Good news and bad news

Good news first. After our recent decade-long bender of snapping up gargantuan gas-hog SUVs, Americans seem to have woken up to the fact that they've been hoodwinked by an auto industry that doesn't give a damn about anything beyond next quarter's balance sheet. Bigger doesn't look so much better anymore when gas is $4 a gallon and the polar ice caps are melting before our eyes. It's sad that it took the combination of the highest gas prices in history and overwhelming evidence of climate change to shock American consumers into changing their behavior, but whatever it takes.

As for the Smart Car, we saw a ton of them on a trip to Europe in 2003. And while I don't expect you'll be seeing many of them on the interstate, for urban environments they're an excellent option -- great gas mileage, highly maneuverable and able to squeeze into a parking space half the size of a Ford Expedition.

The bad news is, my baseball team is threatening to set a record for futility, in more ways than one. Having failed utterly to remake their roster over the winter, saddled with aging, mediocre overpaid free agents, and beset by injuries, the Giants have decided the solution to their problems lies in erasing every vestige of the man who almost single-handedly kept the franchise afloat for the last fifteen years. You know my feelings about Barry Bonds are about as mixed as mixed can be, but for Giants' ownership to suddenly disavow the man who kept the fans coming year after year to buy overpriced food and sit in overpriced seats to watch an underperforming team -- well, it's pretty much the definition of hypocrisy. Add that to what's looking like a sure-thing 100-loss season (110, anybody?), and you've got a recipe for a loooooong year at the ballpark. Or rather, not there.

Will they call him “’Roider” Clemens now?

Surprise, surprise. The sportswriters’ golden boy Roger Clemens is reported to be prominently featured in retired Sen. George Mitchell’s forthcoming report on baseball’s steroids mess.

Actually, this is not much of a surprise to those of us who have observed Clemens doing the very same things that have repeatedly been used as evidence of Barry Bond’s steroids use, e.g. bulking up and maintaining strength in his late 30s and early 40s.

Oh sure, but in Roger’s case it must have been those legendary workouts. You know why? Because he doesn’t trash-talk reporters, that’s why.

I’m an advocate of the Golden Rule and Barry Bonds has dished out plenty of the scorn the media has thrown back at him these past two years. But if all those angry sportswriters are really going to claim that they consistently maintained their professionalism, that they never lost their objectivity, that they never made it personal, then I expect to see a rash of columns in the next few days raining approbation down on Clemens’ head, calling for asterisks on all his records, pledging not to vote him into the Hall of Fame, and generally holding him up as the new poster boy for all that is wrong in the land of baseball.

Waiting.

A sad day

The Bonds indictment can only really be considered a surprise in terms of the timing. Most people thought he was in trouble after his mind-boggling grand jury testimony was leaked lo those many, many months ago. But then nothing, and more nothing, and you started to think the feds didn't actually have a case, other than the word of a spurned woman with serious credibility issues of her own. And now? We'll see. Either way, it's a sad day for baseball and the San Francisco Giants and Willie Mays and the entire Bonds family.

Sad, and as Mike Celizic points out, entirely avoidable. You'll want to read the whole article, but I do think this one quote is worth repeating to anyone who gets a holier-than-thou tone in their voice when speaking of Barry Bonds: "Nothing he did was against the rules of the game when he was putting up his single-season home-run record and ruling the game like no one had ever done before. Baseball allowed him to do what he did, celebrated it, encouraged it and cashed the checks." And if he'd just had the courage and character to stand up and admit it, we wouldn't be here today.

Barry Bonds: The End

Anybody who’s asked me what I think of Barry Bonds in the last five years knows I have stood by the man for a long time. I witnessed home runs # 500 as well as # 71, 72 and 73 during that amazing 2001 season (the story of how I got those tickets is a post in itself, for another time). I still believe it’s absurd to make one player the poster boy for an unfortunate trend that affected the entire sports world, including hundreds of players he competed against. And I will always be grateful for the thrills he provided me as a fan of the San Francisco Giants.

But after reading the following quote in my morning paper recently, referencing the oft-filmed inlet of water that lies out beyond the right field wall at the Giant’s home park (a.k.a. The Big Phone), I am done defending the man:

“They call it McCovey Cove, but I’ve re-written it a little bit.”

If Bonds wants to disrespect holier-than-thou sportswriters, I don’t have a particular problem with it. There’s been enough unwarranted arrogance and venom in that decades-long tiff to go around.

If Bonds wants to disrespect the Giants’ ownership, there are a lot of Giants fans who will join him in doing that, even ones who think Magowan & co. made the right call by not bringing him back for another year.

But you do not disrespect your elders, and you especially do not disrespect Willie McCovey. Willie McCovey is ten times the man Barry Bonds will ever be, and after this latest outburst of swollen-head syndrome, I sincerely hope the City of San Francisco never names so much as a manhole cover after Barry Bonds.