Thursday, September 16, 2004
The Late Edition: Talkin' Throwin' Chairs in Oakland Blues
For the second night in a row, I fell asleep early to wake up late. Last night it was because I was drained. Drained from a long weekend of football, sun, beer and food. Drained from an already eye-straining workweek. Tonight my allergies were kickin' my ass. It took forever for the Claritin D to kick in, and by the time it did I was out in all my stuffed head glory.
Now it's coming up on 1:00 in the morning, and I'm up for my midnight run. The sinuses are clear, the throat doesn't feel like sandpaper and my eyes are only moderately itchy. It's time to write.
For those who still put this page's URL in your browser, I salute you. The ship is starting to veer off course a little bit. And that's a good thing.
If Baseball Writing is going to continue to exist, it's not going to exist as a statistical analysis haven. Not that it ever really has. It's also not going to exist as just a report of what's going on in baseball. It hasn't ever really been that either, as my post frequency (or more accurately, infrequency) doesn't allow for that.
What it has been is my take on the baseball season as it unfolds; it will continue to be that, but it's the execution that I'm calling into question.
Some of you, but not most of you, know that I am a writer. Well, no shit you're saying. No, I mean that I write for a living. At least part of my living. I don't write novels or short stories or poetry or editorials or even those formulaic blurbs that you read in your daily newspaper. I don't report on crimes or town council meetings or the blood drive at our local senior citizens center. I write for two monthly publications, but writing has become less and less a part of my job description as the years have gone by. As a result, this is my only real outlet for my creative energies at this point. And as you can tell, I'm a little itchy to tweak it.
I don't necessarily know how I'm going to tweak it, or if I'm going to tweak at all. It might mean starting a new blog that focuses on a different type of writing. All who are interested could proceed there, those who are only looking for baseball content would go elsewhere. But I'm not there yet. There is still a season to contend with. And unanswered questions.
Well, I soon lost track of m' kids 'n' wife,
So many people there I never saw in m' life
That old ship sinkin' down in the water,
Six thousand people tryin' t' kill each other,
Dogs a-barkin', cats a-meowin',
Women screamin', fists a-flyin', babies cryin',
Cops a-comin', me a-runnin'.
Maybe we just better call off the picnic.
-- Bob Dylan, Talkin'Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
If I had something insightful to add about the melee in Oakland on Monday night I would. I just saw a clip of an interview with Craig Bueno on ESPN. Craig Bueno was sitting with his wife along the right field line on Monday night, in close proximity to the Texas Rangers' bullpen. He admitted that one of the reasons he bought those particular seats is so he could heckle the opposing players, in his words giving the home team any advantage he could.
I feel bad his wife took a chair on the nose. Nobody deserves to go to something as benign as a baseball game and walk home with a broken nose and black eyes.
I also don't know what Mr. Bueno or his wife or anybody else who was sitting around that bullpen said to those players.
However, if you buy a ticket to a game with the intent of hurling curses, epithets and insults at the opposition, with the idea that it will help your favorite team win: you are an ass.
Do you have a right to go to a game and call players names and make fun of their mothers? Sure. I think it says more of you as a person, but that's another matter.
I haven't heard anything definitive that there were objects thrown that night against those Rangers players. I don't think I have to spend time denouncing throwing things on the field.
I'm sure those players hear insults and curses yelled at them on a daily basis in opposing parks. It's a part of their profession. Considering the severity of the incident, one has to wonder what exactly was yelled at those guys. I'm sure most of you have seen the footage. That band of Rangers down the rightfield line looks like a tiny mob. They were incensed. I have to believe it was something more than "Your momma wears combat boots."
I will never excuse a player for throwing something at a fan, spitting at a fan, insulting a fan, punching a fan, kicking a fan or anything else in the same realm. And I certainly don't need to hear Frank Francisco's agent telling me what a wonderful human being Mr. Francisco is.
However, let's look at what we have here. A husband-and-wife buy tickets to a game, with the idea in their heads to hassle the opposing players. For some misconstrued reason they believe this will help their favorite team win. After a couple of hours of insulting players in the other uniform, said husband-and-wife become principle players in one of the worst player-fan incidents in baseball history, and said wife ends up taking a chair off the head.
For a long time I've heard people lament about the coldness of professional athletes. All it took was a major work stoppage for baseball players to grudgingly accept the practice of signing autographs again. It felt like something akin to alimony. They don't care about the fans. They don't acknowledge the fans. What about us, the fans? What's in it for us?
As much as some professional athletes have to get over themselves, there are a whole bunch of fans who are in the same boat.
What are we to the players on the field? The nameless, faceless masses. We make the noise. We cheer. We boo. We pat them on the back after a great play. We boo them when a ground ball trickles through their legs. We lionize them. We idolize them. We help make them rich.
Why fans think they are entitled to anything more than a player's performance on the field is beyond me. I guess it's human nature to want to know these men better. Where did they come from? What are their stories?
However, I've become more and more entrenched with the idea that off the field, these men don't matter. Oh, they matter to Mrs. Baseball Player. And Baseball Player's Mom & Dad. And Baseball Player's community if said Baseball Player gives time and money to make it better. But beyond that they don't matter much more in the grand scheme of things than you or me. Their importance lies only within those white lines.
That could be said for all kinds of entertainers: singers, artists, actors. Their value to us comes from those moments they're working at their craft. When they're not working at their craft, they lose their value.
I read about 3/4 of Leigh Montville's biography on Ted Williams. Montville's prose is really excellent. And the story was compelling ... up until it reached Williams retirement days. Then it became a story about a rich retired guy who fished a lot, cursed a lot, married a younger wife and made business deals to make him more rich. Sounds like a barn-burner of a story, don't it?
Professional athletes probably wouldn't be crazy about this notion, this idea of losing value to society when they're not on the field of play. But they have their millions and mansions and model girlfriends to ease their pain. So I'm not worried about them.
Which brings me back to the fans. What about our value? Our value is that of a spectator and consumer, nothing more, nothing less. Sure there are instances when players in their post-game reverie, with a nifty quote at the ready, refer to the energy that a crowd provided them at a certain moment, or a standing ovation that moved them to emotion. But those are exceptions to the rule.
Some fans probably wouldn't be crazy about this idea either. But sometimes it takes a knock on the head (or a chair to the nose) to wake up to reality.
I was at a playoff game at Yankee Stadium four years ago. It was well before first pitch and my friend and I were milling around down the left field line during batting practice. Several A's pitchers were warming up in left field, about 20 feet or so from the fence. One Yankee fan, who was probably about 25 or so, was standing right next to me and zeroed in on one A's pitcher in particular: Jim Mecir.
"Hey Mecir, weren't you a scab?"
Louder.
"Hey Mecir, weren't you a f'n scab during the strike?"
Mecir looks up and has a bemused look of disgust on his face, but doesn't say anything and keeps on throwing.
"Hey Mecir, what do your teammates think of that? What do they think of you, you f'n scab!"
This kept up for another minute or so. Mecir looks up once more, and I could see he wanted to take the ball and ram it into that guy's face. In that moment, on that night when the good feeling of October baseball oozed from that ballpark, I couldn't blame him.
---
My final thought for the post:
Mr. 3000 looks like the dumbest baseball movie ever made. And there is some excellent competition for that title. God, there are a lot of lame baseball movies...
For the second night in a row, I fell asleep early to wake up late. Last night it was because I was drained. Drained from a long weekend of football, sun, beer and food. Drained from an already eye-straining workweek. Tonight my allergies were kickin' my ass. It took forever for the Claritin D to kick in, and by the time it did I was out in all my stuffed head glory.
Now it's coming up on 1:00 in the morning, and I'm up for my midnight run. The sinuses are clear, the throat doesn't feel like sandpaper and my eyes are only moderately itchy. It's time to write.
For those who still put this page's URL in your browser, I salute you. The ship is starting to veer off course a little bit. And that's a good thing.
If Baseball Writing is going to continue to exist, it's not going to exist as a statistical analysis haven. Not that it ever really has. It's also not going to exist as just a report of what's going on in baseball. It hasn't ever really been that either, as my post frequency (or more accurately, infrequency) doesn't allow for that.
What it has been is my take on the baseball season as it unfolds; it will continue to be that, but it's the execution that I'm calling into question.
Some of you, but not most of you, know that I am a writer. Well, no shit you're saying. No, I mean that I write for a living. At least part of my living. I don't write novels or short stories or poetry or editorials or even those formulaic blurbs that you read in your daily newspaper. I don't report on crimes or town council meetings or the blood drive at our local senior citizens center. I write for two monthly publications, but writing has become less and less a part of my job description as the years have gone by. As a result, this is my only real outlet for my creative energies at this point. And as you can tell, I'm a little itchy to tweak it.
I don't necessarily know how I'm going to tweak it, or if I'm going to tweak at all. It might mean starting a new blog that focuses on a different type of writing. All who are interested could proceed there, those who are only looking for baseball content would go elsewhere. But I'm not there yet. There is still a season to contend with. And unanswered questions.
Well, I soon lost track of m' kids 'n' wife,
So many people there I never saw in m' life
That old ship sinkin' down in the water,
Six thousand people tryin' t' kill each other,
Dogs a-barkin', cats a-meowin',
Women screamin', fists a-flyin', babies cryin',
Cops a-comin', me a-runnin'.
Maybe we just better call off the picnic.
-- Bob Dylan, Talkin'Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
If I had something insightful to add about the melee in Oakland on Monday night I would. I just saw a clip of an interview with Craig Bueno on ESPN. Craig Bueno was sitting with his wife along the right field line on Monday night, in close proximity to the Texas Rangers' bullpen. He admitted that one of the reasons he bought those particular seats is so he could heckle the opposing players, in his words giving the home team any advantage he could.
I feel bad his wife took a chair on the nose. Nobody deserves to go to something as benign as a baseball game and walk home with a broken nose and black eyes.
I also don't know what Mr. Bueno or his wife or anybody else who was sitting around that bullpen said to those players.
However, if you buy a ticket to a game with the intent of hurling curses, epithets and insults at the opposition, with the idea that it will help your favorite team win: you are an ass.
Do you have a right to go to a game and call players names and make fun of their mothers? Sure. I think it says more of you as a person, but that's another matter.
I haven't heard anything definitive that there were objects thrown that night against those Rangers players. I don't think I have to spend time denouncing throwing things on the field.
I'm sure those players hear insults and curses yelled at them on a daily basis in opposing parks. It's a part of their profession. Considering the severity of the incident, one has to wonder what exactly was yelled at those guys. I'm sure most of you have seen the footage. That band of Rangers down the rightfield line looks like a tiny mob. They were incensed. I have to believe it was something more than "Your momma wears combat boots."
I will never excuse a player for throwing something at a fan, spitting at a fan, insulting a fan, punching a fan, kicking a fan or anything else in the same realm. And I certainly don't need to hear Frank Francisco's agent telling me what a wonderful human being Mr. Francisco is.
However, let's look at what we have here. A husband-and-wife buy tickets to a game, with the idea in their heads to hassle the opposing players. For some misconstrued reason they believe this will help their favorite team win. After a couple of hours of insulting players in the other uniform, said husband-and-wife become principle players in one of the worst player-fan incidents in baseball history, and said wife ends up taking a chair off the head.
For a long time I've heard people lament about the coldness of professional athletes. All it took was a major work stoppage for baseball players to grudgingly accept the practice of signing autographs again. It felt like something akin to alimony. They don't care about the fans. They don't acknowledge the fans. What about us, the fans? What's in it for us?
As much as some professional athletes have to get over themselves, there are a whole bunch of fans who are in the same boat.
What are we to the players on the field? The nameless, faceless masses. We make the noise. We cheer. We boo. We pat them on the back after a great play. We boo them when a ground ball trickles through their legs. We lionize them. We idolize them. We help make them rich.
Why fans think they are entitled to anything more than a player's performance on the field is beyond me. I guess it's human nature to want to know these men better. Where did they come from? What are their stories?
However, I've become more and more entrenched with the idea that off the field, these men don't matter. Oh, they matter to Mrs. Baseball Player. And Baseball Player's Mom & Dad. And Baseball Player's community if said Baseball Player gives time and money to make it better. But beyond that they don't matter much more in the grand scheme of things than you or me. Their importance lies only within those white lines.
That could be said for all kinds of entertainers: singers, artists, actors. Their value to us comes from those moments they're working at their craft. When they're not working at their craft, they lose their value.
I read about 3/4 of Leigh Montville's biography on Ted Williams. Montville's prose is really excellent. And the story was compelling ... up until it reached Williams retirement days. Then it became a story about a rich retired guy who fished a lot, cursed a lot, married a younger wife and made business deals to make him more rich. Sounds like a barn-burner of a story, don't it?
Professional athletes probably wouldn't be crazy about this notion, this idea of losing value to society when they're not on the field of play. But they have their millions and mansions and model girlfriends to ease their pain. So I'm not worried about them.
Which brings me back to the fans. What about our value? Our value is that of a spectator and consumer, nothing more, nothing less. Sure there are instances when players in their post-game reverie, with a nifty quote at the ready, refer to the energy that a crowd provided them at a certain moment, or a standing ovation that moved them to emotion. But those are exceptions to the rule.
Some fans probably wouldn't be crazy about this idea either. But sometimes it takes a knock on the head (or a chair to the nose) to wake up to reality.
I was at a playoff game at Yankee Stadium four years ago. It was well before first pitch and my friend and I were milling around down the left field line during batting practice. Several A's pitchers were warming up in left field, about 20 feet or so from the fence. One Yankee fan, who was probably about 25 or so, was standing right next to me and zeroed in on one A's pitcher in particular: Jim Mecir.
"Hey Mecir, weren't you a scab?"
Louder.
"Hey Mecir, weren't you a f'n scab during the strike?"
Mecir looks up and has a bemused look of disgust on his face, but doesn't say anything and keeps on throwing.
"Hey Mecir, what do your teammates think of that? What do they think of you, you f'n scab!"
This kept up for another minute or so. Mecir looks up once more, and I could see he wanted to take the ball and ram it into that guy's face. In that moment, on that night when the good feeling of October baseball oozed from that ballpark, I couldn't blame him.
---
My final thought for the post:
Mr. 3000 looks like the dumbest baseball movie ever made. And there is some excellent competition for that title. God, there are a lot of lame baseball movies...
