Baseball adopts instant replay; Piniella ready to throw down

I'm honestly pretty ambivalent about baseball finally following the lead of other major U.S. sports and adopting the instant replay. But quote of the day on this or any other subject clearly goes to notoriously explosive base-tossing manager Lou Piniella. "What's the format? I'd love to be able to throw a red hankie or a green hankie," Piniella said, referring to the NFL system in which a coach throws out a red flag to challenge a call. "Imagine being able to throw something on the field and not be ejected."

The True Meaning of Sportsmanship

A friend forwarded this amazing story this morning. Kudos to the players involved, and a big raspberry to the guy who e-mailed one of the players criticizing women's lack of competitive spirit. Whoever you are, you're exactly the kind of parent I used to despise seeing around the Little League diamond. People who think sports are about nothing more than beating the opponent by any means necessary have no business being involved with them.

That time again

Springtime, that is -- when baseball returns to make all things right in the world.

Now, let's be clear; I'm not talking about *watching* baseball. My Giants are so bad this year there are fans on the message board saying we should trade our best young pitcher Matt Cain out of compassion for the poor guy. He's 23 years old and if he goes 7-16 with a great ERA again it could scar him for life.

No, what I'm talking about is *playing* baseball. And it's funny to be saying that, because I was never more than decent in Little League and didn't play at all in high school or college. In those days I was mostly just a fan. But after college I started playing softball with a group from the office I was working in and it just stuck. I moved across the country not long after and was back on the diamond with a new neighborhood softball team as soon as I could find one.

That team celebrated the start of its 19th season last night.

It was a typical Tuesday night at the ballfield down the street at our local park. Twelve guys who mostly hadn't seen much of each other since last September showed up and greeted each other like long-lost cousins. The youngest guy's wife came by with his two little kids; one of the older guys was showing off a mug shot of his new grandbaby. Spring training lasted 15 minutes and consisted mostly of goodnatured grousing about sore knees and elbows and scar tissue popping as we threw.

And then we went out and played -- mostly -- as well as we ever do and won 9-6. Afterwards we sat on the grass for a round of cold beverages and ribbing. There was absolutely nothing unusual about the evening, and I loved every minute of it. So never mind the Giants for today; today I'm just going to ride on the good feelings of playing the game itself, and paying for the privilege. It's spring again.

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.

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.

Weekend update

Rambling thoughts on a Saturday morning:

It can be a challenge to maintain faith in people these days when the me-me-me ethic seems to have become the norm in American society. A friend was reminding me at lunch today how different things are in Europe where, for example, they don’t have to erect big fences around obviously dangerous things like railroad tracks or electrical transformers. The operating assumption in European society is that if someone is dumb enough to get hurt being somewhere that they obviously shouldn’t be, dealing the consequences of that behavior is the responsibility of that individual.

As a momentary antidote to our rampant me-me-me-ism, I’ve provided this link to a story about a member of the MLB champion Boston Red Sox who gets it. He gets that he is being paid handsomely to play a game, and that kids look up to him, and that it would be a good thing to give something back in a low-key yet meaningful way.

In view of the long-suffering Sox now having won two of the last four World Series titles, though, I do feel compelled to close with a quote from the most frustrated New York Met fan in America, Jon Stewart: “How can you be lovable if you don’t lose?!”

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.