer-drinking fan could be a virtue?

"Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose"?  Believe it.

Political Journalist - Giants Fan

That would be Steve Harmon; a gent I don't know and never heard of until a few days ago. He's self-admittedly been a fan since 1968. (ten fewer years than moi, so obviously I missed something along the way.)  Professionally he first covered the Giants for the local Vacaville paper and later, the Sacramento Union during the Roger Craig, Will Clark, and Big Daddy years of 1986-90.

He than moved on to political reporting where he is currently engaged by the Bay Area Newsgroup's Contra Costa Times as a political reporter covering the shenanigans of the pols in Sacramento. A job most would consider "challenging" I suspect. But as his blog profile states, writing professionally about politics gives him the opportunity to write about the San Francisco Giants as a fan. Which for other Giants fans, that is a plus. Its kind of like playing beer-league softball and having Mike Krukow in your dugout.
So what does that mean?  It means, you get the investigative instincts of a guy who is surrounded by silver-tongued devils always looking for an edge; the observational acumen of someone who has to see the forest through the trees, and the knowledge and experience of one who has followed the Giants for 43 years. All of that and the willingness and skill to write elegantly and informatively on any topic about one of the most interesting teams in professional sports. That is a rare combination and one that I appreciate, and I don't like the work of most blogs  and/or sports writers in general.
And it doesn't cost a cent. All you have to do is click on a link to Steve's blog or follow him on twitter at ssharmon.  Here's a small sample. Steve writes at length, but never wastes words or runs off the tracks.  And this is just a random snippet from some of his observations. This one on Pablo Sandoval. As insightful an observation as you will see from somebody who is looking at the same things you and I are, but with a perspective just not often found in today's news cycle.

"Just a thought on Pablo Sandoval, who extended his hitting streak to 22 (if you want to count the All-Star game, it's 23). Forget what Tim McCarver said in the All-Star game telecast (maybe the worst ever in the history of the game) about Sandoval getting as many hits on bad balls as good pitches. That was old Conventional Wisdom. Last year's news.

This year, and particularly the last 10 or 15 games, Sandoval has become as disciplined a hitter on the Giants. He has learned to lay off pitchers pitches, build the count to favor him. The irony is this: pitchers still try to get him to bite outside of the strike zone, and are falling behind in the count as a result. Hence, Sandoval is getting great count leverage, getting good pitches to hit on 2-0 or 3-1 counts."

And you know what? He's absolutely right. Sandoval is indeed a disciplined hitter. Disciplined meaning working the count in his favor by not chasing pitches he can't drive. And that is a pitcher's worst nightmare. A guy talented enough to drive pitches outside of the strikezone, but good enough to not chase pitches he can't drive.

Steve also pointed out that the Buck/McCarver crew completely looked like two big green chunks of stupid with their prejudicial take on Sandoval's hitting. And that was he laid off two really tough pitches before he raked that double over the fence. Nobody in media picked that up except Steve that I am aware of; and that was buried in the middle of the rest of his piece about Aubrey Huff, which should also pump up Giants fans in addition to his observations about Sandoval.

Steve is not only a fan and a believer, but he gives you good solid evidence to support his beliefs, as well as your own hopes. Being a fan requires some hope and faith of course. But like they say, faith can move mountains, but you better bring a shovel. Steve provides some pretty high-quality shovels.

Celebrating Bud and Derek - Well Maybe not.

Baseball news centers around the All Star Game this time every year, and every year there is some trivial or not-so-trivial event or non-event that becomes the center of media attention. This year it was Derek Jeter and "will he or won't he show up for the All Star Game" in view of his 3000-hit milestone.

To be honest, I'm glad he wasn't around. Fox Sports is insufferable, even when there really is something newsworthy. Like Bud Selig canceling the '94 World Series. Like Bud auditioning to be a "Cops" mobile-home park resident when Bonds tied Hank Aaron's HR record.  Its hard enough to witness real events when Fox has the broadcast rights; but its their breathless productions of non-events that leave most of America comatose. 

Provide Fox with a chance to overdo something like Derek Jeter actually showing up at the ASG and viewers would have been treated to a 3 hour reality show; "Stalking The Derek". Instead of interviewing Brian Wilson's face nest, Bud's network of choice would have enlightened us with Jeter's critique of the All Star Game (which would not have been seen), his reaction to being proclaimed the most interesting man in the world and when American voters could expect Sir Derek's decision whether or not to accept the 2012 presidential nominations of both parties.

Thankfully, Jeter has been to many All Star Games before; as a player and as Mike Lupica's personal totem pole. Lucky for those who consider Jeter to be even more over-exposed than Oprah, Jerry Springer and Pee Wee Herman, that Jeter, was busy negotiating a deal with the Dos Equis El Jefes to be the new "Most interesting man in the world". Reports that  Jeter demanded that the beer be renamed "Tres thousand Equis" could not be confirmed

So Jeter couldn't be bothered showing up for the amusement of a few thousand Arizona piss-ants. Which was enough to set the chattering chipmunks off, wringing their hands "about the children" and  "what would Christy Mathewson have done?". Ad nauseum.

It does not matter beyond the 24-48 hour news cycle. There are dozens of ASG no-shows every year. And every year the media trots out the names of  Stan Musial, Joe Dimaggio, Willie Mays, Stu Miller, Clark Kent, Frodo and Luke Skywalker; proclaim them to be more respectful of fans than the dastardly, child-eating (insert name of no-show player) ingrate de jour. They wait the requisite 24-48 48 hours, then start up about Tiger Woods' mistress or Tom Brady's hair, or Serena Williams thighs or whatever IQ-robbing topic that rolls across the floor to attract their attention. The season starts again on Thursday and nobody will care about any of it, and Jeter knows that so he just keeps doing what he has always done; look out for Jeter's self-serving interests.

But I keep forgetting for some reason that the nose-picker in chief is still around for these events to award an ugly trophy designed by used car salesmen to the MVP of the most meaningless game of the season. And then the cameras pan onto Bud in one of those 33,000 gray suits he has been collecting since he bought his first Edsel, and I am reminded of why I look forward to the onset of blindness.

Frankly I think Bud has a product placement endorsement with competitors of the Men's Wearhouse to sport the most uninteresting gray suits in the world.  I can't think of any other reason to wear Ward Cleaver's hand-me-downs.

Unable to shut-up, the commish had to put out a statement to the media. Parts of which follow. The guy is a master. You have to admit.

"Let's put the Derek Jeter question to bed: "

To bed? WTF? Derek Jeter needed sleep; he overslept and missed his flight? Did  Bud read him a Winnie the pooh tale while he fluffed The Derek's pillow?"

"There isn't a player that I'm more proud of in the last 15 years than Derek Jeter" 

So much for Cal Ripkin, Tony Gwynn, Ken Griffey Jr and the other "isn't a player I could be more proud of" stiffs.

"He has played the game like it should be played. "

With a ball. A bat. A glove, cleats, cap, bases, foul lines, fences and a Bud Selig autograph.

"He's even been a better human being off the field as great as he is on the field."

So in addition to diving into the stands to catch a foul ball he dives out of windows to catch falling confetti.

"I know why Derek Jeter isn't here. I respect that. And I must tell you I think I would have made the same decision that Derek Jeter did."

So Bud endorses oversleeping, being put to bed, and having bedtime stories read to him.

I couldn't read anymore. And I refuse to link to it on ESPNs site. Nobody but nobody should be encouraged to read anything Selig says unless its a suicide note and he really means it and his will says all his suits have to be buried with him.

Gotta love the guy though for being an outstanding source of jaw-dropping amazement. Maybe he is  worth the $18 Million salary and $500,000 per year expense account.  But the more I think about it the more I think:

No. Dear God. No.  Please. No. No!. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Why No Negro League Uniforms in KC?

That's the question Joe Posnanski posed to the mutts that run the Royals organization in 2002. The response he got from a since departed marketing guy, was "we forgot". Yes. They forgot. And the KC Royals Marketing guy would not budge off that point. He refused to tear himself off the cross he volunteered to nail himself to for the Royals' ownership. The ownership that was too cheap to spend $6000.00 for commemorative uniforms to mark the annual Negro League game in Kansas City, the official home of the Negro Leagues. 

But you think that getting humiliated in print once would be enough. Apparently not.

Joe Posnanski writes here about it in a post entitled "Blunder From the Past"  and it begs the question on why stuff like this happens. And I have my own ideas on why idiocy reigns supreme at times like this.

Because Bud Selig allows it to happen.

It happens because guys like David Glass of the Royals, Lew Wolf of the A's, Peter Angelos of the Orioles, Fred Wilpon of the Mets, Jeff Loria (who has managed to trash two franchises), Robert Nutting of the Pirates and Team McCourt clowns own baseball teams that mean little more than their matching McMansions, McYachts, and McCountry club memberships. And I haven't even touched on Reinsdorf, Lerner in DC, or the Goldman Sachs cronies in Tampa, Sternberg and Silverman.

For the most part they have no first or even second-hand experience with the career path of most other employees. And it is that way because it has always been that way for spoiled children of privilege, and/or those fueled primarily by Gordon Gekko type greed. But mostly it is because they don't care.

They don't care because there are no consequences for not caring if there are no Negro League uniforms for what should be Kansas City's most important game. Apathy and greed and insulation from consequences is why Dodger Stadium is 2/3 empty every night and in last place. Its where fans get killed and maimed in their parking lots because the owners are skimping on security.  Its why the Pirates haven't had a winning year since Barry Bonds left almost 20 years ago. It is why the entire top of the Oakland Coliseum is covered with puke-green tarps. And it is why the Mets owners obsession for loan-sharking rates of investment returns put them in bed with Bernie Madoff. I guess you can never have too many $Millions.

Greed and Ego, and let the fans eat cake. You have things like this happen every year because the guys who are ultimately responsible, do not care if they offend the sensibilities of normal folks who have a sense of perspective and respect for traditions that actually do unite folks who have a history of not always getting along.

These guys don't care what Joe Posnanski thinks or writes. Though it may have happened, I have no recollection of any owner ever speaking out against the travesty that was Buck O'Neil's exclusion from the HOF while he was alive. They didn't care when the All-Star game was moronically called a tie and they proceeded to encourage Selig to make an ass of himself with the home-field-advantage-fairy tale.

These things happen because the people who could prevent them from happening couldn't be bothered less. Anway, I wrote something up a couple of days ago on Giants vs Dodgers ownerships, Burns vs McCourts

Underdog Flummoxes Joe

I recently talked to Joe. Joe is still celebrating the Giants World Championship. And Joe has been following the Giants like he always does. But Joe is flummoxed. The season is more than half over, the Giants have booked 50 wins before the All-Star break, for the first time since 2003, and they don't have a single position player eligible for the All-Star game.

Baseball reference has this bar chart at the top of the Giants 2003 season's page. And every season for that matter. Every game is represented by either a green bar above the line which is a win, or a red bar which represents a loss. If there is a blank spot, there was no game*. The margin of victory or loss is represented by the height/depth of the bar. The longer the bar, the bigger the margin of victory or defeat. If you look across the 2003 season, you will see a bunch of tall green bars and a handful of long red bars. Mostly mountains, a few foothills, a few gullies with the occasional valley and one or two box canyons. If it were an EKG, you would think you were looking at a healthy normal heart.

Click forward to the 2011 season. The Giants have played 89 games and won 50. At the same point in 2003 they had won 55. But if you look at that bar chart for the current season, and visualize somebody's brainwave activity, you would swear it belonged to the winner of last year's Darwin Awards. If it were geography, you would be on the great plains of Middle America with little but the horizon and highway heat mirages in sight. Either that or the Giants appear to be playing 2 games per week. Its like the Rockie Mountains of 2003 vs the Salton Sea of 2011.

The equivalent  of eight seasons have passed between then and now. Or a little more than the length of a pretty good major league career. They won 100 games in 2003. Nobody is around from then except Sabean, Righetti, Gardy, Kruk, Kuip and Jon Miller. Everybody else from the Managing partner to the 40th guy on the roster is different. The Giants scored runs in 2003, but not what you would think. They scored 755, good for sixth place in the NL; the Braves scored 907 by comparison. The Giants were second in the NL in Runs Allowed with 638 trailing only the Los Angeles McCourts' 556. This year the Giants are 15th in runs scored and 3rd in runs allowed. And they lead the majors in walk-off wins with 11.

So Joe is faced with a conundrum (my "beat the word into the ground" of the week). Trying to understand how the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Other than the pitching, this is a lineup pretty much filled with 0 to 2 tool players. A few guys can run some, throw a little, catch a little, hit a little less, and pretty much exhibit all the power of a rolling PG&E brown out. Best described as a lineup of unwatchables until the last couple of innings to see if they can scrap up some runs or hold onto a lead pieced together innings earlier.

Joe is faced with contradictions. A team that leads in walk-off victories yet has nobody with an OPS over 850

Joe  is faced with paradoxes.  A team whose two-time Cy Young winner (Tim Lincecum) is sporting a losing won loss record, yet gets selected for the All-Star team.  A team being managed by a guy (Bruce Bochy) who even after winning the world series and 50 games this season, still has a losing career won-loss record. Even after taking the Rangers down in in last year's World Series in 5 games, he still has a losing record.

Joe is faced with mysteries. A team whose other Cy Young winner (Barry Zito) has a high school fastball, since coming off the Disabled List, but throws zeros up on the scoreboard faster than you can run to a concession stand and fork over $384.00 for a burger and fries. A team whose emergency call-up from AAA after a 4 year absence from the Major Leagues (Ryan Vogelsong) is now going to the All Star Game and is in the company of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Tim Lincecum, Cole Hamels, in leading NL starters in most important pitching categories. A team on schedule to score fewer than 600 runs in a season and averaging less than 3 runs per game at home.

Joe is faced with explaining away adversity. Buster Posey, Freddie Sanchez and Brandon Belt..the best hitters arguably in a weak lineup out for weeks and months at a time because of injuries, and others Torres, Ross, Burrell, Huff, and Sandoval all spending time on the DL themselves.

Yet the team has its best All Star break record in almost eight years.

So what's the answer. I don't think there is one. I think what Joe is seeing here is something he normally doesn't see at the Major League Level where its the best in the world competing against each other where excellence, talent and good fortune combine to give you predictable results.  What Joe is seeing here is something that happens all the time in college ball, where you have the best of their level competing against each other, not the elite of the elite. You have the best college players competing against each other, and the game becomes more team oriented. And thats probably why the Giants are where they are now. They play team ball. Good starters. Good relievers. Unselfish at bats. Focused, if not spectacular defense and comfortable that the powers that be in their own organization have confidence in them. It allows them to play with more focus more often than not than their opponents.

And that's the best I can come up with.

Giant fans - Fortunate children

originally posted at wherehaveyougonejoe.com

The Commish finally pulled the plug on former friend Frank McCourt. This morning the Los Angeles Dodgers filed bankruptcy in Delaware. Besides being the first state in the union, and the home of former US Senator, Joe Biden, it's just as famous for being a destination state for folks who want to establish corporations with a minimum of government scrutiny and cost. Understandable. Most folks I know prefer fewer government fingers in their business pies, not more. And I'm sure its legitimate from a business standpoint. Its just one of those things that just doesn't seem to be right in this case. One of MLBs 6-8 centerpiece franchises the Los Angeles Dodgers turns out to be a Delaware Corporation. Not bad. Just strange. Which is what the Dodgers have become ever since Frank and Jamie McCourt rode into town in a highly leveraged limousine. 

Maybe if it were the Giants, it wouldn't seem unseemly. The  ownership of the Giants is famous for being fan and community friendly. Not just towards its fans, but everybody in the Bay Area. It is no accident. That precedent was established almost twenty years ago by Harlan and Sue Burns, the biggest financial stakeholders in the Giants when they bought out Bob Lurie in 1992.

There will be more gossip, hand-wringing and finger-wagging to come, as McCourt will seek to blame everybody and anybody but himself for the demise of his and his former wife's glass-jawed financial empire. There seems to be some sort of raw cosmic equilibrium in all of this; the Giants losing the Burns to early passing after heroic battles against a dread disease, and now some two years later, the Dodgers soon to be rid of their owners to all manner of unseemly behavior. 

Here is some of what I wrote about a year ago:

Sue Burns' battle with cancer was wearing her down at the end; too ill to come to the park that night.  She passed away on July 26, two weeks after Sanchez' no-hitter--barely enough time to say farewell to her legions of friends, family, and fellow Giants.

We don't often think of women when referring to teammates. But Sue Burns was truly a Giant. The ultimate team mom. Those who played little league right on up through college ball and the low minors all have numerous and great memories of "team moms."  The rides to and from practice and games. Win or lose, there was always a hug, a smile and a "you'll get 'em next time" from Team Mom.

Even in the low minors where young players are housed with willing families, it is the team mom who helps keep the homesick blues away from young players away from home for the first time and thrust into the cut-throat world of professional sports.  We simply do not hear enough about them.  Their stories are too droll by today's standards of slam-bam, 24-hour celebrity news cycles.  Sue Burns was the exception.  She was Barry Bonds best friend when he had no friends.  Thats what team moms do. They befriend the friendless, comfort the disturbed, and like the unlikable. Team Moms accept us for who we are. No matter what.

If ever a picture were worth a thousand words, this is it. The late Sue Burns, San Francisco Giants principal owner and team mom. Former school teacher. This is what was written about her by Jim Doyle,  at the Chronicles website the week of her passing into history: "Mrs. Burns shied away from Bay Area society circles.She talked plainly and dressed casually. She served on the board of the Sequoia Hospital Foundation, and donated to the charity's gala in 2007 a collection of signed baseballs. She was a board member of the Giants Community Fund. Following the tradition of her husband, Mrs. Burns co-hosted parties for the coaches and management staff in San Francisco and at spring training in Scottsdale."
And in the picture just to the right of her, is embattled billionaire owner Frank McCourt around the time he fired his wife--via text message. From ESPN in August 2010 on the verge of the McCourt divorce trial:

"Today, what began as boardroom and bedroom bickering has become tabloid fodder in LA. Details of their spat, once the domain of baseball blogs and Twitter feeds, now rival the latest nuttiness from Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson for splashy headlines in the Los Angeles Times. The McCourts came to Hollywood expecting star treatment. They just didn't expect to star in a reality show about their crumbling marriage. Once the divorce trial begins, on Aug. 30, sordid details of their troubles will likely be aired coast-to-coast." Frank McCourt litigated and leveraged a Boston parking lot into the Dodgers. Mainly by suing people: "To understand who Frank is you have to realize he's not a developer, he's a litigator," says a former business associate who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearful Frank might sue him."


I do not know if a bigger contrast in professional sports ownerships exists. Giants fans are fortunate. World Series Champs after 56 years of failure, Willie Mays 80th birthday party, AT&T Park, The Burns Legacy. Sue Burns. Fortunate children indeed.

Ryan Vogelsong - Lazarus Man and All Star

This is Ryan Vogelsong's rookie card. He was 22 years old. This is his 12th season since his debut with the Giants. It is his first All-Star team. He has put together a remarkable first half of the season, by anybody's standards. There is nothing in his career to indicate anything like this. If it was a long comeback from serious injury it would be understandable to a degree, though almost as unlikely.

But there really is no easy answer. I can't even come up with reasonable speculation. Its kind of like why did a tornado take out this block of houses, but left everything around it unscathed? Why do the stars come out at night? Why do fools fall in love? Hell if I know. And more than likely, neither do you.  My curiosity has limits. Baseball, like Life Insurance mortality tables can only give us general projections. Baseball cannot provide us with 100 percent certainty the outcome of a given pitch, a given at bat, a given appearance, start or season. It can only give us probabilities. No guarantees. No sure-things. Baseball is known for its gearhead use of statistics to predict failure, mediocrity, and success. Millions of fans spend hours arguing back and forth over these projections, and predictions based on prior results. 

But I defy anybody to have predicted this. Not even Lazarus man himself.  Probably the only three people that even half-way believed this would happen were Mr.and Mrs. Vogelsong and Song's mother; because moms always believe in the utter perfection and excellence that are their sons' endeavors in life.  Lets hear it for moms everywhere.

His 2011 stats are here; a quantification, if you will, of this inspiring story. His stats in context here:

The All Star Game is primarily a television event. Events are about stories and spectacles. And if Ryan Vogelsong isn't the best story in Major League Baseball this year, I don't know what is. Here's his current line after Wednesday afternoon's win over the Twins. He needs 6.1 innings his next start to have the minimum number of innings to be qualified as a leader. If these were Lincecum's or Cain's numbers, we would not at all be astonished. But these are not. They belong to Ryan Vogelsong who has risen from the dead like Lazarus.

Ryan Vogelsong	GP	GS	CG	SHO	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	W	L	WHIP	ERA
2011 Regular Season	13	11	1	1	72.2	60	16	15	4	19	57	5	1	1.09	1.86

And as of July 3, 2011 Ryan Vogelsong's line after today's game is 6 wins one loss and an era of 2.13 which places him in the top 3 in the National League among starting pitchers. A week from Tuesday, Lazarus Man, a minimum salary "wing and a prayer" spring training camp invitee, will be representing the World Series Champion Giants in Phoenix Arizona as a pitcher in the 2011 All Star team. And the CC Sabathia, of the New York Yankees, one of the highest paid and dominating pitchers in all of baseball and who makes in half a season more than what Song has earned in his entire career, is not.

There just isn't anything quite like Major League baseball that is so symbolic of the American Dream.

Remarkable.

Pete and Gordo

Original story here.
This is a picture of Gordon Smith. Below it is Pete Smith's baseball card with the Boston Red Sox. From 1964, a season he never pitched in. Pete Smith made his major league debut as the starting pitcher against the Detroit Tigers in front of 2734 fans in Tiger Stadium on September 13, 1962.  

Mgr. Pinky HIggin's Red Sox were in eighth place, 17.5 games behind the eventual pennant winning New York Yankees. Smith was matched up against the Tiger's future hall of fame pitcher, Jim Bunning.

Pete Smith gave up 3 home runs to 3 different Tigers before being pulled in the fourth inning.The three were not chumps: Al Kaline, Norm Cash, and Rocky Colavito. Smith's line for the 1962 season was 19 batters faced and era of 19.64. Not unusual for rookies. It was still a thrill

In 1963, after a pretty decent showing in the minors, Smith came back to the Red Sox to start a game on September 15, against the A's in Kansas City, in front of a little less than 7000 fans. He started, pitched 6 innings, gave up 3 earnies, no homeruns and was pinch hit for in the top of the seventh. It was what is by today's standards a quality start. It would be his last. He made 5 more relief appearances as the Red Sox played out the string of another dismal losing season finishing 28 games behind the Yankees again. But ever the silver lining in an otherwise dismal season his last game in the majors was in relief against the Los Angeles Angels. From Wikipedia:

"On September 28, 1963 at Fenway Park, Smith started a triple play against the Angels with the last ball he fielded in the majors. With Charlie Dees running on second base and Lee Thomas on first, Félix Torres tried to advance both runners with a bunt. Unfortunately for Torres, Smith fielded cleanly the ball and threw to 3B Frank Malzone, who tagged Dees out before throwing the ball to SS Eddie Bressoud, covering second to double out Thomas. Bressoud then threw to 2B Félix Mantilla, who covered first and completed the 1-5-6-4 triple play."

So Smith kicked around the Red Sox minor league system for a couple more years, before finally hanging it up after the 1965 season; done at the age of 25.

And this is where I lose track of Smith until he pops up on radar in 2007 as a volunteer coach at Sonoma State. Only this time going by  Gordon, not Pete. (I asked him once how that came about, he told me and I promptly forgot). Sonoma State like most successful college baseball programs relies on experienced volunteers to help out with any number of little chores that most folks don't think about. And finding guys who know what they're doing and are smart enough to know when to chirp-up and when to dummy up is harder than one might think. Charting opponents pitchers/hitters. Getting materials donated for field upkeep, equipment, even somebody to raise and lower the American Flag before and after games, which is what Gordon would like to do. This came after he personally rebuilt the foundation for the 30 foot pole with his own money, and with a little help from a couple of players in the off-season.

February and March are prime baseball months in college baseball; by the calendar it is still winter. Though Sonoma County's image is one of summery days of wineries and vineyards, it is often cold, damp and windy, in the first half of the season. And for a couple of seasons, while friends and family would collect outside the gates, huddled up against the dusk chill of late winter waiting for their players to exit, one could look out on the other side of the park and always see Gordon trudging down beneath the line of redwoods, out behind the left field fence to lower the flag, in his own private ceremony, and fold it into place, to await the next game.

Unlike far too many coaches who run college and high school programs, Sonoma State's Head Coach for the last 26 years, John Goelz, is not particularly overly impressed with himself. He has collected so many awards and honors that he can't even remember them, so its not for lack of accomplishment. Neither does he exude false modesty or project a public persona that is different than his private self. He does not embellish nor shade stories or events to solicit praise or recognition. He is exactly who appears to be in that moment; engaged 100 percent with the person or persons to whom he is talking. Whether it is a 6 year old kid with a whiffle bat, a Division I transfer, parent of a high schooler, or an 87 year old with a heart condition, John Goelz genuinely makes that person feel like he/she is the most important person in that room. 

Much has been written in the last 4 years about Goelz, due mainly to two Division II College World Series appearances. Bob Padecky (the same one who had the notorious run-in with Kenny Stabler's hometown friends 30 plus years ago in Alabama.) has covered Goelz on and off for a number of years and, like Joe Posnanski, never writes to embarrass his subjects, and has the graciousness borne of an earlier era to leave out irrelevant facts or innuendos if they are harmful. He writes mainly about local athletes and their environs as if they were real people, not cartoons nor fodder for the celebrity sniffers. One might think these are merely puff pieces, and only of interest to those who know Padecky's subjects, but they aren't. Padecky has a serious journalist background that goes back more than 30 years when he was a beat writer for the Sacramento Bee covering the Raiders, Giants, Superbowls, and World Series and right on up through his tenure with the NY Times owned Santa Rosa Press Democrat. He is a serious journalist and he writes serious pieces; he just doesn't feel a need to immerse himself and his subjects in the ooze of sports gossip.

I suppose I could give you my own version of the relationships or personal stories of Gordon and John, but there's enough self-serving scribbling going around these days, and Padecky does such a great job of painting a great picture of two of college baseball's greatest friends.  Padecky's article starts here:
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The Sonoma State baseball program received a staggering $1.3 million donation, and coach John Goelz is still getting his mind around that number and Gordon Smith's generosity, almost as if the news came out of nowhere. It didn't. He was told eight months ago. But it passed him by, like a jet. Didn't stick.

Last fall Smith, who had returned to SSU as a volunteer coach after a two-year absence, told Goelz he had cancer, it didn't look good and he would like to make a donation to the program before he died. What do you need, John?

Goelz said lights and a turf field would be great. How much would that cost, Smith asked? About $700,000 for the lights, about $600,000 for the field. Give or take.

“I have enough in savings for that,” Smith said simply, casually.

OK, Goelz said, and let it pass in one ear and out the other. After all, the largest donation Goelz had ever received in his 26 years at SSU was $10,000, courtesy of Chuck Collett and Ralph Emerson. So $1.3 million? Yeah, right. And why not build a dome while we're at it? For years Goelz had been asking the university for financial help to upgrade the facilities and after years of fund-raising he had accumulated only $137,000. Drawings were rendered. Plans were ready. And that's where it stayed. Seemingly forever......(continued)

A Good Joe

One of my favorite writers is a guy raised in Cleveland, who grew up idolizing our very own Duane Kuiper.  Joe Posnanski has covered the Kansas City Royals for 14 years. He writes for Sports Illustrated. He is loved by athletes, other media guys and fans alike. I think he is one of those guys that when he was told "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it". ..he didn't. 

We tend to think of that particular cliche as trite, false and impractical; something practiced only by monks and the Little Sisters of the Poor.  We certainly don't expect  to find someone with a compassionate disposition to be a featured writer for Sports Illustrated. Perhaps the following excerpt from his blog of June 6, 2011 will tell you more about him than any superlatives I can dish out.

What I love about Joe, is that he remembers to remember all the good guys...even when everybody else has forgotten them. Maybe thats why I like him so much. In his June 6 blog he writes about another good guy, Steve Palermo. His writing lets me know that its okay to keep the memories of really old warriors alive. And to write nice things about people; even when they have a dark side. He reminds us of our humanity in almost every paragraph. He is leaving Kansas City. It is hard, even when there are new adventures and wonderful people waiting for him in North Carolina.  Moving is only hard for the sentimental and tradition-bound I think. I've never met Joe, but he is one of those guys I would like to meet before I check out  and try to score tickets for Pete and the Pearly Gates. He's just one of those guys you hope nothing bad ever happens to. If you've ever had a guileless kid brother than you'll know what I'm talking about.  Enough.

On to Joe:
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Just talked to Steve Palermo. Stevie is one of my favorite people in the world -- someone I have spent many hours talking with at ballgames. You undoubtedly know his story. He was a big league umpire -- and one of the best in the business. To this day, people still talk in hushed tones about Steve Palermo's ability to call balls and strikes. He has a million great stories, my favorite being that he was the left field umpire who made the unnecessary but official call that Bucky Dent's home run was fair. Well, Palermo's father Vincent lived and died with the Red Sox and one day he starts screaming at Stevie for calling that home run fair.

"Dad," Steve said. "It was fair by like 30 feet."

To which Vincent Palermo said: "What, you couldn't have called it foul?"

One day in Dallas, Steve Palermo was in a restaurant with some friends after a game, and the bartender yelled that two women were being mugged outside. Steve and others rushed outside to help. In the horrible flurry, Stevie was shot in the back. The bullet hit his spinal cord. He was instantly paralyzed. He was told he would never walk again. He has walked.

I've written about Steve many times. The story I stands out is one I wrote one story a few years ago about how life goes on after the movie fades to black. Steve Palermo's movie faded to black the day he walked when doctors had said he never would. That was the moment of sweeping music and happily ever afters for our hero. But to me Steve's heroics come in living day-to-day, in trying to help people who have been paralyzed, in working with Major League Baseball to guide the sport he loves. It isn't easy. He has a hard time getting around. He feels a lot of pain. He has had to face the imaginary life he never got to live if that awful night in Dallas had never happened.

And he stays positive. He pushes forward. He tries.

I think often about something he told me for that story I wrote -- I look it up and realize that I wrote it more than 10 years ago. Steve was talking about how people constantly ask him if he regrets going out to help the two women in trouble, if some small part of him wishes that he had stayed in his seat in that moment of danger. And what he said haunts me and inspires me still ...

He said: "If I say no, I wouldn't do that again, then what does that mean? It means I made a mistake. I can't admit it was a mistake. ... I went to help people in trouble. How can that be a mistake?"

Symptom

By all accounts, Bob Geren is a nice guy. By all accounts he is a knowledgeable baseball man. He is neither overly-demonstrative, crude, overbearing, obsequious, sarcastic or vulgar. He seems to be the recipient of the prototypical middle management personality. A middle aged guy with hands on experience, loyalty, team player, works within the guidelines given him, and never ever tries to undermine his boss.  Yet today he was fired following three consecutive series sweeps. Thus adding a semi-colon to the run-on sentence this Oakland A's season has become.

And like a semicolon, it only gives temporary pause to a sentence that would otherwise have ended with a period. Geren's firing seems thus far, to be the only event of note in a listless season of  a listless franchise owned by a listless friend and former fraternity brother of the ever-oozy Bud Selig.  Even Geren's baseball card isn't worth a crap. Lew Wolff, in his seemingly never-ending attempt to morph into a real-life Rachel Phelps is the guy who tarps over entire sections of the multi-level cement casket on Interstate 880 built by the original Crypt Keeper, Al Davis. He claimed it will help him sell season tickets. Of course. Reduce capacity to accommodate increased demand. String Theory.

Its been 5 years counting this season and A's season ticket sales are an embarrassment to Major League Baseball. But that's what the luxury tax will do.  Enable second and third rate owners with net personal cash flow, as their number one priority to run a franchise into the ground in the vainglorious hope that his pal, the commissioner will somehow enable said third-rate owner to invalidate an existing contract with the San Francisco Giants so he can carpetbag his way out of town .

The A's Bay Area standing, under Wolf'f's stewardship, is as low as at anytime during Jackass Finley's reign of self-serving attention whoring. Days whose low points were marked by his efforts to sell Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson for a carton of adult diapers.

And so the A's have apparently bottomed out with Lew Wolff, who like Frank and Jamie McCourt, is/were close personal friends of Bud Selig, along with Jeff Loiria in Miami, Jerry Reinsdorf in Chicago, the Wilpon's in New Yoirk, and David Glass in Kansas City, who paid 1/3 less than a competitor for the franchise by the way. 

It is no accident that those franchises are amongst the worst and least trusted by fans in MLB.  But a dissertation on the Selig embarrassment will wait for another day. For today is the day, his pal Lew Wolff and his sycophantic stooge GM Billy Beane sacked Bob Geren.  A PR move like any other sacking of a field-manager; whose sole purpose is to deflect attention away from those at the top of the food chain; the owner and upper management.  All field managers are human shields for incompetent owners and upper management. They know that going in. Most will tolerate it. A few won't. (Dusty Baker, Earl Weaver, come to mind).

The A's still scout young talent reasonably well, but overall they are horrible on the field, and have been horrible for a long time, and they will continue to be horrible for as long as the shopping mall Grinch holds onto the franchise in an effort to leverage a real-estate deal that gives him even more free millions to pocket. Its not that he doesn't already reap millions from jet-set hostelries like the Fairmonts,  Four-Seasons and a dozen other luxury hotels.

Now of course ownership is going to point at the players when the next manager fails too. The players are only as good as they are. There are no really good players in Oakland, young starting pitching aside. No manager or media shill can make them to be anything other than what they are. A collection of MLB Scout camp left-overs, a couple of over the hill celebrity players and some young arms. Thats it. Yet Lew Wolff will make millions this year even if nobody shows up and they play to empty houses every night and every day for the rest of the season, because that's what revenue-sharing does. It enables the marginally crooked, the disingenuous, the incompetents, and the overarching greed of civilian owners to continue to plunder the public and ticket buying fans.

Geren is just the symptom. He is being replaced by yet another organizational yes-man, knowledgeable baseball dude, and nice guy, former Giants backup catcher and fired Diamondback manager Bob Melvin. Like Geren he's pretty good at looking stoic in the dugout and post-game pressers, when his untalented and under performing collection of ballplayers get the snot beat out of them on a regular basis.  And he will no-doubt be fired soon enough from his "Interim Manager" status, so I'm going to spend zero-time providing background on him. Elsewhere in the interwebs if you really care to know about him, is where you will find "information" on Bob Melvin

What the hell ever.  At least, pre-Selig and the anti-social CBA designed to protect big agents and their few superstars,  and the cable-company monopoly, when a team flopped and people stayed away in droves, and the team lost sponsors, the owner paid a price and eventually sold off the club because he lost his ass. To wit: Finley, Stoneham, and Lurie.

But like the rest of the welfare bums on Wall Street and K-Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, they have legislated for themselves a printing press that prints money.  And its called television and cable and the general public's apathy toward what really causes a bad team to be bad. And just when I think I will be bothered by any of it, I say to myself:

"San Francisco Giants World Series Champions".  It has a great ring to it.

Another Good Joe

Its not often that a middle reliever gets written about in Pinch Sulzberger's old grey lady, the New York Times. No. The NY Times has been dying a slow circulatory death the last few years, mainly by either boring or infuriating most of middle America with its smugness and condescending tone towards anyone who didn't graduate from Harvard or Princeton and who is not on a first name basis with the Obamas, Bushs, Sharpton or Clintons.  This also tends to be the same demographic that makes up baseball's fan base. So most baseball followers tend not to spend a lot of time perusing the bird-cage liner known as the NY Times. 

Somewhere along the line somebody at the NYT decided that it might be a nice idea to host a sports blog on their site. I don't know  if that is a good idea or not. Its certainly not innovative as most any person who can run a keyboard can run a blog, including this one.  But like most old institutions with a condescending eye towards suggesting how the rest of us should live, they tend to focus more on personal interest stories with a social message.  I guess thats alright. I suppose. But I don't spend a lot of time writing about the baseball opinions of Al Sharpton or Anthony Weiner either. For good reason. I don't know anything about it. What's more, I don't care to know.

But thats a general rule. And for rules there are exceptions. Hey, its why they play the game on the field and not on paper. So when the link to Jeremy Afeldt popped up, I suspected, it was going to be one of those touchy-feely stories that some folks with a lot of inner guilt like to write about in order to impress their friends with their compassionate insight. And thats about what I got with the first few lines. Yet another story about the Giants fan in the parking lot who got his brains beat in by a couple of gangbangers and all the kumbyas about diverse communities coming together to condemn violence and the conditions that breed violence and all the same slogans that we've all been listening to since 1964.  I don't know, I just get kinda bugged after about the 38th celebrity jumping on a risk-free cause just to generate some free publicity; but this was not the case.

As most folks who follow the Giants know, Jeremy Afeldt is not only a supporter of charities, and friend to the friendless, he is a very very intellectually curious and intense man who happens to be a major league baseball player.  He has some interesting insights that do not necessarily meet the entertainment-political standards of correctness:

"Love has become ‘feminized,’ ” he wrote recently on his blog, jeremyaffeldt.wordpress.com. “When you talk about love, a lot of people will say you’re soft. But love is what saves people. Loving them. If you ask me, that’s pretty strong stuff.”

Affeldt, 32, works with several organizations, focusing on producing clean water, feeding the hungry, housing orphans and ending human trafficking and slavery. He is ambitious in his goals, and tries to address them with urgency. He is a Christian, he said, but his motivation goes beyond faith."..................

"He asked the team if he could meet Stow, who is in a medically induced coma. Affeldt met with family members, then held Stow’s hand and prayed. He was hoping that Bryan would, on some level, at some point, know it,” Baer said. “And when Jeremy started speaking to him, his eyes opened — halfway, or three-quarters — and that was just amazing. It was almost like a power beyond us.”

Not politically correct. Just correct. Yet another good man.