San Francisco's AT&T Park: A true landmark!

One of the most scenic sports facilities I've ever been in--o.k., THE most scenic sports facility I've been in, and certainly one in keepin with the old-time style of the great East Coast ball parks like Fenway Park in Boston and the other great retro-facility, Camden Yards in Baltimore. Located right smack on the bay, this is one place you at least need to see the exterior of if you are ever in San Francisco. In replaced the old Candlestick Park as a home for the major league baseball Giants in 2000.

Pictured below: One of the aces of the Giants Pitching Staff, two-time Cy Young Award Winner Tim "The Freak" or, as I prefer "The Franchise" Lincecum.

The San Francisco Giants Win 106th "World Series"! Their First Series Win Since 1954!

The last time The Giants won the Series they were playing in New York and Willie Mays (below) was their star player.  In 1954 Eisenhower was President and Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of Great Britain.  The top television show in the USA was "I Love Lucy" with Lucille Ball and her bandleader husband Desi Arnez.  Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize that year for his novella "The Old Man and the Sea" and other great works. And gasoline was only 21 cents a gallon at the pumps in the 48 states of the Union!     

They have gone to the World Series four times since they moved the franchise to San Francisco.  The were eliminated twice in the Seventh and final games in 1962 and 2002.  But this time they won it all in a 3-1 victory in the fifth game, a win fueled  by a great double-digit strike out performance by Tim Lincecum and a game-breaking three run home run by the old man of the team, Edgar Renteria!  

It was about 42 years since my dad took me to Candlestick Park to see Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry face the Atlanta Braves in a regular season game.  The game tonight--and that final strikeout by ace "closer" Brian Wilson was a great moment for me and millions of Giants fans!  Whether this was their first year as a fan of the team of their 56th, this is a very sweet night for the fans of the Orange and Black!

This year was "Next Year"!   The Giants have made it!  Thanks  guys.       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball's Opening Day! "Centerfield" by John Fogerty

(left) A baseball magazine cover from the early 1960's, featuring future Hall of Fame Centerfielder Willie Mays (of the New York and later San Francisco Giants) and Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees.)  This was in the first era that black players were allowed into the major leagues, striking another blow against America's "color bar".

Both Mays and Mantle dominated their respective teams and positions.  Mays (left, b.1931) is generally acknowledged as one of the smartest men to ever play the game, gifted not only with the ability to adjust himself to each pitcher while at -bat,  and every batter when he played the field on defense, but also a "five tool" player who could do anything (run, hit, hit-for-extra-bases-power , steal bases, and field well above average)   in his prime that needed to be done to win games. 

Mantle was also a man of great talent, who had years at the plate with his bat that even exceeded  Mays--and everybody else. Born the same year as Mays, they entered the Majors together in 1951.  While Mays extended his career to 1973, Mantle's playing days were over by 1968, when all the injuries to his knees and his long record of carousing and drinking with team mates finally caught up to him.  

To many baseball fans,  there is a long and not always polite argument over which man was the better player.  But, at their level of hitting and fielding, it hardly matters to me.  I never got to see Mantle play, but I did see Mays when my father and I attended games at San Francisco's Candlestick Park in the late 60' and early 70's. Mays was recognized as a extraordinary athlete.  The sad thing was that he never really felt at home in San Francisco as he did in New York City, where he  broke into the majors at the Giants original home (before they moved West in 1958) and soon became the toast of the city.   

Part of this was that San Francisco fans wanted their own younger heroes to root for (like Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey and the "Dominican Dandy", pitcher Juan Marichal.)  Mays had an ego as big as his talents and really couldn't share the spotlight. In 1972 he asked to be traded back to New York and was sent to the New York Mets.  His last two years in the game were none too successful, but it hardly mattered; he was already a legend and just seeing him on the field in any uniform brought hope to the hearts of fans.   

Centerfield (1985) is a song by John Fogerty, formerly of "Credence Clearwater Revival". It's one of the best songs celebrating the joys of Springtime and the return of baseball to the green fields of American and Canadian ballparks.  It also celebrates the Centerfielder, ofcourse, the man (or now woman in softbnall) who is often the best hitter and the fleetest to chase down a fly ball for an all important out.  Whether you enjoy the greatest sport ever conceived (baseball) or any sport for that matter, this song will hopefully capture the feeling of playing the game or seeing the best in your nation at the pitch or field of your choice.  

This is an exciting time for those who grew up playing the game as I did in pick-up games in the neighborhood and in Little League, Babe Ruth League and high school teams.    

Tomorrow is Opening Day in the Majors.  It's Spring again and hope for glory in the October World Series is possible for every team booster. Gentlemen, select your bats!

Mr. Bonds' Last Game in Frisco

Barry Bonds of the Giants will play his last home game tonight (assuming he plays despite an injured toe) against the San Diego Padres. In a way, Bonds has done a great deal for the Giants--including helping to get them to the World Series in 2002, where they lost in seven games to the Anaheim Angels. Indeed since 1993, Bonds has been the major draw for the Giants. I don't know if they would have been able to move into their new downtown ball park without him. He will always be remembered as a major influence on Bay Area sports.

But having said all that, I think Bonds' 756the Home Run Ball deserves the asterisk that the fans who bothered to vote on-line gave to that piece of baseball history. The guy who bought the ball, fashion designer Mark Ecko, paid 700,000 bucks to put its fate on the block of public opinion and then annouced the results on today's "Today" morning show. Seems a steep price to me for some network face time, but I guess he had the cash to waste.

The sad thing is that Barry Bonds, despite being a complete Hall of Famer and a great "five tool" offensive and defensive force, leaves the Giants under a big cloud. The steroid allegations and potential perjury charges looming over him for years has made his tenure with the team problematical for too long.

Fans in other cities have considered Giants fans "enablers" for supporting the guy when he came to the plate. But the truth is a lot of us who cheered Bonds in the past are happy to see the back of old number 25. We cheered him because he was innocent under the law and MLB allowed him to continue to play. So why not cheer him; its better than if he played for another team.

So, good-bye Barry. You tarnished every record you set by very likely putting crap in or on your body. That is something you will have to carry forever. Hope the few extra home runs you hit because you healed faster from injuries and got more muscle mass was worth it to you. It wasn't to a lot of fans that I know personally, that's for sure!

Some fine ideas for a dignified and proper send-off

They're Giants In Name Only This Year

To me, the Barry Bonds home run record thing (and it's really a 'thing' in the sense of something weird and fantastic and beyond precedent in modern baseball) is a true "good thing" that can't end soon enough.

The Giants, after all, are getting so much attention but they are 15 games under .500 and essentially ended their season as a contending team in their division two months ago. (They were swept by the Padres this weekend, and, although two of the games were close, you had the feeling they wouldn't succeed unless they were five runs up.)

It's been the same case as all the other Giants losses this year...even when they tied a game in the late innings--a rare and wonderful thing--you felt they go on to lose the contest in extra innings.

That's the way the Giants are this year. The bullpen keeps sending out pitchers until one of them finds a way to lose the game. (Usually Randy Messenger, but I'm not just picking on him.) Or Dave Roberts or Randy Wynn gets on base and the middle of the line-up goes cold and/or they get the bases loaded early in the game and some opposing pitcher just up from Triple-A suddenly seemingly turns into a clone of Juan Marichal or Walter "The Big Train" Johnson and makes the G-Men batters look sick up there.

General Manger Peter McGowan--who's over-tanned face has earned him the nickname "Snappy Tom" from my friends Lyle and Pat--now admits recently they may have held on to too many over-40 players and drafted too many young pitchers in lieu of position players and offensive help the last few years.

You think, Pete?! When was the last time the Giants had a major hitter come out of their farm system? Too long.

On the bright side, the Giants have pretty good starting pitching, or at least a lot of potential in their young hurlers Tim Lincecum, Noah Lowry, and Matt Cain. Those three starters are the hope of the team now, along with a younger and more consistent line-up of hitters. It's a hope that won't be fulfilled until at least next year.

Former Oakland A's ace Barry Zito should be the ace of this staff, but he's struggled most of the year. (The Zen-like Zito pitched his first inning of relief last night--it may not be his last if he doesn't find his groove by early next year.)

Frankly, I'll be glad when Barry Bonds just hits that record-breaking 756th homerun, preferably tonight at home against the DC Nationals from our beautiful nation's capital. The constant references to his alleged steroid use in the past, coupled with the hand-wringing from sports reporters about the whole controversy, has gone past grating for me. Please, Barry, just hit the homer soon and let the last-place Giants melt back into obscurity in the National League West for the rest of this year. There is little joy in a record that so many baseball fans view as tainted and no fun watching a team that had high hopes for a run at the Division Playoffs now looks like all 270 million spent on on Mr. Zito and the recruitment of manager Bruce Bochy has so far been almost for naught.

I'm really not a fair-weather fan. I love the Giants, and all the great history this franchise carries with them, all the great players from Christy Mathewson to Mel Ott to Willie Mays to Willie McCovey to Marichal and Gaylord Perry to Bobby Bonds to Will Clark to Jeff Kent and to ,yes, Barry Bonds.

I will be a Giants fan for as long as God will let me hang around to see them. But I want the Lads to be competitive next year and I want the story of the Giants in 2008 to be how well they are doing as a team, not the source of another long-lasting Ethics in Sports Class. Give me baseball that's about what's between the foul lines next year, please!

Barry Bonds: The Devil Wears a Batting Helmet?

Those who don't regularly even follow baseball know about Barry Bonds. He's the steroids guy, the poster man for cheating in professional sports. Tried by a jury of the Fourth Estate and sentenced to be drawn and quartered

Thomas Boswell, the dean of sports columnists in the Washington Post offered some prosecutors talking points against the SF Giants left-fielder:

Here is Boswell of his chosen subject, Dr. Bonds, in the scribe's own words:

"If Bonds has his way, baseball will have to swallow him all season. He's not hiding. Instead, he's beating the drum. Why not? He's had a change of heart. Last season, on his brief reality TV show ("Bonds on Bonds" on ESPN, the shame-lite network), Bonds' eyes filled with tears as he said: "If it makes them happy to go out of their way to try to destroy me, go right ahead. You can't hurt me any more than you've already hurt me."

Now, on his Web site, he says, "I'm happy, very happy." What about the weight of multiple steroid, tax and perjury probes, investigations and commissions? "It doesn't weigh on me at all, at all," Bonds repeated. "Let 'em investigate. They've been doing it this long." But doesn't he have concerns?

"None," he said defiantly.

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Note the words used here: "...weight of multiple...probes, investigations and commissions." And he terms Bonds as defiant, as if the guy should just throw down his bat and trade in his uniform for an orange jumpsuit.

Two things are wrong with this attitude:

1) Let's suppose that Bonds did take steroids or some such substance? Is he the only player who did so? Not likely. Alex Cirtron of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Raphael Palmiero also have been found to have used the stuff. Mark McGuire and Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi have also come under suspicion, as well as players who make nice with the media like the Rangers' Sammy Sosa.

Isn't it odd, therefore, that Bonds seems to be the guy who is the main focus of the media attention?

2) Allegations are just that. Allegations. So far, Bonds hasn't been indicted, much less convicted of anything. He hasn't taken a drug test that has resulted in his being banned from playing for any length of time. Nor has he been indicted by Grand Jury for perjury. Yet you wouldn't know that from reading fire-eaters like Boswell:

The columnist continues:

If Bonds' current defiant stance seems to have more depth than his whiny demeanor last spring, then there's probably a simple reason. Bonds is echoing one of our oldest and most emotionally complex archetypes -- the fallen angel, the proud, ambitious transgressor who is hurled from heaven.

Who knew a left fielder could stumble into such classic material?

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," Milton's Satan decided in "Paradise Lost." "To be weak is miserable. . . . My sentence is for open war, which, if not victory, is yet revenge."

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Right here is where Tom needed the services of a good copy editor. He's snapped his cap. I know Barry Bonds has a reputation for being sullen and moody. He also doesn't smile a lot. Does that make him a Satan figure, though? Hardly. It might make him somewhat similar to another great hitter who played left field, Boston's own Ted Williams, the last .400 hitter in a season and a gent with a .340 batting average and 512 home runs. Williams was often a bit of a pill in his dealings with the media. Ted liked to fish in the off-season and enjoy his privacy. He also didn't pose for pictures at the drop of a hat. He had some "attitude". Well, okay, but I doubt even the most perplexed member of the press back in the 1940s and 50 ever referred to "Teddy Ballgame" as Lucifer himself.

But Boswell is now just getting warmed up. Here he shows off the full range of his past studies in English Lit class:

Many have agreed with the poet William Blake that Milton drew such a sympathetic portrait of Satan that he was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." There may be a similarly perverse temptation in our antihero culture to shrug and give Bonds a free pass into baseball history.

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All that collective shrugging doesn't seem likely. Few people (including myself) have serious doubt about Bonds taking something during his career to help him heal faster or whatever. But its this singular persecution that I'm tired of.

Even Mr. Boswell, with the Bonds-is-the-devil tirade now tries to back pedal a little:

"So many sluggers have used performance-enhancing drugs in the last 20 years that it's almost impossible for fans to remember which star confessed (Jose Canseco), who got caught (Rafael Palmeiro), who is merely suspected (Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa) and who, like Bonds, has had an entire book written about his cheating ("Game of Shadows"), which is underpinned in part by leaked grand jury testimony.

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Well, if somebody actually wrote an entire book(!) about this, then it all must be true. And the leaked testimony--that must be all true too, not altered one bit to the advantage of one side or another. All things stated as fact in writing are true, right? That's a given, right? And all books about famous people contain the whole truth. They are never written with a thought to "juicing" up the facts a bit to sell extra copies. Every single book written about, say, the John F. Kennedy Assassination had to be 100 percent true to be printed. That's known fact!

Case closed. Bailiff, take Mr. Bonds off to ESPN Prison Camp#26!

Tom Boswell may have no doubts about Bonds' guilt. (Silly me, I prefer the old-fashioned notion of not convicting a man or woman until a trial takes place and a guilty verdict is found. But I'm just a quaint boob about such matters as Common Law.)

Whatever Barry Bonds did or didn't do, in the final analysis, should not at this juncture entitle anybody who claims to be a professional journalist to wildly overstate the man's deeds and raise them to heights of rhetorical purple prose suitable for a authoritarian dictator.

Meanwhile, Bonds will continue to play the game because there is no reason why he shouldn't. And sportswriters who would prefer to bring him down hard may or may not get the opportunity. But the truth of a matter often takes time to come to fore. Whatever lies down the road, I predict a lot more press animosity will be vented by Mr. Boswell and any other show-off sports columnist who needs a villain to make a good story.

Hey Ray!

Good news for any fellow Giants Fans Out there.  Peter MacGowan resigned Ray Durham so "The Lads" will have some power in the middle of the lineup for 2007!  He had one of his bestseasons last year and, baring injury, he should be good for another couple years at the 20-25 homer, big RBI level. 

I guess Manny Ramirez will not be with the Giants next year.  At least we still will have Barry Bonds--hopefully a still productive and chemical-free version of Our Franchise Player.