8.08.2007
756
We all knew it instantly. Even though it was to the deepest part of the park and just barely made it, we all knew it instantly.
You've all seen it by now. All I can add is that the atmosphere in the park vastly surpassed last night's, even before Barry came to bat in the fifth. Possibly because he was showing signs of life against Mike Bacsik even before that (double in the second, single in the third), but who knows. It just felt like the right time. The crowd seemed to feel it coming, not unlike the infamous cat who could smell death.
When it came, it was not necessarily a more intense experience in the stands than, say, a playoff sayonara, or an Auburn-LSU game, but it came close, and it had the unmistakable feel of being unique. People may assume that A-Rod will pass Bonds eventually, but don't be so sure. We very well may never see another night like this in our lifetimes.
The initial moment of jubilation is going to stay with me forever. As will the attendant who immediately ran out to replace the now-historic bases. As will the fans who leaned over the railing to slap the freshly-placed 756 next to Bonds' name on the brick outfield wall. As will Hank Aaron's videotaped kudos, providing fitting (if reserved) closure to the saga. As will the inevitable straggler who traipsed gleefully in from center field, stopped near second base when he realized the cops had him encircled, and had already began to kneel in submission when he took a vicious-looking pin from John Law. Just as understated an intrusion as the ensuing ceremony itself.
But no curtain calls for Bonds! I've never seen a curtain call out here in San Francisco, come to think of it. In my St. Louisan days I saw curtain calls for McGwire, Will Clark, Scott Rolen, Ray Lankford, Jim Edmonds, and probably Bo Hart at some point too. Perhaps things are just different out here by the Bay. But gosh almighty, wouldn't this have been a good time for one? Or are fans really this happy to see the long march end, and a trudge of fifty moribund and poorly-attended games begin?
Equally surprising to me was the double switch that removed Bonds from the game immediately after the fifth. Bruce Bochy even sent starter Barry Zito back out to throw warmups before jerking him out as part of the switch, but Bonds didn't really get the follow-up ovation he was hoping for because the fans didn't yet fully realize he was leaving the game so early. They responded in kind by vacating the premises; by the ninth the seagulls once again may have outnumbered the crowd. Every Bonds-related managerial move made by Bochy in recent weeks has underscored that these few weeks have been an exhibition, a sideshow that has eclipsed the increasingly impotent main event. But I've harped on that enough already by now.
(Good thing Selig wasn't around to see it. Why spoil an event like this with a man guaranteed to turn all the cheers into boos? In the end Selig achieved the unthinkable: make Bonds appear a sympathetic figure by comparison. Not to mention render himself a mere parenthetical paragraph in the recap.)
I promised not to preach, I promised not to take a side, and then I came home from the Call Center tonight and read the piece at ESPN.com that Gene Wojciehowski apparently had prepared for this moment, and something set me off. There's nothing special about it -- a hack job, you've read several just like it already. But it was something about the way it reeked of the self-importance too many of us sportswriters tend to bathe in - dealing in cliches as accepted truths, lumping in Sammy Sosa with the rest despite no evidence to go on aside from the court of public opinion (and it is not often you will find me defending Sammy Sosa in any capacity), falsely dichotomizing Bonds with Hank Aaron in the exact way this article describes, pumping up the mythical importance of 756 with his rhetoric so that it will sound more shocking and meaningful when he anoints it as tainted, with the ever-insipid asterisk. It's not just him though, of course. It feels like it's everyone. Even my new favorite baseball site The Dugout can't get over themselves. More and more often I am being lectured that what is happening to baseball is Wrong, and I am outright commanded (as Wojciehowski does) to care about it.
But I don't care. Nor can I honestly apologize for not caring. Instead I direct you to local chap Ray Ratto's take over at CBS Sportsline. He gets it right.
No matter how the huddled masses of the sports media world tried to frame the Bonds chase, no matter how many snarky Deadspin commenters or "Rome Is Burning" callers parrot some invective they heard from someone somewhere about Bonds or steroids, no matter how many hacks like Wojciehowski unwittingly associate themselves with the likes of Bill O'Reilly by furthering the ever-growing national perception that San Francisco is somehow a separate cultural island with values alien to the rest of America, they can't change how it felt to see that ball arc softly through the air towards the ecstatic arms of the crowd. If this was your town, and if Bonds had been your team's cornerstone for fifteen years, you would have felt it too.
[Our gratitude to The Big Lead for the link.]
You've all seen it by now. All I can add is that the atmosphere in the park vastly surpassed last night's, even before Barry came to bat in the fifth. Possibly because he was showing signs of life against Mike Bacsik even before that (double in the second, single in the third), but who knows. It just felt like the right time. The crowd seemed to feel it coming, not unlike the infamous cat who could smell death.
When it came, it was not necessarily a more intense experience in the stands than, say, a playoff sayonara, or an Auburn-LSU game, but it came close, and it had the unmistakable feel of being unique. People may assume that A-Rod will pass Bonds eventually, but don't be so sure. We very well may never see another night like this in our lifetimes.
The initial moment of jubilation is going to stay with me forever. As will the attendant who immediately ran out to replace the now-historic bases. As will the fans who leaned over the railing to slap the freshly-placed 756 next to Bonds' name on the brick outfield wall. As will Hank Aaron's videotaped kudos, providing fitting (if reserved) closure to the saga. As will the inevitable straggler who traipsed gleefully in from center field, stopped near second base when he realized the cops had him encircled, and had already began to kneel in submission when he took a vicious-looking pin from John Law. Just as understated an intrusion as the ensuing ceremony itself.
But no curtain calls for Bonds! I've never seen a curtain call out here in San Francisco, come to think of it. In my St. Louisan days I saw curtain calls for McGwire, Will Clark, Scott Rolen, Ray Lankford, Jim Edmonds, and probably Bo Hart at some point too. Perhaps things are just different out here by the Bay. But gosh almighty, wouldn't this have been a good time for one? Or are fans really this happy to see the long march end, and a trudge of fifty moribund and poorly-attended games begin?
Equally surprising to me was the double switch that removed Bonds from the game immediately after the fifth. Bruce Bochy even sent starter Barry Zito back out to throw warmups before jerking him out as part of the switch, but Bonds didn't really get the follow-up ovation he was hoping for because the fans didn't yet fully realize he was leaving the game so early. They responded in kind by vacating the premises; by the ninth the seagulls once again may have outnumbered the crowd. Every Bonds-related managerial move made by Bochy in recent weeks has underscored that these few weeks have been an exhibition, a sideshow that has eclipsed the increasingly impotent main event. But I've harped on that enough already by now.
(Good thing Selig wasn't around to see it. Why spoil an event like this with a man guaranteed to turn all the cheers into boos? In the end Selig achieved the unthinkable: make Bonds appear a sympathetic figure by comparison. Not to mention render himself a mere parenthetical paragraph in the recap.)
I promised not to preach, I promised not to take a side, and then I came home from the Call Center tonight and read the piece at ESPN.com that Gene Wojciehowski apparently had prepared for this moment, and something set me off. There's nothing special about it -- a hack job, you've read several just like it already. But it was something about the way it reeked of the self-importance too many of us sportswriters tend to bathe in - dealing in cliches as accepted truths, lumping in Sammy Sosa with the rest despite no evidence to go on aside from the court of public opinion (and it is not often you will find me defending Sammy Sosa in any capacity), falsely dichotomizing Bonds with Hank Aaron in the exact way this article describes, pumping up the mythical importance of 756 with his rhetoric so that it will sound more shocking and meaningful when he anoints it as tainted, with the ever-insipid asterisk. It's not just him though, of course. It feels like it's everyone. Even my new favorite baseball site The Dugout can't get over themselves. More and more often I am being lectured that what is happening to baseball is Wrong, and I am outright commanded (as Wojciehowski does) to care about it.
But I don't care. Nor can I honestly apologize for not caring. Instead I direct you to local chap Ray Ratto's take over at CBS Sportsline. He gets it right.
No matter how the huddled masses of the sports media world tried to frame the Bonds chase, no matter how many snarky Deadspin commenters or "Rome Is Burning" callers parrot some invective they heard from someone somewhere about Bonds or steroids, no matter how many hacks like Wojciehowski unwittingly associate themselves with the likes of Bill O'Reilly by furthering the ever-growing national perception that San Francisco is somehow a separate cultural island with values alien to the rest of America, they can't change how it felt to see that ball arc softly through the air towards the ecstatic arms of the crowd. If this was your town, and if Bonds had been your team's cornerstone for fifteen years, you would have felt it too.
Away Side: Washington Gener--uh, Nationals
Home Side: Barry and the Barrinas
[Our gratitude to The Big Lead for the link.]Labels: barry bonds, game reports, mlbeat as soapbox
8.07.2007
Score That Shit an Error
Exactly as I'd feared. This game, a Monday nighter against the lowly (but improving) Nationals, had very little else to it besides the Bonds show. Rookies Lincecum and John Lannan matched 7 IP, 1 ER lines but did so with high effort: 24 baserunners allowed between them on nine walks. Sounds exciting enough, but both lineups in the game were sufficiently nonthreatening (Kevin Frandsen, D'Angelo Jimenez, Nook Logan, Ron Belliard, Brian Schneider, etc.) that there was little tension at any point. Not an inspiring performance in the bunch, save for Randy Winn who went 4-5 with four singles, occupied first base in front of Bonds three times, and knocked in the game-winner. By which point 75% of the crowd was already gone.
Besides Bonds' plate appearances, there was no tension in the air tonight, and it was tough for this crowd to ramp up the intensity out of nowhere for one at single bat every couple innings. It was Irish Night at the ballpark and the Irish turnout was noticeable, which produced a much more interesting clientele than usual, not to mention more traditional jigs and bagpipe tunes than usual, but maybe this sort of crowd had acquired its tickets well ahead of time for *that* reason and thus wasn't quite diehard enough to be really worthy of a major night in baseball's history. (How do I measure diehard at AT&T Park these days? By the enthusiasm for Lincecum's every move: there should be a lot more of it these days.) Sure the flashbulbs popped like mad on every pitch to Bonds, just as they did back in the McGwire days, but it had the feel of a night that folks wanted to be able to someday say they were a part of, more so than a night everyone actually wanted to be a part of. That's the way it came across to me at least. Give me a pennant-chase game any day of the week and play two of 'em on Sunday.
Little to say about Bonds tonight. Today's first-inning video testimonial came from Muhammad Ali (his son, technically) and Bonds made very little show of his applause in response. (A couple weeks earlier it had been Joe Montana, which the crowd devoured.) At the plate he tried, but didn't do it tonight. That's really the best thing about home runs in general: they're still rare enough that you can never truly expect them, or at least it's unfair to expect them. John Lannan pitched to him, did so successfully, and he made sure that when he erred he did so on the side of walking him. History won't remember him for that. Job well done.
We'll be back at the Call Center tomorrow. If history gets made, we promise not to pontificate about it. A hundred percent pontification-free zone, this.
Well wait a sec, just let me have this one. A certain pet peeve has been festering within me, spreading and growing moldy patches and tentacles over several years, and one occurrence of it tonight really colonized my colon. Kindly direct your attention to the bottom of the fourth, when Rajai Davis (playing his first home game as a newly-acquired Giant) rolled a grounder to Ryan Zimmerman at third with two out and Lincecum running at first. The Washington third baseman played it nonchalantly, bending to his right instead than making the one shuffle required to get in position, and he booted it. The ball hit him in the glove, then flopped to the ground on his left side, just far enough away that as it came to a gentle rest, Zimmerman had to give up on it.
The official scorer called the play a hit.
Does anyone else feel the error has been completely devalued in baseball over the last few, or last several years? I am but a simple unresourceful blogger with not a crumb of evidence to back me up, but for many years I have been getting the feeling that a play like this, a play that once would have been scored an error, no question, is now scored a hit. I've heard one theory that this trend is real, and it's the influence of the home team to pump up their players' stats -- and Brian Sabean wants Davis to rack up all the hits he can I'm sure, for his own sake. But do agents influence this process as well? Is there a review system in place for official scorers in baseball?
Think of the consequences. Fewer errors keeps a player's defensive numbers artificially better (fielding pct. and total errors), though more advanced fielding stats might still have him pegged. But more importantly, fewer errors means more hits. More hits means better offensive statistics across the board: average, RBI, OPS, VORP, all of the above. They go in the book just as if they were hard line-drive singles to right, and that means better credentials for everyone. Sure, it does mean more earned runs and higher ERAs for pitchers -- and you know some veteran pitchers probably hate it -- but pitchers' numbers are more likely to be evaluated in context of their league and era. How many times have you heard an announcer say so-and-so's 4.50 ERA is actually decent for the American League, or baseball in general these days? How much of that can possibly be steroids?
Well I hate to play the pest, but bottom line -- if a professional major leaguer has a routine play and he doesn't make it, score that shit an error. Some gray area can remain, but on a play like Zimmerman's tonight... I'm sorry but I must insist that my scorecard's interpretation of that play be instated as the interpretation of record. The truth shall win out in the end! Two and two are four! Oceania has not always been at war with Eurasia!
Besides Bonds' plate appearances, there was no tension in the air tonight, and it was tough for this crowd to ramp up the intensity out of nowhere for one at single bat every couple innings. It was Irish Night at the ballpark and the Irish turnout was noticeable, which produced a much more interesting clientele than usual, not to mention more traditional jigs and bagpipe tunes than usual, but maybe this sort of crowd had acquired its tickets well ahead of time for *that* reason and thus wasn't quite diehard enough to be really worthy of a major night in baseball's history. (How do I measure diehard at AT&T Park these days? By the enthusiasm for Lincecum's every move: there should be a lot more of it these days.) Sure the flashbulbs popped like mad on every pitch to Bonds, just as they did back in the McGwire days, but it had the feel of a night that folks wanted to be able to someday say they were a part of, more so than a night everyone actually wanted to be a part of. That's the way it came across to me at least. Give me a pennant-chase game any day of the week and play two of 'em on Sunday.
Little to say about Bonds tonight. Today's first-inning video testimonial came from Muhammad Ali (his son, technically) and Bonds made very little show of his applause in response. (A couple weeks earlier it had been Joe Montana, which the crowd devoured.) At the plate he tried, but didn't do it tonight. That's really the best thing about home runs in general: they're still rare enough that you can never truly expect them, or at least it's unfair to expect them. John Lannan pitched to him, did so successfully, and he made sure that when he erred he did so on the side of walking him. History won't remember him for that. Job well done.
We'll be back at the Call Center tomorrow. If history gets made, we promise not to pontificate about it. A hundred percent pontification-free zone, this.
Well wait a sec, just let me have this one. A certain pet peeve has been festering within me, spreading and growing moldy patches and tentacles over several years, and one occurrence of it tonight really colonized my colon. Kindly direct your attention to the bottom of the fourth, when Rajai Davis (playing his first home game as a newly-acquired Giant) rolled a grounder to Ryan Zimmerman at third with two out and Lincecum running at first. The Washington third baseman played it nonchalantly, bending to his right instead than making the one shuffle required to get in position, and he booted it. The ball hit him in the glove, then flopped to the ground on his left side, just far enough away that as it came to a gentle rest, Zimmerman had to give up on it.
The official scorer called the play a hit.
Does anyone else feel the error has been completely devalued in baseball over the last few, or last several years? I am but a simple unresourceful blogger with not a crumb of evidence to back me up, but for many years I have been getting the feeling that a play like this, a play that once would have been scored an error, no question, is now scored a hit. I've heard one theory that this trend is real, and it's the influence of the home team to pump up their players' stats -- and Brian Sabean wants Davis to rack up all the hits he can I'm sure, for his own sake. But do agents influence this process as well? Is there a review system in place for official scorers in baseball?
Think of the consequences. Fewer errors keeps a player's defensive numbers artificially better (fielding pct. and total errors), though more advanced fielding stats might still have him pegged. But more importantly, fewer errors means more hits. More hits means better offensive statistics across the board: average, RBI, OPS, VORP, all of the above. They go in the book just as if they were hard line-drive singles to right, and that means better credentials for everyone. Sure, it does mean more earned runs and higher ERAs for pitchers -- and you know some veteran pitchers probably hate it -- but pitchers' numbers are more likely to be evaluated in context of their league and era. How many times have you heard an announcer say so-and-so's 4.50 ERA is actually decent for the American League, or baseball in general these days? How much of that can possibly be steroids?
Well I hate to play the pest, but bottom line -- if a professional major leaguer has a routine play and he doesn't make it, score that shit an error. Some gray area can remain, but on a play like Zimmerman's tonight... I'm sorry but I must insist that my scorecard's interpretation of that play be instated as the interpretation of record. The truth shall win out in the end! Two and two are four! Oceania has not always been at war with Eurasia!
Visiting Side - Washington Nationals
Home Side - Los Gigantes
Labels: barry bonds, game reports, mlbeat as soapbox
