Blog blast past: Putting Bonds into some perspective

U.S. federal prosecutors on Friday decided not to challenge a ruling that tossed out evidence in their case against baseball's home run king Barry Bonds. Between the World Cup, NHL draft and Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Edwin Jackson throwing a "lame no-hitter," it probably didn't get much coverage. It seems like the case that was supposed to go to trial 15 months ago is flagging. From Nov. 16, 2007, here's a post from when Bonds was first indicted:

Dave Zirin of the Edge of Sports sums up the lunacy and self-serving hypocrisy of the U.S. Department of Justice (or as he calls it, "Just-Us") vis-a-vis Barry Bonds:

"The actual indictment parses in language that would shame a Clinton. It reads, 'During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other athletes.'

"This is idiocy raised to the level of law. It makes me wonder what they're teaching at Jesus-land Legal Academy these days. Did Bonds actually test positive for steroids or were pharmaceuticals only found in these mysterious un-indicted 'other athletes'? And what is a 'performance enhancer'? That's not even a legal or medical term; it's sports radio shorthand. The cortisone shot into Curt Schilling's ankle in the 2004 playoffs was a performance enhancer. The Viagra coursing through Bob Dole's veins is a performance enhancer. Whatever keeps that smile glued to Laura Bush's face is a performance enhancer. It's a colloquial phrase that tells us nothing. It only raises the question whether the indictment was written by Mike or the Mad Dog."

To a serious person, the Bonds indictment is more laughable than anything else. He's a huge jerk, and no baseball fan outside the Bay Area will miss him.

However, there are no white-hat types here; if anything, Bonds' hat is a lighter shade of gray than that of the people trying to put him in jail. (Thirty years? He won't serve a day.) The same U.S. Department of Justice that's trying to take down Barry Bonds is the same one that authorized torture not too long ago. It's the same legal system that, as Zirin notes, drags its feet on hate crimes against African-Americans.

Consider this the denouement, the final unravelling, of Bush-Cheney America. Like Chuck Klosterman wrote shortly before Bonds surpassed Babe Ruth 18 months ago:

"... it's been a half-decade where many long-standing fears about how America worked (and what America represented) were gradually -- and then suddenly -- hammered into the collective consciousness of just about everyone, including all the people who weren't paying attention to begin with.

"Here was a man" -- Bonds -- "accomplishing unbelievable things ... but we did not really believe or disbelieve; we just sort of watched it happen, and then we watched it get out of control, and then we expressed shock without feeling a grain of surprise, and then we tried to figure out how we were supposed to reconcile an alien reality we unconsciously understood all along."

Now the U.S. establishment is going to make up for it on the back of Barry Bonds. Anything's possible, considering all this has already done something seemingly impossible -- make Barry Bonds seem like one of the good guys by comparison. Last word to Dave Zirin:

"The idea that they (the U.S. Department of Justice) have no time for Megan Williams, but invest years in the prosecution of Barry Bonds should make any good person of conscience utterly enraged."

Related:
It was never about Barry, and of course it always was (Deadspin)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

Zen Dayley: Where is Bonds' major-league job?

Alex Rodriguez is going to get a World Series ring. Mark McGwire's buddy gives him a job as a hitting coach.

Meantime, Barry Bonds, the one other tainted ballplayer who gets the descriptive "disgraced slugger" according to the Fake AP Stylebook is, well, somewhere, awaiting trial on something.

It's hard not to think of McGwire getting back in the big leagues as a St. Louis Cardinals coach — thanks to the beneficence of Tony La Russa, who was convicted of drunk driving not too long ago — without thinking about Bonds being erased from the sportgeist. It's not clear how much of that is related to time healing all wounds and how much is racial. The fact remains McGwire is back in the game and Bonds is off the grid. Why one and not the other?

The other polarizing pariah of a pituitary case is at least as eminently qualified as McGwire is to be a hitting instructor. Bonds would have the bona fides. Future Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox once said of him, "He might be the most observant hitter I've ever seen. He's on the bench, always talking about the hitters." (Sports Illustrated, July 26, 1993.) That sounds a lot like what a hitting instructor does. It's more consulting than coaching at the major-league level, offering advice, giving people a framework to make good decisions, like teaching hitters how to read pitchers.

It seems like a question worth asking, since ex-greats often do get coaching jobs — although how much coaching is actually involved seems rather dubious. Sooner or later, one of Bonds' old teams, or maybe one of his ex-managers, might invite him down to spring training as a guest instructor, try to get him back in the fold.

Imagine what's going to break out when that happens. It will strain the all that forgiveness and bygones-be-bygones sportswriters are willing to trade in today. The restoring of McGwire's image has begun in earnest. A column on FOXSports refers to McGwire returning from "eight years of a self-imposed exile," as if the public shaming was utterly undeserved.

A column out of St. Louis notes McGwire cannot expect to skate on The Steroid Question, noting "he can’t remain defiant, like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds (or) offer mealy-mouthed recollections, as Alex Rodriguez did." At the same time, the writer, Jeff Gordon, like most of us, notes, "Personally, I’ve come to terms with the Canseco Era. PED abuse was rampant. Hitters juiced up to hit home runs. It was good for business, so commissioner Bud Selig looked the other way -– as did the owners, general managers, managers, player agents and players' association leaders." Four years ago, that was a minority opinion. It is now the majority.

Point being, it is easy enough to say when it's been eight years since McGwire stopped playing and four since his "I'm not here to talk about the past" appearance before the U.S. Congress in 2005, plus he's a white guy.

Meantime, Bonds is wearing the hair shirt. One would like to think it had to do with him being a cold, aloof prick more so than North America's racial politics. At the same time, people don't forget when a public figure who is visible minority who screws up, or has her/his human frailties exposed in a humiliating fashion. Nearly 30 years later, you can still find people making reference to former Montreal Expos star Tim Raines admitting to cocaine addiction, even though he got help and got clean. You never hear about the white jock who did blow, even though there's been a few.

Anyway, there's no beef with La Russa bringing McGwire back into the fold to try to get him into the good graces of the sportswriters who vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame. (Keep an eye on how much his support jumps in January after being around 25% the first two tries, right down in Tim Raines territory, coincidentally enough.)

It just seemed worth pointing out this will come with Bonds before long. There's been scarcely little in the news about the charges he's facing in U.S. federal court, which could lead one to believe that has run cold (Please do not remember who said, "He won't serve a day.) Major League has been trying to scrub away Bonds for the past five years, although people would have yelled rat if he hadn't been allowed to stay one and supplant Henry Aaron as the all-time home run leader. His name popped up a few times in 2008 whenever some team had a crying need for some left-handed home run power, then gradually that faded away as '08 became '09, although he could have done about as well as the .735 OPS the five-years-younger Ken Griffey Jr. posted in Seattle.

The ship's sailed on Bonds playing again, but someone might approach him about doing some coaching. Please keep an eye on how that's received.

3 strikes against outing ballplayers

Well, since it is two years to the day since Barry Bonds, who will be vindicated yet, becoming Major League Baseball's all-time home run leader...

Circling The Bases and It's About The Money, Stupid had the better rebuttals to baseball great Henry Aaron having no use for the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution (unreasonable search and seizure) by saying the names of all the ballplayers who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The former National League outfielder Doug Glanville also wrote a great op-ed for The New York Times:

"When all is said and done, these players are simply 'users,' low men on the totem pole of a drug scheme. The players lying at hearings and in the media are creating a distraction and getting in the way of the investigators’ ability to do their job. They are also inhibiting their need to focus on the more significant issues, like the suppliers and the source of these drugs. We’re talking amounts that are changing local economies, not the meager thousands of dollars these guys spent in a year on their 'fix.'

"I think the release of this list of 104 would be a travesty. The promise of confidentiality was in place to allow players to be more willing to provide a true test. We can't go back and change the rules after the fact and then claim we are now noble and honorable."

What individual players think is kind of immaterial. Major League Baseball needs to nip this story in the bud and protect the players' right, lest it invite a lawsuit. It's pretty simple. Announce a blanket amnesty for any player who wants to unburden himself and try to have leakers in the U.S. government Nifonged.

Even if every name was out, you would still have players who managed to beat the test. You'll never know, but we'll have jokes that a struggling player should start cheating like yesterday. That's another shade of grey someone had pointed out to "Only God Can Stop The Leaks" Scanlan. If there is a God, there are bigger things to worry about than who stuck a needle in his tuccus.

Zen Dayley: Bill James, 'your grandchildren are going to be steroid users'

Thank goodness Bill James can put into words what the rest of us can't.

James has written an essay, "Cooperstown and the 'Roids," for billjamesonline and the Bill James Gold Mine 2010 annual which argues that all those disgraced PED-using pariah ballplayers are going to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame — Mark McGwire, Alex Rodríguez, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and "probably even Barry Bonds." It's available as a PDF and The Sporting Blog and TheScore.com blog have linked to it. For the most part, it's new to people who don't go down the rabbit-holes which are the hardcore Seamhead sites, plus the Hall of Fame's induction day is on Sunday, so it's topical.

James is far from the only person who has espoused a belief ballplayers affected by what he calls MLB commissioner Bud Selig's "periodic spasms of self-righteousness" will be judged more fairly over time. A lot of people have felt that way for the past couple years while listening to kneejerkers in the media prattle on about PEDs.

It's hard to argue their points, oversimplified though they might be. However, the way some commentators have Plasckhed on and on about fans moving on before sportswriters gave them the OK has never set right. It goes double when it contradicts what a writer said previously. Thank god for Bill James:

"The fact is that, with time, the use of drugs like steroids will not disappear from our culture. It will, in fact, grow, eventually becoming so common that it might almost be said to be ubiquitous. Everybody wants to stay young. As we move forward in time, more and more people are going to use more and more drugs in an effort to stay young. Many of these drugs are going to be steroids or the descendants of steroids.

" ... we can reliably foresee a time in which everybody is going to be using steroids or their pharmaceutical descendants. We will learn to control the health risks of those drugs, or we will develop alternatives to them ... If you look into the future 40 or 50 years, I think it is quite likely that every citizen will routinely take anti-aging pills every day.

"How, then, are those people of the future — who are taking steroids every day — going to look back on baseball players who used steroids? They're going to look back on them as pioneers. They're going to look back at it and say 'So what?'

At that point, all the moralizing you've heard over the past few years won't have a leg to stand on.

"The argument for discriminating against PED users rests upon the assumption of the moral superiority of non-drug users. But in a culture in which everyone routinely users steroids, that argument cannot possibly prevail. You can like it or you can dislike it, but your grandchildren are going to be steroid users. Therefore, they are very likely to be people who do not regard the use of steroids as a moral failing. They are more likely to regard the banning of steroids as a bizarre artifice of the past."

Whether the self-improvement of future generations actually involves "steroids and their pharmaceutical descendants" is beside the point. For all we know, genetic enhancement might be the future. That is no different from a moral/ethical standpoint, and that is James' focus.

The normalization of steroids is merely the first argument. The others are as follows.

1. Eventually, some players who have been associated with steroids are going to get into the Hall of Fame.
   
   Right now, the "extreme position" that no steroid users should ever be inducted still holds sway. Mark McGwire's weak support in his first two years on the ballot is a case in point. The man hit 583 home runs and he's 12th all-time in park-adjusted OPS, but he hasn't cracked 25% on the ballot.
   
   However, it only takes one. Basically, as James says, once there is "no longer a firm consensus at an extreme position, there (is) an fluid standand that moved inevitably toward more and more openness ... It was like a battle line that disintegrated once the firing started. The important of holding the battle line, in old-style military conflict, was that once the line was breached, there was no longer an organized point of resistance."
   
   
2. History is forgiving. Statistics endure.
   
   James uses the example of 1960s and '70s slugger Dick Allen, who was kind of the Albert Belle or Milton Bradley of his time, a productive power hitter who was a hothead and careened from team to team. Allen dropped off the Hall of Fame ballot when he was first eligible despite having the numbers, albeit over a relatively short career. However, the Veterans' Committee might put him in someday.
   
   Another example is Shoeless Joe Jackson. There was a time when it was unfathomable a player banned for life would ever be inducted, but more people than not believe he should be in posthumously. Professional lobbyists are working to get Jackson into Cooperstown, almost 60 years after his death.
   
   People forget, in time.
   
   
3. Old players play a key role in the Hall of Fame debate. It seems unlikely to me that aging ballplayers will divide their ex-teammates neatly into classes of 'steroid users' and 'non-steroid users.'
   
   Some players who are quote-unquote untainted will be elected. They will speak up for teammates. Off the cuff, Pedro Martínez lobbies hard for Manny Ramírez. Pudge Rodríguez goes to bat for Palmeiro. Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera or Randy Johnson speaks up for Alex Rodríguez, and so on and so on.
   
   
4. ... was there really a rule against the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs? At best, it is a debatable point.
   
   That is the big matzo ball hanging out there for the steroids = cheaters crowd. James notes:

   " 'Rules,' in civilized society, have certain characteristics. They are agreed to by a process in which all of the interested parties participate ... The 'rule' against Performance Enhancing Drugs, if there was such a role before 2002, by-passed all of these gates. It was never agreed to by the players, who clearly and absolutely have a right to partipate in the process of changing any and all rules to which they are subject."

Perhaps the rank-and-file of sports columnists who make a fetish out of simplicity don't want to hear it. When it comes to grey areas with the Steroid Era, a lot of them are like the grown-up brat played by Isla Fisher in Wedding Crashers, holding their breath, sticking their fingers in their ears and stomping their feet until Daddy, played by Christopher Walken, gives in and says, "OK, I will go along with your vision of baseball as it existed when you were 11 years old and say no steroid users in Cooperstown."

Andrew Stoeten of Drunk Jays Fans fame made a good point that James has added "a layer of complexity that we can't just barge our way around by screaming that PEDs are illegal and whoever did them is a cheater." It's an important arrow to have in the quiver.

People are coming around. Former Chicago White Sox pitcher Jim Parque wrote an op-ed where he confessed to using human growth hormone to try to come back from an injury. He now runs a youth baseball academy, and as he told it, enrolment went up after he told people he had taken HGH and regreted it.

People are forgiving. The Hall of Fame might, as Craig Calcaterra noted, be "owed just as much reverence as Wal-Mart, Google, Congress or any other useful yet ultimately self-interested institution," but ultimately it is going to reflect the principles of society of general. It will take pressure and time. The pressure will likely be economic; as Pete Rose said in February, what's going to happen if in 10-15 years, no players are getting in? It's hard to have an induction weekend when there was no one to induct.

Related:
The Hall of Fame: it's all about the money (Craig Calcaterra, Circling The Bases)

Cuban missive crisis; why it took so long to address Ibáñez and Sosa

Here you thought you were crazy for thinking the blogs vs. MSM debate was as talked-out as, well, steroid use among major league baseball players.

(Since it was on this blog that Stephen Brunt anticipated the desire to make a hero of former sportswriter Steve Wilstein, a post was appropriate, even at this late date.)

That is a best stab at feeding two birds with one scone. It hangs off Mark Cuban's wingnuttery about ESPN needing to put up "a page of blacklisted blogs and websites whose posts they won't comment on or report on in any way" and the whole "PED blame game" (Buster Olney, ESPN.com) which has dominated baseball news over the past fortnight.

The latter is embodied by the Jerod Morris-Raúl Ibáñez controversy and the leak about about Sammy Sosa being one of the 104 major-league baseball players who tested positive in 2003. What all of this can be boiled down is that some, present company included, have more trouble than others accepting that everyone has a way to express an opinion. (Present company included, sometimes.)

To be completely honest, the first thought after seeing Cuban's post on Friday night was to laugh it off. If Cuban wants to think, "ESPN and local newspapers, radio and TV media have become the patsies of bloggers," with respect to how trade rumours are reported in sports, well, that's his journey. A rich man saying whatever is on his mind with no consideration of logic, gee, that has never happened before.

Point being, whipping up a post with a headline such as "Mark Cuban has stupid ideas about blogs" accomplishes sweet eff-all. The blogs vs. MSM debate is also a go-nowhere play, since it does not get at why Jerod Morris became a flashpoint. Try to get past the snark.

Maybe mentioning Cuban is just a way to make this seem fresh. There are similarities with how Morris v. Ibáñez played out over the past fortnight. As the creator of the Clavin Rule, I'm inclined to agree with Cuban's point about trade rumours (it's best left to the people who specialize in it), but don't miss the point. Cuban dislikes that any doofus can whip up a trade rumour.

It was a similar story with how Morris vs. Ibáñez played out. It was not really about whether "a blogger" (see Bucholtz's explanation) said Ibáñez is a 'roidoid because sports nuts are cynical about why the 37-year-old Philadelphia Phillies outfielder's production far surpasses his career statistics.

Buster Olney blew that canard all to hell:

"Some of the mainstream media outrage to the (Jerod Morris) column was fascinating, because some of the same writers who have said they will never vote for a player they suspect of using steroids are saying it's wrong for others to blog about their own suspicions of players' steroid use. Think about the laughable inconsistency there."

Exactly. At the heart of it was a desire to control the narrative with baseball's steroids saga. This involves protecting the privilege of who gets to call someone a cheater. The latter is basically expressed as, "Hey, you must have been in journalism this long before you can say that!"

Those in paying media gigs would like to keep that for themselves. Like Colin Quinn on mid-1990s Saturday Night Live, they have their story and they're stickin' to it.

That lent itself into turning Jerod Morris into a straw man. When traditional media such as The FAN 590's Prime Time Sports did not bother using Morris' name, it made it easier to do this. If "a blogger" wrote Ibáñez's "great start was probably due to steroids," hence all bloggers wrote Ibáñez's great start was probably due to steroids.

(For the last time, Morris did not say it, see for yourself.)

'Closing the book'

Then you have baseball writers' general desire to close the book on the Steroid Era and have people believe it was mostly confined to the '90s and early 2000s. It's completely understandable why that would be the case. Jeff Pearlman savaged that mindset in a piece for Slate ("Pee No Evil," June 2, 2006):

"After having been duped by the men they cover, America's sportswriters are playing dumb again. One year after being dismissed as a has-been, steroid-using fibber, Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi is the toast of New York. Recent articles in metropolitan newspapers have praised the steadfastness and resiliency that have led him to hit a team-high 14 home runs. But where, oh where, are the doubters? At the start of spring training in 2005, Giambi looked smaller than in seasons past. Now, he has muscles atop muscles atop muscles. Yet unlike the San Francisco Chronicle, which dedicated itself (journalistically and financially) to learning the truth about Bonds, none of the New York dailies have assigned an investigative team to the case.

"... I, for one, don't believe him. During my six years at Sports Illustrated, I fell for the trick and covered Giambi as the hulking, lovable lug who cracked jokes and hit monstrous homers. All the while, he was cheating to gain an edge. So, why — when MLB doesn't administer a test for human growth hormone — should I believe Giambi is clean?"

Three years later, a lot of traditional media outlets are slashing budgets and staff and expecting fewer staff to produce more and produce it quickly. That makes it tougher, not to mention less high-reward, to assign an investigative team to anything, let alone a sports story.

A lot of journalists are angry and defensive, even though many papers are still profitable. It also means that the fortunate ones with paying gigs, in many ways, have been reduced to the same footing as some of the well-informed amateurs. If idle, ill-informed speculation was outlawed, sports talk radio would cease to exist by tomorrow.

Meantime, it is only human nature to wish to pretend away something unpleasant like the reality of the Steroids Era (that athletes might use steroids if a professional sport sticks its head in the sand over steroids, especially if there's a feeling it's a common thing among her/his peers). It was icky. It was sleazy. It was just embarrassing how so many people got sucked in during the days of Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Sosa.

The rules of the day and the media's complicity were enablers, as Jonah Keri wrote last week:

"Just can't get worked up at over Sosa or anyone taking PEDs. MLB policies enabled it. I'd take Substance X if it made me umm ... write gooder.

Of course, it's easy enough to tell people what they should hear instead of telling them that all the evil-doers PED-taking ballplayers are going to pay (since bin Laden and all the AIG guys are harder to bring to justice).

That is too logical by half for some people. That is why you get the rear-guard action brought down tenfold on the unfortunate Jerod Morris. It is easy to see why the sportswriting profession, to quote Deadspin's Tommy Craggs, "simultaneously flays itself for not bulldogging the steroids story hard enough and congratulates itself for starting the conversation."

Craggs' words are in a similar vein to what The Globe & Mail's Stephen Brunt, who is ultimately smarter than us, cited in 2008 when he explained why declined his ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame:

"I also retain a very strong memory of the great home run derby, and especially of the baseball-writing community's reaction — or non-reaction — to the andro story. I was at the first McGwire press conference the following spring training (in 1999), and one guy in the room had the balls to ask a question about andro. The rest of the writers looked at him as though he'd farted.

"Anybody who has a HOF vote now was writing then. Also I recall that when I wrote about McGwire and andro, wondering why we celebrated him while crucifying Ben Johnson, the fan/public response I received was almost one hundred per cent negative. Leave McGwire alone, they said. Totally different thing. Don't wreck a great story.

"So the same writers who were celebrating Big Mac back then, and pissing on the reporter who wrote the andro story, suddenly got religion last year. I got sick reading all of those 'what will I tell my children if I vote for him' columns."

If only everyone was as transparent as Brunt and Pearlman.

Meantime, desperation is a stinky cologne

Hopefully, this is providing some background on the buzzsaw Morris walked into two weeks ago. It also reflected something that Vancouver Sun managing editor Kirk Lapointe touched on last week when he blogged, "The tradition in news organizations is to believe their work is definitive. The corollary of that belief is that others' work is inferior. The product of that belief is to dismiss, disregard and even discredit anyone else's work."

Of course, that is on the way out. The journo's job is best summarized, "We don't know everything, but know where to find what we don't know."

A lot of those well-informed amateurs know as much or more about a sport or a particular sub-section. Case in point: When the Ottawa stadium debate was going on, I didn't bother to read a lot of the news coverage. I just e-mailed Pete Toms to get his take.

Many journalists realize you have to engage with your audience. The next generation, people such as Kinger, are already doing this very well.

What Morris v. Ibáñez showed is how entrenched the old way of thinking is, but hopefully for not too long. Craig Calcaterra, the ShysterBaller, realized as much by late last week.

"I can only conclude one thing, and that's that the Morris-Ibanez thing wasn't about steroids and it wasn't about ethics ... It was an effort to breathe life into a tired blog vs. MSM turf war and old-fashioned media sensationalism. A couple of years ago that observation might have made me angry and might have inspired me to unleash a screed or two. As I sit here this evening, however, I can only shake my head and smile.

" ... no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. It seems to me that the sporting press in the mainstream media is giving it the old college try. For my part, I'd be lying if I said that I thought idiocy and sensationalism would one day be gone from journalism entirely. But I am optimistic, based on what I've seen here and what I've seen on many other blogs in the wake of the Ibanez stuff, that the idiocy will constitute a less prominent place in journalism as time goes on."

Thankfully, Calcaterra made sure to get some mileage out of the furor instead of sitting and stewing, like a certain resident of Sageritaville we could name (Neate S.? No, too obvious, N. Sager). The topper was creating the Geoff Baker Rigidity Award to honour sports columnists who have tossed around baseless PED allegations.

There will always be value in having the time and ability to do some digging and being able to write, no matter whether you do it for pay. The point is that there was a method to keeping quiet about all this until now. There is little to no point in going into blogs and MSM, especially when one no longer believes in either term (both are kind of limiting, and traditional media works better for the latter). Meantime, it's always better to think for yourself rather than collecting some celebrity's thoughts. Maybe one in 15 of Cuban's ideas are good.

It's up to people to try to learn something out of all this instead of running over the same ol' ground and not learning anything. The point with Cuban and Morris-Ibáñez is sooner or later, the snark and sideshow aspects, while necessary, get old. People can work past that and come out the better. Goddamn it, we are still capable of understanding nuance, no matter how often the news cycle suggests otherwise.

Batter up: San Francisco Giants

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a baseball team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things about each team. At bat: The San Francisco Giants.

1. There's a rationale to borrowing a pic of third baseman Pablo Sandoval to polish the turd dress up this preview. Cy Young Award Tim Lincecum is everyone else's first point of reference with Los Gigantes, so it's only natural to go the other way.
   
   Sandoval, a 22-year-old hittin' machine, could be good for 40 doubles and 20 homers in his first full season. Expect some of the day-to-day focus to be on his fielding. He's basically a DH on a National League team.
   
   
2. You owe it to yourself to read the Driveline Mechanics deconstruction of Lincecum and the Tom Verducci Sports Illustrated cover story. Both capture what LinCyYoung is all about; one just hopes that his unique pitching motion doesn't put too much torque on his right elbow.
   
   
3. It is factual yet intellectually dishonest to refer to the Giants having three former Cy Young winners. Randy Johnson is 45 years old. Barry Zito posted a 5.15 ERA last season and handed out free passes like he was running the theme park in Adventureland.
   
   
4. Something which can't be ignored before you try to look all smart by taking the Giants to win the NL West: Their 72-90 record was built on winning 13-of-18 games vs. San Diego, including a 7-0 mark in one-run games vs. the Padres. Some kind of evenout is probably coming.
   
   
5. Manager Bruce Bochy is probably going to wear the sack after this season if the Giants don't play at least .500 ball. The Giants are a combined 143-181 the past two seasons. It's not Bochy's fault, but someone usually ends up having to pay.
   
   
6. The Tao of Stieb has vowed to eat a pound of raw bacon if centrefielder Aaron Rowand ever has a 20-homer season during his San Fran tenure. He only hit 13 last year, so The Tao's arteries are safe.
   
   
7. The future Giants starting rotation includes right-hander Matt Cain and 19-year-old lefty Madison Bumgarner as the Nos. 2 and 3 starters. Bumgarner impressed Keith Law when he watched him the other day, although some say his fastball is "so trackable." Another assessment is that Bumgarner, "basically got signed only one pitch." (Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com.)


8. Left-hander Jonathan Sánchez, the No. 5 starter, averaged almost a strikeout per inning last season (157 in 158 frames) and almost no one noticed (guilty as charged).
   
   
9. Another bright young hope is the 2008 first-rounder, catcher Buster Posey, who grades out well in Great Baseball Name quotient. The Giants have had only one catcher selected for the All-Star Game in the past 35 years, so you can imagine there's some breathless anticipation over Posey's ETA in the majors.
   
   
10. The best guess at what happened to Zito is that word got around that he was toast if hitters could avoid laying off his famous curveball. His fastball topped out at 89 miles per hour last season, not enough to put fear into hitters. If the velocity comes back, the Giants might have something (or, not).
    
    
11. Cain gets bonus points for telling reporters who were recently scrumming Lincecum, "Man, you guys are fishing. Those are the lamest questions I've ever heard." He was obviously just trying to save the newspaper industry.
    
    
12. There is no truth that San Francisco bars are going to tie drink price to second baseman Emmanuel Burriss' slugging percentage (.329 last season).
    
    
13. Is Bengie Molina that slow or were the hitters coming up behind him that bad? It's a little from column A, a little from column B. The catcher hit cleanup last season and scored only 46 runs all season. To his credit, he cut his passed balls from 16 in 2007 to just five, but he might have had a little to do with Lincecum's league-high 17 wild pitches.
    
    
14. It's not every day you see a blog post listing a prospective Giants lineup which has Fred Lewis as the cleanup hitter and prediction that San Francisco will win the NL West, without even a hint of irony.
    
    
15. Brian Wilson had 41 saves last season. It pays to be the closer for an anemic hitting team.
    
    
16. Lefty Jeremy Affeldt should improve their middle-relief situation — or not.
    
    
17. Is it mean to wonder if Rich Aurilia ever gets asked if he's the father or uncle of the Rich Aurilia who played shortstop for the Giants earlier this century?
    
    
18. Flipping catcher Ronny Paulino to the Marlins for a low minor leaguer, pitcher Hector Correa, just seemed strange. Correa is a 21-year-old who hasn't got past Single-A, so he's not a big prize.
    
    
19. Seventy-three per cent of respondents to a San Jose Mercury News poll, for what it is worth, believe the neighbouring Oakland Athletics should pursue a stadium deal in that city. The Giants, of course, can pull a MLSE to keep a team from invading their turf.
    
    It's not about the Giants, but reading Stephen Kaus' piece, Athletics Owner Wants Baseball in Oakland to Fail, sounds like the columns which should have been written in Montréal when Jeffrey Loria was killing off the Expos.

    "The TVs are few and far between and you cannot see the field while you wait. Combined with the indifferent "service" from the food servers, you can stand in line for two claustrophobic innings and not see a pitch or even hear a broadcast.

    "And the food is awful, particularly in comparison to the offerings at AT&T Park across the Bay. It is embarrassing to bring a Giants fan to a game. The staple is doughy hot dogs wrapped in tin foil. There are some specialty foods, but they taste like rubber. The only bright spot is some decent beer"

20. Shortstop Edgar Renteria's numbers absolutely nosedived during his one season in Detroit and when that happens, it usually means a one-way ticket to San Francisco. The Giants put every team to shame with their sign-anyone-who-was-good-once policy.
    
    
21. Renteria is still only 33 and has 2,070 career hits, but his dismal year in Detroit probably muted any talk of him getting to 3,000.
    
    
22. Righty-hitting first baseman Angel Villalona bears watching; he's likely to start in high Single-A ball even though he won't be 19 years old until August.
    
    
23. The Giants' Triple-A team, the Fresno Grizzlies, might have to re-jig their June 6 promotion, As Seen On TV night, in light of recent events:
    

    What do the Snuggie, the Clapper, the Chia Pet, and the ShamWow all have in common? They're all staples of the 'As Seen on TV' phenomenon known as the infomercial. "As Seen On TV" Night on Saturday, June 6th will honor all the products that seem appealing, at least when someone tries to sell them to you at 3 a.m. on a Saturday. The first 2,500 fans into the ballpark will receive their very own Grizzlies Shammy Cloth.
    

24. It has next to nothing to do with the Giants, but you have to read this L.A. Times article about how a group of friends have rallied around a man named Pat Chawki, a high school teammate of the late Giants closer, Rod Beck. Chawki has "a rare disorder that renders him fully cognitive, but unable to move or speak."
    
    Chawki's old friends (including Beck's widow, Stacie), actually thought he had died — even announced it during their 20th high-school reunion.
    
    
25. Barry Bonds will never spend day in jail.

Snark break ...

Pour the milk in before the cereal? You wild man, you ... meantime, chew over one man's opinion of The Tragically Hip's five best songs, especially if you do know where Kingston is ...

It is NHL trade deadline day, or for people with an inner life, Wednesday.

The nerve of that Alex Rodriguez. How dare he say the Yankees could use Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, who's only nine years younger and is making $14-million less this season than Derek Jeter. It was a tough Tuesday all around for diva ballplayers. Manny Ramirez is almost signed, took attention away from rumblings Barry Bonds wants to play again and Darryl Strawberry saying, "hell, yeah," he would have taken steroids in the 1980s.

Fox Sports has an anti-ice agenda; five of the flicks on their 10 Worst Sports Movies involved hockey or figure skating.

Shame on anyone who doesn't realize Youngblood was brilliant in its way. It's worth it alone for spotting Steve Thomas and Peter Zezel as extras and the fact that it shows the Hamilton Mustangs taking the bus home after a game in Thunder Bay which shows the screenwriters didn't have a clue about Canadian geography.

The Wrestler and Hot Rod were basically the same movie.

This post is worth nothing, but this worth noting:

• The three St. Francis Xavier basketball players facing assault charges won't play in the Atlantic conference tournament, but could be reinstated for the CIS Final 8. That includes one of their star guards, Tyler Richards, along with Nepean native William Donkoh.
  

Snark break ...

As you were camping out for Spinal Tap tickets. The sustain, listen to it ... I don't hear anything ... well, you would if it were playing.

Miami's chances of getting a MLS expansion team are deader than Jefferey Loria's prospects of a new ballpark for the Florida Marlins. In other words, great day to be a soccer fan in Ottawa or Vancouver who rooted for the Expos way back when (there have to be a few).

Barry Bonds' case: Everyone realizes this will never make it to trial, right? It's only the U.S. Bill of Rights, who cares?

Vernon Wells has one of the worst contracts in baseball. Try not to look so surprised.

Nashville wants to host a NHL all-star game. You are only a year too late to make jokes that this would kill the NHL in Nashville for good.

Baltimore Ravens defensive back Anwar Phillips should foreclose so well when he's on the field. None of this has been proven in court, but who knew someone could sink lower than playing for the Ravens?

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Tiger Stadium in Detroit might yet be saved.
• Anyone who has spent time around Belleville, Ontario, knows about the old Memorial Arena, which people love because it has no protective glass and the lowest sideboards around. It's too bad, then, that some fan had to get hit in the head with a puck and spoil it for everyone else.
  
• Last, but not least, try to work "bonehead gangster" into conversation at some point today.
  
  
  
  

That's all for now.

Zen Dayley: Buttoning up for Bonds

The question with the Barry Bonds trial has always really been if the juice is worth the squeeze.

The big story today is that Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, ain't talkin', even if means going back to jail. That could be bad for the federal prosecutors, who normally in the U.S. win about 95% of their cases, taking advantage of the conservative judiciary at the federal court level (the president's party tends to have much more impact on the federal courts than the big show in Washington, D.C.).

Anderson zipping it out of loyalty to Bonds would put the feds' case "on serious life support." (Dave Zirin.) It is understandable if you're disgusted that Anderson won't testify, especially if it turns out in 10 years that Bonds promised to make it worth Anderson's while . The white-hat guys have spent five years trying to bring Bonds down, when he's no threat to the public morality, let alone safety. That is more obscene that one swollen head.

This, that and the other:

• The Tao of Stieb is saying what most Jays fans are thinking: Put Alex Rios in centrefield and Vernon Wells in right. Cito Gaston (whom Jeff Pearlman believes will be the first manager fired) tends to be loyal to his guys (remember Devon White hitting in the 2-hole during the '93 stretch drive while two Hall of Famers flip-flopped in the 3 and 6 spots?), so it's possible Wells stays put, but really he should move.
• Baseball Prospectus' Jay Jaffe has a must-read about the Yankees being "shockingly out of touch with a fan base that it's trying to bully into spending beyond their means during hard economic times." Eighty-five bucks for a seat behind the foul pole, people.

Related:
Greg Anderson’s pledge of allegiance (Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports, Feb. 22)
Bonds' personal trainer expected to remain silent (The Associated Press)
The US v. Barry Bonds (Dave Zirin, The Nation)

Zen Dayley: Hank Aaron isn't here to be kicked around

Henry Aaron, as you probably heard, wants no part of being a political football.

Some of you probably saw that Aaron took a hammer to MLB commissioner Bud Selig's CYA (that doesn't stand for Cy Young Award) notion that baseball's all-time home run record should be restored to him. Aaron told Atlanta scribe Terence Moore, "I just don’t see how you really can do a thing like that and just say somebody isn’t the record holder anymore, and let’s go back to the way that it was." He added:

"It belongs to Barry (Bonds). No matter how we look at it, it's his record, and I held it for a long time. But my take on all of this has always been the same. I'm not going to say that Barry's got it because of this or because of that, because I don’t know."

Selig kind of played into the sad reality that Aaron "has been reduced to a sportswriter's cheap trope" (Tommy Craggs, Slate, July 2007) instead of being properly appreciated. It is also ties in with getting people to reject this whole notion that there is some special sanctity to baseball's record book. It's just an annual put out by The Sporting News.

All we know about Aaron is through reading about him and knowing his statistics, that he hit 755 homers yet had good enough bat control that the Milwaukee Braves actually used him as their 2-hole hitter for part of a season. Whatever feelings he has toward the years 1973-74, when he was closing in on Babe Ruth's record, are his alone. It is notable that he once said it was odd how the biggest record in baseball was the home run record until he, a black man, broke it, then it became Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

It might very well be that being passed by Bonds gave the 75-year-old Aaron, in dollar-store psychology parlance, a chance at closure over that period in his life. That was one takeaway from a passage in Bill Rhoden's column Sunday, which evoked a years-ago interview.

"During an interview in his office in the early 1990s, I asked Aaron about his attitude toward celebrating the anniversary of breaking the record. He said that 'April 8, 1974, really led up to turning me off on baseball.'

" 'My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats, and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp,' he said then. 'I had to duck. I had to go out the back door of the ballparks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day. All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth, and it won't go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.' "

Reading that, as a carpenter's son from cracker-ass crackerville, does not answer definitely why Aaron would have such a take, but ours is not to demand an answer. It would make one feel like they get why he's not too eager to be someone's "rhetorical bludgeon" (Craggs' term) all these years after the fact.

No word of a lie, Terence Moore's blog post went up late Friday afternoon, right when yours truly has on the radio with Kinger, touching on Alex Rodriguez, steroids in baseball and such. Selig's suggestion of installing Aaron came up, and if memory serves I spat back something about it being an "affront" to Aaron's "dignity," would that I had with a better word.

The point is Hank Aaron is 75 years old. Leave him be.

This, that and the other

• The Yankees don't like paying rent.
  
• The Roy Halladay Farewell Tour should be in full swing by mid-March, so sayeth Jeff Blair at globesports.com.
• Erik Bedard threw off a mound; this counts as news in spring training, especially since it's coming from Geoff Baker and cisblog.ca has another Concordia U grad, Jared Book, now contributing.
  
  Bedard spoke to the media afterward, which is a good sign.
  

Related:
Aaron: Bonds can keep the record (Terence Moore, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 13)
In Aaron’s View, Bonds Is Home Run King (William C. Rhoden, The New York Times)
Hammering on Hank; how the media abuse baseball's home run king (Tommy Craggs, Slate, July 20, 2007)

Rodriguez: Thirteen thoughts on the baseball Judas

It is better for your health to "ignore these blowhards" with regard to the media coverage of the Alex Rodriguez scandal, to quote FanGraphs, which has created the Hyperbole Index (HI, for short).

Good friend Pete Toms notes this is a chattering class issue. The majority of people who will attend ballgames, just for something to do or on a company outing, will have forgotten about this by April. For sanity's sake, condensing the whole Rodriguez matter to 13 thoughts seems appropriate for putting the matter to bed for a few days.

1. Rodriguez breaking the home run record... good thing: Contary to what you might have heard, Rodriguez has not destroyed the game's history. His shame will serve to liberate it from the conceit, kept up by self-appointed gatekeepers such as Bob Costas, that baseball is the best game of all because of its record book.
   
   Those of you who have also watched all 18½ hours of Ken Burns' Baseball, six times over in the past 15 years might remember this part. At one point, Costas says the grand old game stands alone since you can rhyme off numbers such as 56, 755, 4,256, .406 and everyone will get the reference. In other sports it is, "How many yards did Jim Brown have when Walter Payton passed him? How points did Wilt Chamberlain have when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar passed him to become the all-time leading scorer in the NBA?"
   
   Statistics are a good backup for confirming what you saw or filling in what you missed. It's mostly a reflection of the competition player faced, the conditions (i.e., segregation, scouting, home ballpark), the way the game was played at the time and whether he was fortunate enough to enjoy a long career. Everything needs to be put into context, not just the Steroid Era.
   
   The failure to understand is this is why Dick Allen, who played in the low-scoring 1960s and early '70s, is not in the Hall of Fame. It is also a big part of why Jim Rice got in last month by the skin of his teeth. Oh, and remember, anyone who played before the game was fully integrated, their numbers are a bit suspect too.
   
   It's a fair leap, but if the top two home run hitters of all time are a pair of universally hated cheaters, perhaps it gets slower-thinking sportswriters to stop furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation. This is a small, nerdy point to list first.
   
   
2. Marvin Miller must be laughing. The now 91-year-old former players' union boss warned five years ago (The Biz of Baseball, July 13, 2004) that the U.S. government might step all over players' constitutional rights in order to be the white knight on Steroids in Sports. No one was listening (guilty as charged):

   "... it's one thing if an employer makes it a labor-management issue. It's quite another when the government says, 'I now will subpoena records of confidential tests and I will use the material,' which, after all is tantamount to saying, 'I will require self-incrimination and I may send some of you to jail.' I think the sports media, like so much of the other media, is just asleep on this issue."

3. This shall pass. This is only the second-worst scandal in sports history, according to the estimable Seattle baseball writer Geoff Baker. (Canadians might be interested to know what claimed the No. 1 and No. 5 berths.) People are so jaded that they can shrug this off, noting it was timed so it keeps Steroids in Baseball on the front burner in the lead-up to the start of Barry Bonds' trial (which is going so, so well for the prosecutors).
   
   
4. Statistics can prove anything; 14 per cent of all people know that. Baseball was due to see an attendance decrease in 2009 due to the recession. Expect someone to blame that on the Bonds and Rodriguez fallout.
   
   
5. Putting the media on trial: The Sports Law Professor turned the cannon on Sports Illustrated's Selena Roberts, who broke the story Saturday.

   "Where is the reporters' complicity? I see Selena Roberts, Sports Illustrated's new back-page moralizer ... being interviewed on evening news programs without having to answer for her conduct. If it not permissible for an insider to reveal the contents of sealed evidence, then why is it morally permissible (if not illegal) for an outsider, especially a veteran reporter experienced in prying admissions out of reluctant innocents, to cajole and entice such insiders to break their known legal obligations? Isn't luring another to commit a wrong just as culpable as the wrong itself?"

6. In other words, Rodriguez didn't have to make stuff up: Rodriguez steered some of his ESPN interview with Peter Gammons around to spewing invective about Roberts. He even went so far to accuse of her of committing a B&E:

   "What makes me upset is Sports Illustrated pays this lady Selena Roberts to stalk me. This lady has been thrown out of my apartment in New York City. This lady has, five days ago she was thrown out of the University of Miami police for tresspassing. And four days ago she tried to break into my house while my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach Police. I have the paper here. And this lady's coming out with all these allegations, all these lies, because she’s writing an article for Sports Illustrated. And she's coming out with a book in May. And really respectable journalists are following this lady off the cliff, and following her lead. And that to me is unfortunate.

   Jeff Pearlman has some choice words for Gammons for not challenging Rodriguez's assertions. Roberts was also slagged by The Futility Infielder last night.
   
   
7. Yes, him again: Rodriguez's infamy means that Pete Rose, who's been sent down the river so many times only to keep bobbing up like some raspy-voiced Rasputin, can continue his two-decade-old image rehabilitation.
   
   Rose was on MLB Home Plate on Tuesday afternoon, where he drew a distinction between his crimes as an athlete-gambler and a juicer: "What I did had nothing to do with the direct outcome of a game. What I did (betting on baseball), I did as a manager." That might be a flimsy premise, but taking a banned substance definitely impacts
   
   For what it's worth, Rose did not buy any claim Rodriguez was young and naive in 2001-03, pointing out "he wasn't a kid." Granted, at the time Rodriguez was playing for a team whose former managing partner who referred to things he did in his 30s as "youthful indiscretions." Maybe that gave him the idea (kidding).
   
   
8. Cooperstown needs new shorts: Rose, who of course wants to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame worst than anything, said, "I just got a call from a guy in Cooperstown. He's all pissed off. He's like, this is going to ruin us because no one from the last 10 years is going to get into the Hall of Fame because of steroids."
   
   There would not be a problem if the Baseball Writers' Association of America would get off its collective high horse, but that's another 100 posts. To borrow a phrase from one of Kinger's contemporaries, Tim Cunningham, the Hall of Fame voting system is "totally broken." A-Rod sticking a needle in his bum doesn't let anyone off the hook.
   
   
9. Comfortably numb: Please keep in mind that some other big name will get out at some point.
   
   
10. Who is innocent by association? Poz noted Frank Thomas, who was just naturally huge and cooperated with the Mitchell Report, comes out very well. Thomas was huge naturally and his career has wound down at a normal pace. Some of the pitchers who played through the Steroid Era, such as Mike Mussina, might have stronger arguments for the Hall of Fame, assuming they were on the level.
    
    It's been hard, as a Jays fan, to shake the idea that Carlos Delgado's reputation might improve even though there's no way to presume anyone was clean as a bean. The former Toronto slugger, as you probably remember, finished second to Rodriguez in the American League MVP voting in 2003. Delgado was fourth in 2000, behind the tainted Jason Giambi, Thomas and Rodriguez.
    
    Being a former MVP draws a lot of water with the BBWAA. The view might take hold that Delgado actually should be looked at as the winner in 2003, which would help his borderline Cooperstown bonafides. As a first baseman who has OPS+'d 138 over his career, Delgado is an iffy Hall of Fame candidate, but he is getting close to the 500-home run plateau which once meant automatic induction, along with 500 doubles and 1,500 RBI.
    
    
11. Talk about timing: The Rodriguez scandal has done for the new MLB Network what the first Gulf War did for CNN back in 1991, as Sports Media Journal noted. It's been a real coup for the digital channel, although Canadians have to take everyone's word for it since the channel is not available in Canada, thanks Rogers.
    
    
12. Why the shrug? It is tough to feel scandalized when one made his peace with the Steroid Era three flippin' years ago:

    "Baseball’s hamfisted attempt to put a gloss over the steroids scandal last year makes every fan a little bit guilty. We are taking pleasure in a sport that you know has been altered by drug cheats, knowing that there are strings attached."

13. Barry Bonds is still in the 10th circle. It makes no sense to draw a distinction between Rodriguez and Bonds because the latter is a more arrogant jerk. No one thought to call Rodriguez a cheater before Saturday, and Bonds was pilloried far, far worse.

Zen Dayley: All the news about Rodriguez is a lot of Huey

Don't call him A-Rod, A-Roid, A-Fraud, A-Hole (nice one, New York Post), or even A-Bastard.

It should be just plain Alex Rodriguez. The first thing you do, since it would take too long to kill all the lawyers, is to strip away all the iconography and just realize Rodriguez is a very flawed man; he's. Marvin Miller was right all along when he said the ballplayers' union never, ever should have agreed to any drug testing.

How reasonable is it to wonder if Rodriguez, who is choosing the beg forgiveness route, knew this might be coming out and if that influenced his choice to play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic? One might have little to do with the other, but the Dominicans play their round-robin games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Team USA's first games are in Toronto. One is a little cheaper for a media outlet to send someone to these days.

Here's a fairly representative collection of the thoughts today;

Deadspin: "Well, that's everyone. Any baseball player who has done anything notable in the last ten years did so while hopped up on goofballs. So I guess baseball is canceled now?"

Craig Calcaterra, ShysterBall: "In any event, it is my view that long after the Alex Rodriguez-specific portion of this drama has played itself out with an apology, a press conference, and a .300/.400/.600 season, this episode will be remembered mostly as the first known instance of the MLBPA truly betraying the interests of its own players. That, my friends, will have longer legs than anything else that broke on Saturday.

"And of course, let us spare no ill feelings when it comes to whoever in the government leaked this stuff. Look, I don't sit in my study wearing a tinfoil hat all day, but you don't have to be someone like that to wonder why, if the feds have had this information for years, it's only coming out now. To me this leak smells like a calculated and maybe even a vindictive move, designed to thrust the steroid story back into the public eye on the eve of Barry Bonds' trial ... it is certainly the case that the federal government's investigation of steroids in professional sports has gotten out of hand, both in terms of the reources spent and in the amount of zeal with which it is apparently being pursued."

Curt Schilling: "I'd be all for the 104 positives being named, and the game moving on if that is at all possible. In my opinion, if you don’t do that, then the other 600-700 players are going to be guilty by association, forever."

Bill Madden, New York Daily News: "(The Yankees) should do what's best for the organization:

"Cut him loose - no matter the cost.

"As difficult as it is to imagine eating $270 million, the Bombers will be making a statement, not just for the Yankee brand but for baseball as a whole.

"They will be applauded for it."

Anthony Rieber, Newsday: "... when A-Rod's name comes on the (Hall of Fame) ballot, whatever year that will end up being, I plan on voting for him, too, even if he breaks down at a news conference next week and admits sticking needles in his tush every year of his career.

" ... We just will never know who did and who didn't take steroids and HGH during the home-run happy 1990s and 2000s. Heck, we will never know who is and who isn't taking steroids and HGH today, since there is no test for HGH.

Jeff Blair: "The allegations surrounding Rodriguez won't kill baseball. In the end, it will be part of the price fans pay, like overpriced watered-down beer and lousy hot dogs. But make no mistake: This is the single most devastating development for the game since this whole process of self-analysis and self-flagellation started."

Scott Carson, sportsnet.ca: "Especially tough questions should be directed at (Gene) Orza (of the players' association - ed.), who we are led to believe, was giving certain players warnings about when random drug tests would be heading their way. Anyone that doesn’t find this inherently wrong probably also thinks that professional wrestling is real and that Charles Manson was just a misunderstood hippie. And the fact that Selig and Fehr knew of a positive test by A-Rod and chose to stifle that information, probably won’t sit too well with the politicians in Washington who have been trying to get to the bottom of this whole steroid mess.

"In the end, this will be all about spin and super agent Scott Boras will do everything within his power to protect his client and the millions of dollars that A-Rod represents to him. In due time, A-Rod will come forward and – hopefully – will truthfully give his side of the story. But with the verdict having already been handed down in the court of public opinion, it says here that no matter what Rodriguez tries to sell us, it won't amount to a hill of beans."

A Large Regular suggested whoever does the in-game music at various parks should play forgotten corporate rockers Huey Lewis and the News' I Want A New Drug when Rodriguez comes to bat. This is the first recorded instance of anyone wanting to hear Huey Lewis, and for that, Alex Rodriguez should burn, especially when he went to such great lengths in the past to say in not so few words, "I have never done steroids."

Zen Dayley: The burden is on the state

It's not unreasonable search and seizure when the defendant is a huge jerk.

Straddling the fence until the judge in Barry Bonds' perjury trial rules on the admissibility of his urine tests might e best, but what the hell. No less an authority than Shysterball is saying that the U.S. government is "relying on considerable amounts of hearsay" (dedicated Lionel Hutz legal scholars will note that's a kind of evidence) to build its case against the home run king. The Smoking Gun just outed the sketchy character who gathered much of the evidence that was used for the big bag of nothing that was the Mitchell Report.

(This is more interesting than learning the Blue Jays are about to add Kevin Millar, who slugged a mighty .394 last season? True, he used to be able to hit lefties very well.)

It basically means that most of what the media is reporting about Bonds is water off a duck's back, pending what happens later today in a northern California courtroom. However, most of the procedural decisions by Judge Susan Illston have gone his way so far. Also, as Gwen Knapp says:

"(T)he 2003 sample absolutely was taken under false pretenses. Its appearance in the trial would effectively make Bonds' employers agents of the state. That's not MLB's job."

The Smoking Gun just outed the sketchy character who gathered much of the evidence that was used for the big bag of nothing that was the Mitchell Report. Honestly, all of this seems so mired in sleaze and dodgy ethics that it's turning Bonds into Don Quixote -- no intention of burning.

Other stuff:

• Along with Millar, the Jays continued their raid of the Orioles by adding lefty Brian Burres, who at least was well-liked when he flung for the Ottawa Lynx a few years ago.
  
  That's three former Baltimores now with the Jays on minor-league deals. The Orioles are rebuilding and the Jays are adding their discards. Granted, it might make for a go
  
• It's always better to just talk baseball. Here is one promising report on Canadian Brett Lawrie, the Milwaukee Brewers' super hitting prospect. He might be their catcher or shortstop of the future.
• A portrait of the rightfielder as a younger man with the Jays' Alex Rios.
  
• One-time prospect, now suspect, Matt Murton is now with the Colorado Rockies. You know someone will overpay for him in a fantasy draft, now that he's at Coors Field.

Related:
MLB Bonds drug tests shouldn't be admissible (Gwen Knapp, San Francisco Chronicle)
Major League Snitch; Unmasked: How a white-collar Baltimore swindler turned secret FBI informant and ignited a Major League Baseball steroid scandal (The Smoking Gun)

Zen Dayley: The Bonds travesty

At what price a skin on the wall?

Were justice blind, the Barry Bonds witch hunt would be over in a trice, and people will probably wonder that it will be, given the public pronouncements of the new U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, who says there will be no "witch hunts" on his watch.

It appears, according to those who done the due dilegence, that the much-ballyhooed testimony of Jason Giambi does not amount to much more than a a bucket of warm spit. Giambi apparently never even met the notorious Victor Conte, the Clear was actually legal (although as Sports on My Mind noted, you might not have heard that since ESPN conveniently passed on picking up the story, which often dictates how much play it gets in Canada.)

Please think back to the kind of emotions that were attached to Bonds back in 2004, '05, '06, '07. The thought of him ending up in prison, even three months in Club Fed, was the stuff of pleasant dreams for a lot of sports fans. Now, as it appears the prosecution's case is little more than smoke, mirrors and press releases, there's one big shrug.

This is why people can suck sometimes. It is understood that this is short attention span society. Bonds is old news when it comes to the athlete-celebrity who can be used as a straw man for everything wrong with the world. He will never cut much of a sympathetic figure. Those who know how the legal system really works know that the highers-up hate to invest time and man-hours in an investigation that goes nowhere. It can be a constant refrain of, "Have you laid charges yet?"

With all that being said, it's impossible to stay silent about this, as Only Baseball Matters noted last week:

"There is nothing fair about this anymore, nothing at all. And forget about fair, how about the astonishing abuse of power we’re seeing here. Barry Bonds didn’t kill anyone, he doesn’t smuggle cocaine into high schools, or rape little girls. He used something to make himself better at what he does for a living. He took steps to improve himself. Regardless of whether you think it was right or wrong, whether you believe that it is the government’s job to tell us what is legal or illegal to take to make us happier, stronger, faster or just plain high; what Bonds did is in no way commensurate to the level of money being spent, and quite frankly, laws being broken, in chasing him down.

"Make no mistake, standing by and watching (the U.S.) government do this without a word of protest will haunt us. This is a targeted witch hunt, a black man who is being taken down because a government employee – a man whose salary is paid for by you and me– IRS Agent Jeff Novitzky, decided he wanted to take him down because he was an, 'arrogant asshole.'

"Not to mention, this investigation, costing between $30 and $50 million while our economy is crashing like the Hindenburg, is the height of absurdity. Twenty federal agents raiding the home of a 60-year old woman, in an effort to pressure Greg Anderson to testify? Really?"

It's a little glib to just expect the Obama White House to step in and say, no more. It should not be Priority One, but the new POTUS has said it's not the governnment's business to regulate what athletes put in their bodies; it's up to the leagues themselves.

It seems like the people going after Bonds have nothing. They'll probably, like they did with Al Capone, get him on something barely related, and it will not be worth the time and effort invested. Shame on them.

Related:
Giambi's testimony lacks blunt force (Jonathan Littman, Yahoo! Sports)
I hope they have something better than this (Shysterball)
Why New Barry Bonds Witness Can't Be Trusted (Sports On My Mind, Jan. 30)
... Obscene (John Perricone, Only Baseball Matters)

Zen Dayley: Of Bonds, Bill Lee, Bud, ballparks and back-patting

Almost 14 months to the day that someone predicted he would never serve a day in jail, it appears Barry Bonds is accused of taking something that wasn't actually illegal.

That sounds like the classic MAD magazine definition of entrapment — "this guy is guilty of crimes he hasn't even been accused of." Yahoo! Sports is promising more relevations, but you can't blame people if they start wondering if the case vs. Bonds is as strong as the San Diego Padres' reasons for signing David Eckstein and Omar Vizquel for their middle infield.

This is more of a notebook-style Zen Dayley. Item the second is that MLB is giving lip service to the notion of participating in the Olympics if baseball and women's fastpitch are reinstated for 2016 (all four bidding cities say they will accommodate both sports). Selig didn't actually say how that would be accomplished, which makes one wonder if all the talk amounts to a belch in a windstorm.

This, that and the other

• Bill Lee's interview with the Toronto Star on Thursday was a scream. That's why they call him the Spaceman:

  " 'There's something inherently wrong with the Hall of Fame,' he offered. 'It's just a bunch of sycophants, apple polishers and everything else. Everybody's got faults; all but Brooks Robinson. Hey, Lucifer had wings at one time. Don Sutton was a cheater. No one cheated more than Gaylord Perry – except maybe Charles Barkley.' "

  Absolutely brilliant.
  
  
• It has been almost exactly one year since this site first co-opted Dan Rowe's phrase "uninterested ownership" to describe Rogers Communications' approach to owning the Blue Jays. It has, if one can be totally smug about it, made it easier to accept the Jays' winter of inactivity or not getting to hear Jim Hughson do play-by-play, which was a nice change of pace for the team's other TV voices. It is all water off a duck's back at this point.
• Geoff Baker, a former Star baseball writer who's now at the Seattle Times, is pretty candid about what it's like to cover a ballgame at the Rogers Centre, which he rated ninth out of 14 in the AL:

  "The press box food is pretty good, but the team is stingy on the portions. It's famous for putting up signs warning people not to take more than one cookie or pudding (most parks don't limit this). The press box is comfortable, but very high up. At night, the setting sun causes a glare around gametime that makes it tough to see your computer screen. The wireless access is among the worst in baseball despite the fact the team is owned by a cable giant. They also haven't figured out how to control the temperature in here and when they close the retractable roof after games, all the humidity gets trapped inside and turns it into a sauna. Getting to the clubhouse in this outdated, 1980s-style ballpark requires a hike down a long hallway, a ride on a terribly slow elevator and then a march down a very long basement concourse area. Security staff are not as bad as at Yankee Stadium, but tend to consider themselves as Canada's frontline to the War on Terror. No, that's not a joke. Well, it is, but it isn't."

Related:
Ever-drifting Spaceman cries out for integrity shift in Hall balloting (Richard Griffin, Toronto Star)
Bonds blockbuster: 'The Clear' was legal (Jonathan Littman, Yahoo! Sports)
Pressbox view of best/worst AL ballparks (Geoff Baker, Seattle Times)