Get ready for some righteous indignation

Roommate celebrating xmas on the lake; ice keeps the beers cold, camo is slimming

I don't like baseball. It's boring, the games take too long, and it's boring. The Fox telecasts are unwatchably bad. They introduced the now en vogue quick-cut style, where they cut from crowd, to pitcher, to manager, to pitcher, to crowd, to batter, to crowd, to batter all in about 15 or 20 seconds, in between pitches. They do this to give you the illusion that something is happening. There are two things wrong with this: 1. Nothing is happening, and 2. The important part of what is happening is happening on the field, with the players, and they rarely show that. (I hate crowd shots.)

So, baseball is not my thing. Whatever. I don't hate it, and I'll turn the game on if Vin Scully is announcing or if the Giants are featured or similar. Whatever.

What I HATE about baseball is the judgy, sanctimonious nonsense surrounding the baseball hall of fame. Hate it. With a fervent passion. The character clause invites sportswriters (bitter because they're ugly and the pay sucks) to sit in judgment on players for more than their performance. It's bad enough that every sportswriter would sell his soul to be a major league ballplayer, and spends their entire career at their mercy. This is not the type of atmosphere that fosters good subjective judgment. So you get words thrown around like 'impact' and 'feeling' and etc.

There was a minor victory for rational argument over 'gut feeling' this year with the election of Bert Blyleven. The case against him was mostly based on the idea that Blyleven didn't 'feel' like a hall of famer (more on that in a moment). The case for him was based more on other stuff, like numbers and objective metrics and math and comparables and other shit that attempt to reduce or eliminate the 'gut feeling'.

Jon Heyman, never one to miss an opportunity to broadcast his idiocy, weighs in with an entire article on the subject. Heyman's main reason for not voting for Blyleven is that he doesn't 'feel' very good. Then he cites a bunch of stuff about how no one thought he was very good at the time, like Cy Young awards and All-star balloting. In essence, he says, "We didn't think he was great then, so he's not great now. Numbers? Piffle!" The good news is that a great percentage of the voters actually changed their minds about Blyleven after reconsidering his career. So, a small victory for open mindedness.

I was all set to break down Heyman's post but I don't have time and no one would read it. Joe Posnanski addressed it, which you can read here: http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/12/30/hall-of-fame-the-eight-definites/.

Apparently Blyleven was a bit of a touchstone, because it set off a wave of commentary from other clowns about how the hall should be reserved for only the 'great' players. Blyleven's greatness apparently doesn't rate with people like Bob Costas, whose primary qualification seems to be a willingness to gargle the balls of worshiping Mickey Mantle. Posnanski writes about that, too, and I'll leave it to him because presumably he gets paid to write 5000 word blog posts. I know I don't.

Baseball starts today (I think)

I don't much care for baseball. Can't sit through it (too much inactivity), and can't deal with how horrendous the broadcasts and announcers tend to be (with the exception of Vin Scully - even though I have less use for the Dodgers than almost any other franchise except the Yankees and Angels). When Vin finally retires I don't know if I'll ever watch another baseball game again. Fox works really hard to make the game "exciting", to perpetuate the illusion that something is happening. It's a shame, because the pace of the game is what makes it unique.

What I do enjoy is reading about baseball, and sabermetric analysis. Really this is true. No idea why nerds love baseball so hard but it brings out the geek in people. I mean people besides me.

So this article was a nice kickoff to the-part-of-the-year-I-ignore-the-sports-calendar that we will henceforth refer to as "baseball season". It led to this. And then to this interesting summary of historical home runs. And that hitting a baseball is really, really hard.

Not mentioned in any of the analysis: Bud Selig is a milquetoast d-bag. I think it was implied a few places but not stated explicitly.

In related baseball news, I think we need more guys throwing the eephus. Seriously. I heart the eephus. RJ is throwing for the Giants now and he's got it in his arsenal. Wakefield throws the eephus and the knuckler, and it works for him.

Photo courtesy flickr and the wonderfully-named Waldo Jaquith.

if you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin'

ahh, the magic of sport. On the one hand, you've got guys like Barry Bonds. He probably took steroids. I don't much care. It wasn't against the rules when he did it, and there's a long and inglorious history of cheating in baseball. You can say Aaron didn't use illegal drugs, but you have to admit that he may have been popping greenies like tic tacs. So what?

And then there's cycling. lordy lordy lordy. Cyclists are the East German swim team from 1976. I have a friend in France (oui!) that rides with some amateur cyclists on the weekends. He told me a couple years ago that even the amateur riders, the weekend warriors riding for club teams, have to deal with doping at every competition. He says it's just the done thing; if you're not enhancing w/ drugs, you're not going to even compete. I confess that I doubted him then, but not now.

The rider in the photo above (from Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; please don't send me litigious correspondence) was the race leader until he got booted for skipping scheduled drug tests before the race started. How did he get through almost the whole race without someone noticing that he had been booted from his own national team for suspicion of using drugs? That's the kind of oversight you only expect from the federal government.

Sportswriters are bitter because they're ugly and the pay sucks*

Barry Bonds is a polarizing figure. He's also, by all accounts, a titanic jerk. At least, that's the way he's portrayed in the press. I don't know, because I've never met him. I do know that you can't take the full account of a person from what you read or hear. People have written exhaustive books about it, though. So you can decide for yourself.

One certainty is that Jon Heyman, in his most self-righteous and sanctimonious tone, will defend the magic and truth of baseball to his dying breath. Thank God for that.

Hank Aaron is the smart one in baseball's sad spectacle. He isn't coming to Barry Bonds' unhappy party, and he isn't really saying why.

Perfect.

Jon, why is that perfect?

Aaron has told people I know that he has no interest in honoring Bonds. But by now that should be obvious. And no one should blame him for that. Many of us feel that way, too, and Bonds -- who's now only nine home runs shy of Aaron's record 755 -- hasn't stolen one thing from us.

I sense some anger here, Jon. And, who said anything about stealing? Are you taking this personally? Was Barry Bonds rude to you at some point? If BB passes Hammerin' Hank, will you hold onto the old home run record because it has more truthiness? More superbosity?

Besides, why should Aaron want to participate in a sad spectacle that's getting sadder by the day? The latest bit of negativity came via Bonds, who is now saying he won't hand over his record-breaking artifacts to Cooperstown because he cares only about himself.

I fell compelled to point out here that the latest bit of negativity comes via J. Heyman, writer at Sports Illustrated. It could be that Bonds won't hand over any of his artifacts to Cooperstown because Bud Selig is a douchebag, or because he's a nutcase who (some speculate) was driven to start using steroids because he was jealous of all the attention other steroid users were getting (I'm looking at you Sosa and McGwire), or because the Baseball HOF is full of crackers and segregationists and similar. Or not. Hard to say, since he won't talk to you. But you can write mean things about him, protect the game, as it were.

That's fine, because about the only person truly excited about this record is him.

There may be more than one person excited about it. I'm guessing. Bruce Bochy is pumped. He needs the Giants to win. And he sucks at managing (separate issue, I know).

Aaron is right for doing what he is doing, which is nothing. Nothing is what Bonds' record deserves.

I didn't know that, but I'm glad you told me. Otherwise I might have thought damn, that guy seems like a jerk, but he's really really good at baseball. Who cares if he took steroids? I guess the same people that think Hank Aaron never took greenies, and that Babe Ruth was godlike, even though he didn't have to play against black or brown people. That's a big advantage, because they are pretty good at sports, these non-whites. You can look it up.

Middle America hates Barry because he's not white, and he doesn't give a shit about you or anything but being really good at baseball. And because you write articles about what a jerk he is, and how his record is meaningless.

Feel free to get off your high-horse and join the rest of the rank and file any time you like, Jon. We'll be over here, enjoying our beers while we watch Barrold Bonds hit another unhittable pitch over the bleachers. Then we'll get back to our lives. We're funny that way.

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* title stolen from withleather.com. It's the truest thing I've ever read about sportswriters. and writers in general.