Warning: This is a baseball post.
Oh, and...
Warning: This is a writing post, too.
As the Airman used to say to me, "Sit down, shut up, and hang on."
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This morning my favorite PBS affiliate, KQED in San Francisco, posted this article to Facebook and Twitter, an open letter from a fan to the Giants. In it, the fan deliberates so many repercussions of SF Giants' outfielder Melky Cabrera's positive test result for performance-enhancing drugs. KQED asked in their teaser, "Do you still love the San Francisco Giants?"
Oo, boy.
Yes, Virginia, I still love the San Francisco Giants. I also happen to still love every other baseball team, with the exception of the New York Yankees. I love all of the minor league teams, I love the college teams, I love the Little League teams, and I love the little kid who was at the park the other night in a batting helmet almost too big for him sending grounders past his dad. I love baseball, pure and simple. I love so many things about baseball.
But I've only loved them recently.
When I graduated from high school, I was a huge Twins fan. Loved all things Kirby. Had my own "Buy a vowel Hrbek" sign. Wanted to see the park someday. I still haven't got there--and won't because they are in a new ballpark now--but I got a little heartbroken along the way and got sidetracked. In the mid to late nineties I sort of gave up on baseball...right about the time Mr. McGwire and Mr. Sosa started beefing up and hitting home runs all over the place. I didn't give up on baseball because they had been found to have used drugs, but because baseball, by my definition, was a sport where you didn't look like an athlete of any kind of stereotype but yet you made amazing things happen. I stopped watching baseball when they stopped looking like average guys and started looking like cartoon characters. To me, the game didn't look amazing anymore.
And, of course, we all found out why.
(Someone that I dated once said that he stopped watching baseball when the players went on strike in the nineties. Strangely, even in my cash-strapped position, that would be less heartbreaking than drug use. A union fight is a union fight. Drug use is a short cut.)
I didn't come back to the game until 2004, and that's only because my brother was fool enough to take me to a ballpark. I was hooked at the entrance gate. Keep in mind that I saw Bonds play that day, and while I wasn't impressed and knew what was going on already with him, I wasn't following players at that point. I was following ballpark experience, the experience of going to a game at AT&T. Since then I have visited the Coliseum (blech; sorry, Oakland, I love you, but I hate your venue) and Petco Park (nice ballpark, no excitement, though). AT&T still wins. AT&T wins regardless of whether the Giants do. I attended games through the Bonds' era, and into the long drought after Bonds, and even when I had to fight to get seats from opponents' fans who were sitting around me waiting for us to lose and Johnny-come-lately Giants' fans who decided to start flooding the ballpark in 2011. I loved AT&T after we sent Molina to Texas and Dave Roberts moved to San Diego and Mike Matheny left to heal from concussions. I'm not there now, but I'm still there in spirit.
Let me just say this about Melky Cabrera: I didn't hate him, and I don't hate him now. I can say that even though he doped up AND even though he used to be a Yankee. (Chris Stewart is now a Yankee, and I don't hate him, and I have always love Sabathia, so I think the Yankee hatred lies in their leadership...no, I don't like A-Rod, either.) Honestly, I was sort of ambivalent about him. I liked the idea that we got a better batter for an awful pitcher (Sanchez), but I'm sure that now someone in Kansas City is getting the last laugh on that one. I was probably more hurt by Mota getting suspended for his drug use than Melky, because I didn't know Melky as well. But any drug use is not okay. When Mota comes back, I'll treat his bullpen time like I did Bonds' at-bats, with silence. I will pause the passion and look away. And I'll do the same for Melky.
I too have questions on how this could happen, and what the Giants (or any other ball club) could do to stop it in the future. It all comes down to this--do you assume that any phenomenal player is using something as a crutch? Should we presume guilt on Jeter, Fielder, Wright, Vogelsong, Cain, Dickey, Harper, Pence, Sandoval, Strasburg, etc, etc, ad nauseum? What then, would be the magic number? What's "too good" for you?
I didn't hate Melky. But I was bored by him. I'm not bored by the Giants, or baseball, in general. Only if the player is too good am I bored. Show me your humanity and I'm interested. Which, remarkably, sort of makes the guys who take the shortcuts perfect for the job in my eyes, if it weren't for my love of integrity as well, and my hatred for shortcuts.
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As a side-note, I promised that this post would be about writing as well.
In the past couple of months we've heard some pretty wild things from the political ad campaigns and from non-fiction writers fabricating certain things in their books. I won't point fingers; you've probably read/heard about them from MSNBC, Fox News, or other news organizations. It makes it difficult for me to care about current events, or to pick up a memoir without wondering how much of it is a shortcut to get me, the reader, to pick it up.
Does that mean I'm going to give up on current events?
Does that mean I'm going to only read novels? (Hmm, that's a thoug--juuuust kidding...)
Does that mean I'm going to give up baseball?
Lack of integrity, and the short ride instead of run to the finish line, could ruin the journey. Or it could pinpoint who I cheer for. I'm still cheering for the Giants, but not all of them. I'm still reading books, but not all of them. And I'm still following current events, but not all of them.
After all, I have my own race to run. And I can't afford a shortcut.
Sit down. Shut up. And hang on, dear reader.
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