Thu, July 12, 2007 - 10:21 PM
I watched the Home Run Derby and All Star game this week with a genuine shitload of enthusiasm, mostly because it was here, in San Francisco at Phone Company Park and what a great time it was. My job has become brutal and the summer is here so baseball is there to get me through it all as it always has.
There was Willie McCovey, number 44, at the Home Run Derby. Phone Company Park is one of the hardest to hit a Home Run in, which is another reason why Barry Bonds is one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
Barry sat out the Derby because he's old and you could see how it would have killed him had he made it to the second round when Matt Holliday, Valadimir Guerrero, Alex Rios and Albert Pujols worked their asses off to hit home runs to narrow it down to the final two, Guerrero and Rios. I got home early to see the kayaks in the McCovey Cove and all the Aerial Shots of our fair City, up 3rd, into SOMA, the City skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge.
There's no better ballpark in America if you ask me.
Jenny likes Guerrero because he didn't wear gloves or a helmet or (she says) a cup. I couldn't really make out the cup thing. I enjoy watching her watching baseball. She goes to one game a year at the park and she'll watch stuff like the World Series. But she'll deny that she likes any sports, even though I know she likes baseball since it's zen and she likes to give me a hard time for enjoying the game...
The game itself was the usual, except it was, as I mentioned, in San Francisco. Pre-game, was all about 76 year old Willie Mays, the Say Hey Kid, getting adoration from 40 thousand plus fans; adoration you rarely see for older folks, but Mays is a legend and it seems like Sports and Astronauts (and now Rock Stars) elicit such adoration. Our's is a country that doesn't generally hold the old in great esteem unfortunately, but those three fields of career seem to be good paths for having a stadium still rocking out to you when you're in your 70s, riding in the back of a Pink Cadillac, throwing balls into the crowd. You gotta give it to Mays.
I you don't know anything about Willie Mays, read about him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mays. He was number 24.
And the media was really building Barry Bonds (#25) up. At the All Star break, he was 4 away from Hank Aaron's all time home run record of 755 and with all the controversy, well, in my opinion, that just gives the Barry haters something to fuel their fires. They always hated and booed him because he always kicked their asses. Now they can bitch and bitch about an asterix to his career and on and on ad nauseum, but really, Barry Bonds is the greatest playing baseball player alive today. Here's a little bit of what he's done.
- Holds record for most home runs in a season, (73)
- 2nd all time for career home runs, (751)
- Holds record for most walks in a career (2,512)
- Holds record for most MVP awards (7) and consecutive MVP awards (4); (1990, 1992-93, 2001-04). Note: the current version of the MVP award has been given since 1931. Prior to that year, the League Awards were only given to a player once (from 1922-1929) and sometimes not at all (from 1915-1921).
- Holds record for most pitchers homered off of (442)
- Holds record for most consecutive games with a walk (18)
- Shares record for consecutive plate appearances with a walk (7)
- Holds record for consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs (13)
- Only player in 400 homerun and 400 stolen base club
- Only player in 500 homerun and 500 stolen base club
- One of four players in 40-40 club (40 homeruns and 40 stolen bases).
- Holds record for most consecutive seasons with .600 slugging percentage or higher (8)
etc. etc. ..
...so you can kiss my ass if you if you don't think Barry is one of the greatest. Yes, his prime is past. Yes, he may have taken performance enhancing whatever, but it wasn't illegal and the 1990s will always be a time when baseball players may have been taking that shit. But he's got the cred. People who hate him, do so because he's beaten them bad, made their pitchers look like little girls. And he's our player, a San Franciscan, the Godson of Willie Mays.
The game itself was ok. There was well deserved booing from the fans for The Anaheim Angels and the hated Dodgers, both teams who have fucked the Giants over when it really counted, the bastards. The Blue Angels flew over at the Chris Isaac Star Spangled Banner and I tried to count how long it took them to get from the Port of Oakland, where the blimp first filmed them, to when they buzzed the park. I think it was around 10 seconds. Then, not two minutes later Jenny looked at me and said, "You hear that?" and it was the Blue Angels flying over our house out in the Sunset.
As far as the game went, Ichiro hit big in the 5th, an in park Home Run off Ken Griffey, the first in the park HR in Allstar game history. Griffey did hit a sac fly in the 6th to to make it 3 AL and 3 NL. And the American League eventually won, as they have fo the last 9 years.
It was great week of baseball all in all.
But back to Barry.
It occurs to me that, in my short "adult" life, there have been 4 or 5 men who were "Stars" who I have admired and Barry is one of them.
They're people I've never really met, but I may have shaken their hands or nodded to them, or yelled out loud enough for them to hear me, and they're all flawed in one way or another. Perhaps their flaws and their greatness make them more interesting, because they're all doing what they do, and they aren't destroying shit, like some of the "men" these days who are driven by nothing but what seems like just pure fucking evil. Men who aren't even tragic, they're just assholes. I don’t need to mention names.
I know Barry's heard me yelling at him at Phone Company Park, or back at Candlestick. Mr. Jerry Garcia was another man who was dear to my heart and who I mourned sincerely when he finally died. I remember tripping and yelling out shit in my deep drunk way at shows and being told not to freak Jerry out. And there was Bill Clinton, who I believe cared about this country and left it in good shape from his 8 years in office, but who wasn't part of the oil current slime crew, so the witch hunt took him down for his definition of sex, only to have all the abundance and good will he'd worked so hard to leave as his legacy for this country, looted by the profiteers who stole the 2000 election. I shook Bill's hand in Union Square as he got off a cable car, down into the crowd and I knew then that I'd support that guy.
And there was Willie Nelson who played 3 versions of Whisky River at the Fillmore that one weekend of Jack Daniels soaked concerts when I'd scream out Whisky River and he'd find me in the crowd then nod and go into the song yet again. And I used to teach Bukowski at the University of South Florida Modern Lit class. Never met Buk, but I wish I would have.
Ahhh, blog blather..
But perhaps I'm thinking about these All Stars because my friend (who I admire) is writing about his experiences finding himself in the jungle drinking vines with shamans and just after, he came back to the states and his father died after a long illness, and I think that’s affecting me. And another friend of mine (who I also admire) just lost his dog of many years (again after illness) who was his and his wife’s child and they’re in so much pain right now I can’t even write about it, but I want to do something for them, and writing is the only thing I can think would even be close to doing something sincere, but I have to wait until the first tidal wave of grief has passed over them because when we’re in that state, we can’t do anything but feel the intensity of the pain of our loss and just keep our heads above water.
If you consider smoking dope or being an alcoholic or a junkie shaman, or taking performance enhancing substances or getting a blowjob from an intern and lying about it flaws, then I suppose these men are all flawed and damaged, but to me, they're all kind of real and, dare I say, heroes. I'm flawed and damaged and I'm just trying to do the right thing, the thing I was meant to do, and my flaw is that I let myself get sidetracked, and I drink and work jobs that are unfulfilling and I find excuses for not just quitting what I’m doing and starting something that would be exactly what I think I should be doing at the moment. I believe there's something I'm meant to do and I haven't done it yet, so death can't quite get his grip around me. I keep slipping out.
And I think we're all like that. People who hide their flaws are full of shit and I don't trust them. What are they hiding, anyway?
And maybe the National League will win next year. Or maybe not.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~npmelton/sfmap96.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Run_Derby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_McCovey
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2007/hr_derby.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mays
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Bonds
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