Good For Ball/Bad For Ball

What follows is a version of something I’ve been writing, off and on, for about 10 years. It’s proven somewhat popular with readers because it’s a quick and easy read, and I dig writing it because it allows me to touch on all sports, local and national. Hope you dig it, too …

Assuming the intentions are pure, running for local public office is Good For Ball. The pay — if any — stinks, and the time commitment is considerable, so it’s essentially a selfless, thankless service to your fellow citizens. The colorful cardboard gardens of campaign placards that pop up around the neighborhood are a bit of an eyesore, but hey, knock yourself out.

Then you have the people who apparently sneak around late at night and uproot said gardens, ripping said placards in half and littering the yards in which they were displayed with torn and twisted cardboard. Who knew city council candidates prompted such vitriol? Bad For Ball.

Everyting in life, you see, can be classified in one of two ways: Good For Ball or Bad For Ball. With that in mind, we take our latest spin around the sports world and determine what’s what.

The big story in the Bay Area on Monday was the trade that sent Giants lefty Jonathan Sanchez to Kansas City. Can’t really call it the trade that brought Melky Cabrera to San Francisco because there is not yet any sort of connection to Cabrera. To Sanchez, Giants fans alternately have been joyously connected and bitterly disconnected over the years. Has there ever been an athlete in these parts so clearly talented and wildly inconsistent? Not in recent memory. Seems like a classic change-of-scenery guy from here, and given the good times he provided as “Good Sanchy” — particularly the I-can’t-believe-what-just-happened triple against the Padres and the 11-K game against the Braves in the playoffs last year — he deserves Good For Ball status and best wishes with the next chapter of his baffling career. 

Joe Frazier was nobody’s punching bag in the ring. He was a force of nature. A world champion. A worthy foil to the great Muhammad Ali. Unfortunately, a great many sports fans of the generation that followed Frazier’s prime know less about his frightening mastery of the sweet science than they know of Ali’s constant belittling of the man who, according to Ali himself, nearly beat him to death in the 1975 classic “Thrilla in Manila.” Sad beyond words that Frazier died without ever getting his due outside boxing’s inner circles, and while it’s borderline sacriledge to cast Ali in anything less than a glowing light, it’s inescapable that The Greatest’s use of Smokin’ Joe as a verbal punching bag created the bitterness that clouded Frazier’s legacy. Bad For Ball.

Alex Smith, after years of ridicule, is a winning NFL quarterback. Sure, it feels a little like saying Tom Arnold is an Oscar-winning actor, but Good For Ball nonetheless.

Joe Paterno. Bad For Ball. No further explanaton needed. Wow.

Stanford football finally takes the big stage this weekend, with ESPN’s “College Gameday” down on The Farm for the Pac-12 showdown with Swoosh University. It’d be nice if Cardinal wideout Chris Owusu were at Andrew Luck’s disposal, but beggars can’t be choosers, and the BCS poll has forced one of the nation’s top teams, starring the nation’s top QB, to all but beg for this kind of attention. Well, here it is. Good For Ball.

NBA commish David Stern is arrogance personified. His most recent transgression? Telling the players to take the deal that’s on the table now or the next offer will be worse. In what world does that type of negotiation thuggery work? Can’t think of one outside the mafia. Bad For Ball.

And finally, a nod to Tommy Kelly of the Raiders, who gave a voice to every frustrated Oakland fan in the wake of Sunday’s pathetic showing against Tim Tebow and the Broncos. The read option isn’t supposed to work in the NFL, especially against a team that had two weeks to work on defending it, but it worked against the Raiders, who seem on the verge of full-on implosion. Kelly no doubt deserves his share of the blame, as does every member of Oakland’s front seven, but at least he was man enough to publicly blast the embarrassment that went down. Good For Ball.