Month: June 2013

Honest. Positive. Helpful.

These are three traits to which the old me paid little to no attention, and the results were predictably unfulfilling. Miserable, even.

Now? Being as honest, positive and helpful — HPH — as humanly possible in everything I do is the primary goal. During my morning commute and throughout each day, I remind myself that HPH has to be my personal GPS.

It’s an approach I adopted, ostensibly, to offset/counter/combat my destructive self-centered tendencies; HPH is, after all, largely selfless.

But the more I practice HPH, the more I find that it’s NOT all that selfless. I get a TON out of it. Turns out being selfless is a little bit selfish — in a good way. My life now is the polar opposite of unfulfilling and miserable!

It only took me 44 years to figure that out, by the way. My jackassness never ceases to amaze me.

Now on to some sports …

One of my Twitter followers, @Michael_RA, asked me to update my thoughts on a discussion we’ve had in the past regarding the Giants’ Brandons, Crawford and Belt. Specifically, he asked me who’s better at this point in their budding careers.

Great question, isn’t it? You could make a strong case for either one.

Both have Gold Glove potential at their respective position, but Crawford’s position is more important, and despite the fact that he’s made errors in bunches at times, he’ll be the superior defender in general over the long haul.

Crawford has proven that the I’ll-be-happy-with-.250 stance many fans adopted in regards to his offensive upside, but Belt, despite his propensity to slip into extended funks at the plate, has more power and will be, over the long haul, the superior (more productive) hitter in general.

So again, the question: Who’s the better Brandon?

Sorry to give you a Waffle Cone, folks, but from here it seems pretty much a push. One’s a rock-star defensive shortstop who contributes his fair share offensively and runs the bases well. The other’s a corner infielder with power who can pick it, play some outfield and run a little bit himself.

Ask any GM in the game which type of player he’d rather have. His answer will probably be the same as mine:

Yes, please.

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With all due respect to LeBron, he’s not the most unstoppable player in the NBA right now. That would be Tony Parker. Holy crap, is there anything he can’t do when he really wants to do it?

OK, maybe he can’t smash on a 7-footer, but he doesn’t need to. It’s just as demoralizing to drop a feathery floating runner over the big fella’s fingertips.

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I understand the fascination with professioinal drafts. Sports are an escape, a fantasy, and every sport’s draft allows its fans to fantasize about the future. But you can’t put earrings on a pig, and that’s what MLB has been trying to do with all the TV time and analysis.

The NBA, NFL and even the NHL drafts are mostly dealing with the immediate future. MLB is mostly dealing with three to five years from now. That’s, like, three more versions of the iPhone down the road. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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Thanks for stopping by, folks. If you download one song today, make it “Roundabout” by Yes. Especialy you youngsters with, um, hippie tendencies. Feel me?

–Urbs

According to Tuesday, MLB has persuaded one of the ringleaders of suspected cheat factory Biogenesis to rat out a large collection of suspected cheaters, which we’re told will likely lead to an unprecedented slew of suspensions.

If the reports are true, the nickname “A-Fraud” will have never been so apt — before PEDs came to the fore, it simply mocked his transparent, plastic personality — and Ryan Braun, the other headliner in the soon-to-boil-over cauldron of controversy, will officially and irretrievably lose any shred of respect he might have maintained in the wake of his MVP/overturned drug bust drama.

Here in the Bay Area, the A’s will have to once again make due without Bartolo Colon, a loss perhaps offset competitively by the fact that Rangers stud Nelson Cruz is said to be among the dopes, and Giants fans get to thank their lucky stars that Melky Cabrera got popped last year — BEFORE the Giants convinced themselves they needed to sign him to a monster multi-year deal.

Across the country, baseball fans will be taking sides.

On one side will be those who skew negative, using this unprecedented-in-scale scandal as support of their theory that big-league ball is as dirty as ever. The testing program isn’t working, they’ll claim. The penalties don’t serve as a severe enough deterrent. The players have no respect for the game, its history or its authority.

We’ll probably get some racial nonsense, too, given the surnames of the players implicated.

Are those on this side of searing condemnation wrong? Not really. Truth is, there is no right or wrong here. Any frustration, disappointment, anger or indignation associated with this story is certainly justified.

It’s another flaming bag of feces on the so-called national pastime’s doorstep, and a great number of fans long ago resigned themselves to the notion that very little that’s seen on the fields before them can be believed as the product of talent plus hard work and sacrifice. The preponderance of evidence to the contrary makes it hard to assume anyone’s 100 percent clean.

Unfair to those who ARE clean? Sure. But a sadly understandable stance.

The other side? That’s where I’m choosing to sit on this one, in a place where what’s sought is progress rather than perfection.

Is baseball ever going to be cheat-free? H-to-the-ell no. You’ve heard the saying, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,” right? Well, there’s a lot of truth to that. It’s not the most pious approach, but it’s taken in one way or another by virtually everyone who’s played the game at a relatively high level.

“Cheating,” of course, is difficult to define in sports. Stealing, for instance, is unacceptable in the real world unless it’s in reference to glances or kisses. In basketball and soccer, though, stealing the ball is an art form to some, as is stealing signs in baseball and football.

There are rules against scuffing the pearl in baseball, or loading it up with the nectar of Gaylord Perry’s essence, but it’s in an entirely different class of “cheating” than popping greenies or stabbing needles in your ass. In fact, there’s a wink-wink/nudge-nudge admiration associated with the practice of subtly getting over on umpires.

Hey, I did it too. You ever throw a ball accessorized with a little sweat and some Ivory soap? Pretty damn magical movement, and pretty damn easy to get away with when you’re wearing home whites. Just rub a bar against your thigh before every inning, step off the mound to wipe your brow, introduce fingers to said thigh, and say hello to that strikeout you so desperately need.

Cheating? Some call it gamesmanship.

Drugging it up, though, is something we can all agree is Bad For Ball. It’s absolutely cheating in every sense of the word. There is no gamesmanship in a lab. And unfortunately, it’s likely that no matter what happens when the Biogenesis dust settles, a certain segment of the player population will choose ego and the lure of bloated stats, money and fame over integrity.

They will try to beat the system. They will cheat.

But some of them will get caught. Given the progression we’ve been witnessing, it seems likely that a LOT of them will get caught.

Not all of them, of course. Good and evil will cat-and-mouse it ad infinitum; baseball’s scientists on both sides of the equation are no exception. But we’re seeing more and more players exposed as sullied every year, and that, at least to me and those of like mind, is proof that the game really is serious about cleaning things up.

It wasn’t always that way. We have those “Chicks dig the long ball” commercials as evidence of the blind eyes once turned.

Those same eyes appear wide open now. Who cares if they were shamed open by the pathetic showings of Big Mac, Sammy Sosa and Pointy Palmeiro in front of Congress? Open is open, and open is good.

Bust are up. Home runs, and the pajama-style unis that juicers used to rock to hide their freakishly enhanced Frankenstein physiques, are down.

That’s progress, and as long as there’s progress, we should be encouraged, not discouraged.

Perfection? Not often found in this world. Queen’s Live Aid set, Sophia Loren and Halle Berry in their prime, and Vin Scully’s handling of Kirk Gibson’s homer in ’88 (sorry, A’s fans) are about all we’ve seen.

Are we going to see more imperfection in baseball regarding PEDs? Yup. No doubt. Some people are flat-out dumb and greedy and dishonest.

Keep combating that with honesty and sincerity in the effort to eradicate the issue, though, and the pastime will always survive the occasional angst of the present.

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Thanks for stopping by, folks, and if you download one song today, make it Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight.” Dude was a teenager when he bust that out. Insanely good.

–Urbs

Some of my posts here are going to have a singular focus. More often than not, though, multiple subjects will be addressed, and in the name of generating some sense of appeal, I try to find a theme that might connect the various and seemingly disparate musings.

Whether it works or not, hell, I don’t know. Not even sure it matters. If you dig my work, you’ll read what I post. If you don’t, you’ll bash me anonymously online. I know the drill. Perhaps my thematic efforts are an example of my tendency to make things harder that they need to be. Whatever.

That said … “that written” just feels weak … the theme today is reflected in the first two words of the post title. The topics include the response to my soul-baring, butt-nekkid post on Friday, everything Tim Lincecum says and does, Chad Gaudin’s debut as a Giants starter, and A’s lefty Sean Doolittle.

Friday’s post: It was pretty amazing, the response it got. Particularly on Twitter, from folks who’ve been where I’ve been and are where I want to go. I also heard from a gang of loyal readers welcoming me back to the land of the living; within minutes of posting, I was inundated with congratulations and pledges of support.

I used to think people were basically negative. I subscribed to a theory I once heard thrown out by a popular standup comic:

“I like the concept of people … but people fuck it up.”

Now I realize that this attitude was the result of my own negativity, so I make every effort to take the glass-half-full route these days, and the results have been staggering. Friday’s response is but one example, and for those who understand my the root of my recent struggles, it was an example of good things coming quickly in the wake of real work. Another example: a friend at BaySportsNet.com asking, later Friday, upon seeing I was writing again, if I’d like to contribute to the rapidly growing site. I agreed, and my first post there went up early this morning.

Just a great way to head into my weekend, so thanks to everyone who chimed in.

Timmy Time: Scary how big all things Freak become, no matter what it is. That’s essentially the jumping-off point of my BaySportsNet.com debut, which examines the all-but-etched-in-stone eventuality that Timmy will be working out of the bullpen before long.

A related thought on the topic that I saved exclusively for “Unchained”:

Lincecum’s unorthodox windup, which requires exquisite timing and body control, was created to allow for a relatively small man to maximize the inordinate amount of power in his body. So now that the power has clearly been diminished, with no sign of anything more than an occasional return of a couple mph, why not make an all-out effort to simplify those mechanics once and for all?

Lincecum’s money pitches, even with diminished velocity (which is overrated, anyway), remain downright filthy. His split change is cartoonish, his fastball still slips and slides, and his breaking stuff is breathtaking when it’s on. But none of it means much if he can’t command it, and as is the case with 98 percent of struggling pitchers, Lincecum’s struggles can be pinned on the fact that he’s nothing close to pinpoint.

Insanity, we’re told, is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Stop the insanity. Make a radical change. It can’t get any worse, right?

Pronounced GO-DAN:  Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise. That’s how you say the last name of our man Chad. Not gaw-din, or go-deen or gaw-deen. It’s go-dan. I know because I asked him — all the way back in 2006, when I was the A’s beat writer for MLB.com and Gaudin arrived for his first Spring Training with Oakland after  being acquired from Toronto for a player to be named later.

That PTBNL designation always gives me a chuckle, by the way. I immaturely envision a newborn deemed so insignificant and that his parents put off giving him a name, but he somehow perseveres and makes it all the way to professional baseball and gets sent from one organization to another, eventually being assigned a name upon completion of the transaction. Inspiring, goosebump fiction, ain’t it?

Aaaaanyway, Gaudin was a hell of a pitcher for the A’s for most of the time I covered him, and he’s been that for other teams as well. He’s had some rough patches, in part because he fought the notion of being a Swiss Army Knife, but now that he’s accepted the inherent value of such a role, he’s settled in nicely as a pitcher capable of saving a team’s ass at any time in a game.

He’s also a great guy, period. Easy to get along with, quick-witted and generally pleasant in the clubhouse.

And what a great sign by the Giants. Just keep the guy into Vogey’s role until Vogey gets back. Don’t even try to force some square-peg prospect into a round hole. Count the blessing that is Chad GO-DAN.

Doolittle does a lot: Nice to see the converted first baseman get the feature treatment in the Sporting Green over the weekend. His story is one of about 324 ridiculously rich stories unfolding in the A’s clubhouse that have gone largely untold.

The guy was a washed up, banged up hitter a couple of years ago, and now he’s a very strong candidate to represent the Elephants in the All-Star Game — hopefully along with Josh Donaldson, giving Oakland two players in the Midsummer Classic for the first time since the days of the Big Three.

Donaldson, of course, is a heck of a tale, too. He got the treatment recently as well. Two down, 322 to go. Good for the Chronicle. Good for A’s fans. …. And wait for it … Good For Ball.

Bonus plan: Gotta get this off my chest before I bolt. The world of youth sports must be rid of the character-building scourge that is participatory trophies.

Come on. You get rewarded just for showing up? Yeah, kid, that’s EXACTLY how it works in real life. Just show up and do the bare minimum. It’s all good. You don’t even have to be on time. Just show up and it’s all cookies and juice boxes.

No wonder we’re getting so soft.

It’s time to get back to teaching life lessons rooted in reality. Winners get trophies, losers get to try harder. That’s real. Who’s with me?

And don’t even get me started on not keeping score …

Thanks for dropping by. Check back tomorrow for more. Oh, and if you download one song today, make it “Flava in Ya Ear” by Craig Mack. Siiiiick.

Peace,

Urbs