Tell us how you really feel

Bud Selig arose out of his seat only when it seemed conspicuous not to do so. Still, he gathered himself slowly like a petulant teenager who was told by his parents to go take out the garbage or worse, give his over-perfumed and plump aunt Tilly a big hug a kiss right on her peach-fuzzed jowls.

But then Selig did something really amazing that can only be described as an act of defiance that could fairly be measured as a modern-day version of Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving the gloved fisted Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968.

Selig jammed his hands in his pockets.

The only thing he could have done to top his non-acknowledgement acknowledgement would have been to stretch his arms as far as he could into the soft, night-time air in San Diego’s Petco Park and give an obnoxious yawn. But really there was no need for a yawn. The rest of us did that for the commissioner.

A reluctant stand from his seat at the ballpark followed by shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers was how Bud Selig, the man at the helm of baseball’s so-called Steroid Era, reacted when witnessing home run No. 755 by Barry Bonds on Saturday night. Around him the fans appeared to react similarly as the commissioner in that they weren’t really sure how they should react. Some cheered, perhaps not for the man who hit home run No. 755, but because they got to see something that people would talk about or talk about how no one cares – an odd little irony that seems to follow Selig’s game (and all sports) like a lost puppy.

Others, of course, booed. But even that seemed as if it was out of some sort of duty rather than true disdain for the guy who hit the homer to tie Hank Aaron’s record. Really, what do the fans in San Diego care about the assault on Aaron’s record? It’s not as if Padres fans are like the baseball zealots in the Northeast where the game was created and the numbers accumulated during a routine baseball game are viewed as sacrosanct. Yankees fans care. So do Red Sox and Phillies fans.

Padres’ fans? Yeah, it’s a nice night out and maybe they’ll even play “Hells Bells” when Trevor Hoffman comes in for the ninth. Padres’ fans? They taunt Mr. 755 with signs depicting neatly stenciled asterisks. That’s clever and makes a point, but it’s hardly defiant.

But that’s the thing, no one really seems angry that Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record is about to be surpassed by an admitted steroid user (and yes, grand jury testimony in which one says that he used the cream and the clear is an admitted steroid user). Nor does anyone think it’s kind of funny that the guy who served up No. 755, Clay Hensley, was suspended as a minor leaguer for testing positive for steroids.

No one really knows what to think about the whole home run mess. Apathy and outrage seem equally trite, but perspective about what home run No. 756 and beyond really mean escapes us. ESPN, the network that carried the game late Saturday night, didn’t have its top team calling the action. Instead of the inscrutable and annoying ramblings of Chris Berman, Jon Miller or Joe Morgan, former pitcher Orel Hershiser and play-by-play man Dave O’Brien spent most of the middle innings dumping all over the milestone, baseball during the steroid era while detailing why it was hard to be excited about No. 755. However, the duo attempted to do right by ESPN, the corporate partner of Major League Baseball, by reminding everyone about due process and the fact that there has never been a positive drug test on one man’s climb up the charts.

Grand jury testimony or no grand jury testimony.

Clearly, Aaron’s new co-home run leader had no realistic perspective on No. 755.

“It just feels weird,” he said. “Alex is going through it right now. Each time gets tougher. I don't know what to think right now. I just don't. It's just a weird thing right now.”

Actually, Alex, as in Alex Rodriguez who became the youngest to 500 home runs just a few hours prior to No. 755, isn’t going through it right now. Alex, after all, doesn’t have the threat of indictment hanging over his head.

Yet through it all the commissioner of baseball stood there with his hands in his pockets. The only man to witness the only two 755th home runs in the history of baseball looked as if he would have preferred to be anywhere else.

Creating a legacy

Not much to report about the Phillies aside from the fact that the second half opens up tomorrow when defending World Champion St. Louis Cardinals come to town. The fact also remains that the Phillies need to add some pitching if they are going to make a push after the Mets, but they are in a very large club in that regard.

Everyone needs pitching.

It also seems that there could be a shortage of ash bats as well. According to a story in The New York Times a scourge of Asian beetles – called the ash borer – has wreaked havoc on trees in the northeast and could, as some scientists predict, wipe out the ash tree used to make baseball bats from the region.

Speaking of wiping out bats, the web site Steroid Nation reports that the “mainstream” media missed a story in which MLB commissioner Bud Selig “quietly” endorses a growth hormone test. Currently there is no such test to detect whether one is using HGH and it’s quite conceivable that a large number of professional athletes are using the performance-enhancing drug.

Needless to say, this is an important development. If Selig is successful in spearheading the research for an HGH test it could define the legacy of the man who presided over baseball during its so-called Steroid Era.

***
Speaking of creating a legacy, it was quite an eventful day on the road from Chablis to Autun in Stage 5 of the Tour de France. Italian Filippo Pozzato won the 113-mile stage which featured the first major climbs of the Tour, but that was an afterthought in light of what shook down in wine country today.

What everyone is talking about now is that the pre-race favorite, Alexandre Vinokourov “hit the floor,” in the words of Phil Liggett, with approximately 15 miles to go in the stage. According to reports, Vinokourov says the chain on his bike popped off and then he was cleaning himself off the floor.

Then it got interesting. As Vino dusted himself off and got back on his bike, the TV cameras zoomed in on his shorts where some big-time road rash showed through on his right hip/buttock. Also evident were some nasty cuts and bleeding on both knees that required a trip to the hospital where he got stitched up for some wounds that went all the way down to the muscle.

Nevertheless, Vino’s Astana teammates all dropped back – except for overall second-place rider Andreas Klöden, who was left to fight for himself in the peloton – to help the team leader rally from a more than two-minute deficit to close to within 75 seconds in the end. Despite that, the damage had been done. Vino fell to 81st place and 2-minutes, 10 seconds behind, while nursing some soreness and sporting some stitches as the mountain stages loom. Next comes Stage 6, a flat ride from the medieval Semur-en-Auxois on the Armancon to the suburban Bourg-en-Bresse at the base of the Alps. This one will be the last flat stage until late next week.

Still, perhaps the road isn’t so daunting for Vinokourov. Known as rider without fear and unafraid to take risks, Vino comes from Kazakhstan, which when it was part of the USSR was the place where the government tested nuclear bombs. According to Daniel Coyle’s entrancing Lance Armstrong’s War, Vino’s parents were chicken farmers in Petropavlovsk, but it was never something the cyclist ever talked about. In fact, when he first arrived on the professional riding scene Vino never talked at all except to say:

“I will ride hard today. The hill is not steep. I will attack.”

And that’s exactly what he did. Jonathan Vaughters, the former pro cyclist turned leader of the American Slipstream team said in Coyle’s book, “It’s very understood in the peloton – [he] doesn’t have anything to go home to. Sprints, climbs, descents – [he is] never going to give up, and will go all the way to the edge because [he] just doesn’t care.”

So he has that going for him, which is nice.

But if that's not enough for Astana, Klöden's status in the race is up in the air after it was revealed that the second-place rider hit the floor and has a hairline fracture in his tailbone.

An injury like that makes it very difficult to ride a bike.

Stage 5 Final
Top 20 (all same time):
1.) Filippo Pozzato, Liquigas, Italy
2.) Oscar Freire, Rabobank, Spain
3.) Daniele Bennati, Lampre, Italy
4.) Kim Kirchen, T-Mobile, Luxembourg
5.) Erik Zabel, Milram, Germany
6.) George Hincapie, Discovery Channel, USA
7.) Christian Moreni, Cofidis, Italy
8.) Stefan Schumacher, Gerolsteiner, Germany
9.) Bram Tankink, Quick Step, Netherlands
10.) Jérôme Pineau, Bouygues Telecom, France
11.) Cadel Evans, Predictor-Lotto, Australia
12.) Fabian Cancellara, CSC, Switzerland
13.) Alejandro Valverde, Caisse d'Epargne, Spain
14.) Chris Horner, Predictor-Lotto, USA
15.) Fränk Schleck, CSC, Luxembourg
16.) Martin Elmiger, AG2R, Switzerland
17.) Linus Gerdemann, T-Mobile, Germany
18.) Inigo Landaluze, Euskaltel-Euskadi, Spain
19.) Michael Rogers, T-Mobile, Australia, T-Mobile, Australia
20.) Laurent Lefevre, Bouygues Telecom, France

Overall
1.) Fabian Cancellara, CSC, Switzerland, in 28:56
2.) Andreas Klöden, Astana, Germany, @ :33
3.) Filippo Pozzato, Liquigas, Italy, @ :35
4.) David Millar, Saunier Duval, Great Britain, @ :41
5.) George Hincapie, Discovery Channel, USA, @ :43
6.) Vladimir Gusev, Discovery Channel, Russia, @ :45
7.) Vladimir Karpets, Caisse d'Epargne, Russia, @ :46
8.) Mikel Atarloza, Euskaltel-Euskadi, Spain, @ :49
9.) Thomas Dekker, Rabobank, Netherlands, @ :51
10.) Benoît Vaugrenard, Française des Jeux, France, @ :52

The other interesting development in Stage 5 is the hard-riding je ne sais quoi of overall leader, Fabian Cancellara. Some close observers of the Tour suggested that Cancellara’s days in the Yellow Jersey were coming to an end after Stage 4 as the sprint specialist met the first ahrd climbs of the race. But when the action got hot in the final kilometers of Stage 5, Cancellara was right there battling it out with the rest of the peloton.

“The maillot jaune gives a rider the strength of two men,” Phil Liggett offered.

***
Bonnie DeSimone, the cycling writer for The Boston Globe and ESPN.com, has a blog called "A Feast on Wheels." It's very good.

Early and often

When I was a kid and went to ballgames, I used to grab piles of the All-Star ballots and punch out those cards. Sometimes I sent them in, other times they just ended up in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

Either way, I voted. Early and often. And no, I was never one of those kids who voted just for my favorite players. Back then I was a numbers guy and used that as the criteria in which a player merited an All-Star selection.

Yeah, I know, so silly.

Anyway, I still see those All-Star punch cards on display at the ballpark and always resist the urge to pick up stackfuls. These days those ballots are such an anachronism – an old-time relic of the 1980s when something as pedantic as cable TV was seen as innovative. These days, the core of All-Star voting takes place on the Internets where the ballot box can be stuffed by overzealous fans and interns working in the teams’ office.

But not here. No way. The All-Star Game determines which league gets home-field advantage in the World Series. You know, since Bud Selig and the league office have figured out baseball’s performance-enhancing drug problem they can focus on which the hardcore issues like which team gets to host Game 1 of the World Series. He has to do it because the idea of rewarding the team with the best record in the regular season is just so far out there.

OK. While rambling through the Internets last night I figured it was time to vote for which players I thought deserved an All-Star nod. Here they are:

American League
c – Victor Martinez, Cle
1b – David Ortiz, Bos
2b – Placido Polanco, Det
ss – Derek Jeter, NYY
3b – Alex Rodriguez, NYY
of – Ichiro Suzuki, Sea
of – Vladimir Guerrero, LAA
of – Magglio Ordonez, Det

National League
c – Russell Martin, LAD
1b – Prince Fielder, Mil
2b – Chase Utley, Phi
ss – Edgar Renteria, Atl
3b – Miguel Cabrera, Fla
of – Ken Griffey, Cin
of – Carlos Lee, Hou
of – Matt Holliday, Col

***
Speaking of Selig and showing the fans who is boss, MLB is still battling over who owns such public information like statistics produced from acts performed on a wide swath of grass in front of 50,000 spectators and countless others watching at home.

Yeah, that’s right, MLB is still fighting over the statistics used in fantasy baseball leagues.

Along those lines, I ran 15 miles yesterday and I did it on public roads… do I own the statistics from that run or does Selig and the gang want a piece of that, too?

How about the neighborhood wiffle ball game? Little Jimmy hit a bunch of home runs and made a couple of nice catches near the bushes next to the driveway… can he use the term "home run" or is such a statistic “intellectual property?”

***
Meanwhile, reports are that Selig wants to suspend Jason Giambi for not cooperating with the toothless Mitchell Investigation into baseball’s drug problem. You know, because Giambi said, “I was wrong for doing that stuff.”

In other words, Selig is telling the players, “Tell the truth and you will get in trouble… now go tell the truth.”

***
Here’s one for the Phillies fans that keep harping on the signing of Jose Mesa:

Do you think the Phillies really wanted to sign Jose Mesa? Stop and think about it for a second…

Bonds hits town again

Typically, Memorial Day is a significant milestone during the baseball season. As the days begin to get hotter and the cooler evenings are spent with a game glowing from a TV fans finally can gauge what they are watching.

Is it a team that is going to keep one’s attention through June, July and the Dog Days of summer with the hope of late-night games in the autumn? Or is a team that is better left for the days when one simply needs to watch a game?

Here in Philadelphia it appears as if the Phillies will keep the collective interests piqued past Labor Day. Whether or not that results in games around Columbus Day or closer to Halloween is still to be determined.

But away from the everyday minutia and rhythms of the team trying to end a 14-year playoff drought is the historical. You know, the types of things that occur once in a lifetime or perhaps once every quarter century or so. The things that baseball fans as well as the larger fabric of the sports’ world deems significant enough to place one of those “Where were you when…” plaques on the memory.

They happen so rarely. In my lifetime I can remember Pete Rose breaking Ty Cobb’s record for the most hits in September of 1985. Then there was Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s unbreakable consecutive games streak in September of 1995. I was too young to remember Hank Aaron slugging home run No. 715 in April of 1974, but there is a good chance I’ll be in front of a laptop, television or at the ballpark on the day Barry Bonds surges past Aaron with No. 756.

Having had the chance to watch Bonds come up through Arizona State on rebroadcasts of college games during the early days when ESPN was digging for programming to fill the spots between episodes of Vic’s Vacant Lot and Dick Vitale, to his blossoming to a perennial MVP in Pittsburgh, this should be a major event.

Should, of course, is the operative word.

Yet like a lot of folks who follow baseball closely and even the most casual of fans, Bonds’ ascent to become the all-time Home Run King is more of a nuisance than significant event. It’s more spectacle than a historical event. Just like most fans I don’t know if Bonds surpassing Aaron should make me angry or just join in with the chorus of yawns that seem to be echoing from every spot on the map outside of the seven square miles surrounded by reality called San Francisco.

Certainly the debate over the importance of Bonds’ taking over the home run record is better served in the hands (and brains) of smarter people than me. That much is evident. So too is the reaction that Bonds will receive when he arrives in Philadelphia with the Giants for the four-game series to be played at Citizens Bank Park this weekend. Certainly Bonds will hear louder boos than J.D. Drew ever heard in his travels to play against the Phillies.

Nevertheless, instead of summer where baseball fans should rally around a significant milestone in the long history of the game, they have decided to ignore its biggest villain. Warranted or not, Bonds has slipped through the sports’ fans consciousness until he shows up in their hometown. Then they come out to boo.

But then again, even the commissioner of baseball says he hasn’t decided whether or not he will be on hand to witness the crowning of the new home run king. That, in itself, is odd. Since Bud Selig is presiding over the game during the so-called steroid era, he should be there when its poster boy breaks one of the game’s most sacred records.

It’s also possible that Bonds will inch closer to the record, too. Standing at 746 as of this writing, computer projections indicate that the record will fall before Independence Day. But unlike the Framers who gathered in Philadelphia on that sweltering day in July of 1776 whose place in history was never in question, it doesn’t appear as if Bonds’ legacy will be liberated from the clutches of public doubt any time soon.

Good deal and Bud

The word trickled out during the late innings of the Phillies-Braves game on Wednesday night that MLB and the cable companies had finally brokered a deal to keep the league’s Extra Innings package on cable as well as satellite TV. It’s a good deal for diehard baseball fans as well as MLB since they will now be able to sell its product to people who want to buy it.

That’s savvy business acumen there, folks.

“Our chief goal throughout the process was to ensure that fans would have access to as many baseball games and as much baseball coverage as possible,” baseball chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said. “With this agreement, the MLB Channel will launch with an unprecedented platform.”

Speaking of savvy, MLB commissioner Bud Selig made approximately $14.5 million in salary and bonuses in 2005. That puts him up there with the likes of Gil Meche and Ted Lilly. Be that as it is, Selig’s commissionership as been as interesting as any since Kennesaw Mountain Landis first held the post in the 1920s. For one thing, MLB has seen an unprecedented growth in terms of attendance, revenue, the value of the franchises, new infrastructure and television dollars. More people around the globe are watching the game than at any other time in history.

That’s all very good.

Yet at the same time, while the world tunes in fewer groups of Americans are watching than ever – namely kids and African-Americans. According to popular sentiment and columnist/talk-show fodder, Selig has reigned during a time in which MLB has “lost a generation” of fans. Kids, apparently, have tuned out in favor of the NFL, NBA and whatever other types of technology rules the day. They have chosen to play those sports, as well as lacrosse, hockey and soccer, instead of signing up for the baseball team.

At the prep school across from my house, the structure of the athletic fields has changed exponentially over the past decade. Several of the baseball diamonds have been re-configured and re-lined as lacrosse and soccer pitches as the game seems to have less of a grip on the kids coming up. At least in the exurbs, it appears as if baseball has become a bit of a fringe sport like hockey and the other so-called “extreme” sports.

Meanwhile, the latest statistics indicate that fewer than 10 percent of Major Leaguers are African-American, which is the lowest total in at least two decades.

Are these issues simply a matter of MLB being short-sighted and ignoring its future fans and players by televising World Series games at 9 p.m. on school nights? Or is it something deeper?

I don’t know.

Aside from those issues, Selig seemingly buried his head in the sand as performance-enhancing drugs issues went from a concern to a scourge rendering the league’s records meaningless and its history with little context.

Other than that, every day fans seem to enjoy the wild card and interleague play. So they have that going for them…

It's Game 3!

Here are a few observations from Tuesday night’s Game 3 in St. Louis:

* If I’m not mistaken, commissioner Bud Selig took the “boys will be boys” approach to the controversy regarding Kenny Rogers and his dirty hand during Fox’s pre-game show. In an on-the-field interview with the always-entertaining Penn alum, Ken Rosenthal, Selig said that if Tony La Russa didn’t do anything about it, why should he?

Selig said that La Russa has been known to be combative.

What Selig and player’s union president Donald Fehr were with Rosenthal for was to announce the new labor agreement that will last through the 2011 season.

Selig called the new deal “historic.” You know, like the Treaty of Versailles.

* Kevin Kennedy, one of Fox’s pre-game analysts with a penchant for dismissing everything controversial in the game, was on top of his game on Tuesday night. This summer he debunked all steroid and performance-enhancing drug accusations and controversies with a hand waving, “He never tested positive!” As well as, “Put your name next to it! Stop using unnamed sources!”

OK, Mr. Haldeman.

Much to our surprise, Kennedy was just as dismissive of the Rogers controversy.

“It happens all the time,” Kennedy said. “It’s part of the game.”

Could you imagine what Kennedy might say if he were in Uganda with Idi Amin when people just started disappearing.

“What? It’s no big deal. It happens all the time. That’s just Idi being Idi.”

Yes, I see how silly it sounds comparing a brutal, homicidal dictator to a baseball pitcher with dirty hands and an apologist announcer. Better yet, it reminds me of one of my favorite Tug McGraw quotes.

After escaping from a tough, late-inning jam against the Big Red Machine's Joe Morgan, George Foster, Tony Perez and Johnny Bench with his typical aplomb, Tug was asked by a reporter how he was able to stay so cool. “Well,” he said. “Ten million years from now, when the sun burns out and the Earth is just a frozen snowball hurtling through space, nobody's going to care whether or not I got this guy out.”

My favorite Tug quote is when he was asked what he would do with the money he got for making it to the World Series with the Mets in 1973.

“Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste.”

* I had Nate Robertson on my rotisserie team this season, Game 3 was the first time I saw him pitch. He’s a lefty… imagine that. He wears glasses, too. He’s also No. 29 like 1968 World Series hero Mickey Lolich and has been driving the same car for a really long time.

At various points of the season, I also had Jason Isringhausen, Anthony Reyes, Jason Marquis, Preston Wilson and David Eckstein of the Cardinals, as well as Pudge Rodriguez, Craig Monroe, Brandon Inge and Sean Casey of the Tigers.

I finished in ninth place of a 12-team league.

* Richard Ford’s new novel The Lay of the Land is out. This is the third of the Frank Bascombe series, which includes The Sportswriter and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day. The reviews look good, which isn’t too surprising since Ford is a bit of a media darling. Nevertheless, I’m anxious to dive in.

* I had the chance to tune into the radio broadcast of the start of the game while running an errand. ESPN radio’s Jon Miller and Joe Morgan handle the call on radio, which is filled with much more insight than the TV version.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are not fans of Morgan’s work for ESPN, but there were a few nuggets from Morgan and Miller that the more superficial TV broadcast would miss.

This is no fault of TV, I suppose. After all, if someone is listening to the World Series on the radio they are seeking it out. A non-baseball fan isn’t going to drive around and listen to the game, though that same non-fan person could tune in on TV. You know, maybe the batteries on the remote died or something.

Anyway, Morgan and Miller pointed out that Preston Wilson could be the key for the Cardinals in Game 3. The reason? Wilson is in the No. 2 spot of the batting order, one place ahead of Albert Pujols. It would be Wilson’s job to ensure that the Tigers cannot pitch around the fearsome Pujols.

Yet because Wilson is hitting ahead of Pujols, the duo pointed out, he should get a lot more pitches to hit than if he were batting in front of, say, Jim Edmonds or Scott Rolen. Plus, they said, Tony La Russa likes for someone with some power to hit ahead of Pujols in the No. 2 spot. That’s why Wilson is so important, the announcers said.

This is interesting, though if La Russa likes power in the two-hole, why not try Edmonds or Rolen there. Certainly they both have much more power than Wilson and strike out a lot less, too.

* In the first inning after Robertson came up and in to Pujols, Morgan made a joke.

“Looks like that one slipped. Maybe he needs some pine tar?” Morgan said.

“He plays for the Tigers,” Miller said. “I think I know where he can get some.”

It made me laugh.