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.