With Rawlings’ announcement of their All-Time Gold Glove Team and Henry Schulman’s ringing endorsement of Pedro Feliz as the hands-down best defensive third baseman in the National League this year, there’s been a lot of Gold Glove talk lately, so we thought we’d try to put together a list of the Bay Area’s All-Time Gold Glove Team.
Admittedly, we’re not too familiar with the teams of the ’60s and ’70s, so please feel free to disagree and/or toss any other names into the hat. You’ll be wrong, but whatever.
Catcher: Did you know that Kirt Manwaring won a Gold Glove in 1993? Benito Santiago had a lot of flair behind the dish, but was terrible at blocking balls. Mike Matheny wasn’t even around for an entire year. Terry Steinbach was great but our pick is a personal favorite: the vastly underrated Ramon Hernandez, who anchored four consecutive 90-win seasons with the A’s (2000-2003). Food for thought: how well has the Big Three done in his absence?
First Base: Big Mac won a Golden Arch in 1990, but who knows how. Willie McCovey and his 6-4 frame must have been a nice target for his infielders. The Baby Bull has a lifetime fielding percentage of .990. The Thrill grabbed a Gold Glove in 1991, but the hands-down winner has got to be JT Snow. During the Snow Days, it was like the Giants had a left-handed shortstop playing first base. Has a first baseman in big league history ever contributed so much to the highlight reel?
Willie: “Willie Mays Hayes. I hit like Mays, and I run like Hayes.” Lou Brown: “You may run like Hayes, but you hit like shit.”
Roger Dorn = Barry Bonds
Jake Taylor: “What I was concerned with was why you didn’t come up with that grounder that Rockert hit in the 9th.”
Roger Dorn: “It was out of my reach, what do you want me to do, dive for it?”
Rick Vaughn = Tim Lincecum
Lou Brown: “Forget about the curve ball Ricky, give him the heater.”
Lou Brown = Bruce Bochy
Assistant Coach: [Vaughn has just given up a grand slam after walking three straight batters] “You want me to go get him?”
Lou Brown: “No, keep him in. Let’s see how he reacts.”
Lou Brown: [Vaughn hits the next batter] “Interesting.”
Following 756* (which also included a Giants loss), Manager Bruce Bochy gathered his physically exhausted and emotionally weary team around for a post-game meeting. Of course, Barry Bonds had left the stadium hours earlier.
Bruce Bochy: Okay guys, now that that’s out of the way, we can go back to concentrating on baseball. The chase is finally over. All trade speculation is over. The insane media presence is–
[Pedro Gomez, with torn dress shirt and dirty face, stumbles in the locker room]
Pedro Gomez [out of breath]: Oh thank god you guys are still here! My Lincoln Continental broke down in Oakland and I had to run across the bridge!
[Silence]
Pedro Gomez [gaining his composure]: So, what’d I miss?
[Silence]
Bruce Bochy: Correia, get him out of here. Players only!
[Kevin Correia shoves Gomez out of the locker room. He heads to sit back down but Bochy stops him.]
Bruce Bochy [sternly]: Players. Only.
[Correia puts his head down and leaves the room too.]
With the recent hubbub over The Simpsons Movie, we decided to take a page out of the Boston Globe’s book and applied the treasure trove of time-wasters, the Simpsonizer, to your favorite Bay Area superstars and ours, from Senor Bonds to Baron to Miss Jessica Alba and more…
The NBA ref betting scandal. The steroid mess. Dogfighting. It’s a terrible time to be a sports fan, so like we mentioned yesterday, we’re taking a trip through sports hell, with the help of Dante.
Now we’re getting to the good stuff. After skipping the heretics–everyone in the sports world thanks god already–we’re headed straight for lucky number seven. For some reason, these guys seem the scariest to us. Here come the crazies!
The NBA ref betting scandal. The steroid mess. Dogfighting. It’s a terrible time to be a sports fan, so like we mentioned yesterday, we’re taking a trip through sports hell, with the help of Dante.
In Dante’s version of hell, the deeper the circle, the worse the sin. With nine circles total, the first five circles are considered “outer hell,” because they are sins of incontinence, which for you mouth-breathers out there, means sins that result from an inability to control oneself (as opposed to more serious sins, as we’ll soon see). So, without any further ado, let’s hit circles four and five.
The Fourth Circle: The Prodigal and The Avaricious: those who wasted money and those who craved money.
The Prodigal:
Pacman Jones (above): Everytime he makes it rain–several times a night, every night–a child in Africa sheds a tear, which really dehydrates the little guys. (Note: actually we’re not really sure if Pacman should be in the “avaricious” category since his unwillingness to part with his $81,000 worth of, ahem, rain caused the whole Vegas melee in the first place. Either way, he’s here in this circle of hell.)
Scott Boras: We suppose you could put nearly every sports agent in this category, but Boras is the poster child for crazy, overinflated contracts. Well, him and Jerry Maguire and Arli$$.
Bay Area Reps:
Don Nelson: Not saying he doesn’t deserve it, but he’s seeking out that cash at the risk of distrupting the best (only?) feel-good story of the NBA, not to mention the last decade of Golden State Warriordom.
Miguel Tejada, Jason Giambi, Julian Peterson, Gilbert Arenas: There are more, but these are the guys whose salary-based departures stung the most for us at the time.
Like we mentioned earlier, we’re taking a trip to sports hell this week. We welcome your suggestions.
The first five circles are dedicated to incontinence: sins resulting not from direct malice but from an inability to quell an urge/appetite for destruction. [Note: In Dante's version, the First Circle is Limbo, where the virtuous pagans (those who were worthy, but lived before Christianity or didn't have a chance to be baptized) dwell in Elysium. We're skipping that and starting with the Second Circle.]
The Second Circle: The Lustful: those who sinned “within the flesh, subjecting reason to the rule of lust.”
One of our favorite literary works of all-time is Dante’s Divine Comedy. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the basic plot goes as such: Dante travels through hell, purgatory and heaven. Each otherworldly realm is highly organized based upon the sins/virtues of a soul’s life and along the way, Dante encounters characters from his present day, from history and from myth, each placed in a section of the afterlife based on Dante’s judgment. For example, Dido, who famously killed herself after her beloved Aeneas left her, is with the suicides of the Seventh Circle.
You see where we’re going with this.
Modern times–and these here “blogs”–have afforded sports fans everywhere the luxury of being privy to the often humorous, sometimes sad and nearly always entertaining lifestyles of athletes. So, over the next day or so, with Dante’s Inferno as our guide, we’re going to be taking a trip through sports hell, placing the most notorious sports figures of today–and maybe some from yesteryear–in the various circles of medieval hell.
Here’s the rundown of the nine circles. Feel free to submit nominations.
1. Limbo
2. The Lustful
3. The Gluttonous
4. The Prodigal and Avaricious
5. The Wrathful and Slothful
6. The Heretics
7. The Violent
8. The Fraudulent
9. The Traitors
Suffice to say, the sporting world will be well-represented. From Michael Vick and Barry Bonds to Lou Seal and the Rally Monkey, we ain’t even bullshitting. We hope you like it.
To the best of our knowledge (actually, this site’s knowledge), 56 Major League baseball players have been known (or highly suspected) to have taken steroids or HGH, either by positive tests, their own admission or others’ implication. But which teams have been at the center of the steroid maelstrom?
To answer that question, we’ve put together the first-ever Steroid Standings. We merely took the team of the player in question and tallied the results. However, it only counts if the incident occurred while the player was on the team. For example, Jason Giambi admitted (in the leaked grand jury testimony) to have used a myriad of BALCO boosters while a member of the Oakland A’s, so he counts to Oakland’s total, not the Yankees’. Conversely, Juan Gonzalez was implicated twice, once while a Ranger and then as an Indian; he counts for both.
Again, the players in question are merely a result of what’s been in the media and not meant to imply guilt. Some of the implicated users are from the Grimsley case and BALCO case, while others are from Jose Canseco’s book (which obviously should be taken with several grains of salt). An asterisk (*) signifies a positive drug test and a double asterisk (**) signifies an admitted user. Here are the Steroid Standings:
Baltimore Orioles, 7: Rafael Palmeiro*, Jason Grimsley, David Segui**, Miguel Tejada, Jerry Hairston, Brian Roberts, Jay Gibbons
Oakland A’s, 6: Jason Giambi**, Jeremy Giambi**, Jose Canseco**, Mark McGwire, Ozzie Canseco, Randy Velarde
Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 6: Wilson Alvarez, Dave Martinez, John Rocker**, Tony Saunders, Alex Sanchez*, Juan Salas*
Texas Rangers, 5: Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez, Jose Canseco, Gary Matthews Jr, Carlos Almanzar*
San Francisco Giants, 5: Barry Bonds**, Bobby Estalella**, Armando Rios**, Benito Santiago**, Marvin Benard
New York Yankees, 4: Gary Sheffield**, Jim Leyritz**, Roger Clemens, Matt Lawton*
Seattle Mariners, 4: Bret Boone, Jamal Strong*, Ryan Franklin*, Mike Morse*
New York Mets, 4: Yusaku Iriki*, Guillermo Mota*, Felix Heredia*, Lenny Dykstra
Obviously, the numbers are skewed based on where the steroid busts/implications have been, so teams with the BALCO guys (Giants), the Grimsley guys (Orioles) and Canseco (A’s, Rangers) have inflated stats. The Mets and Mariners have had the most positive tests though. Food for thought.
At 30-41, the Giants are on nearly the same embarrassing pace as the last Giants to team to finish in last place: the 1996 wonders that finished with 94 losses.
Let’s take a closer look at how the two teams measure up against each other, position by position.
Catcher: Bengie Molina is the MVP of this current Giants squad. After hearing stories of Molina steaming for an hour after losses, still in his gear, there’s no doubt in our mind that he should be the Giants’ All-Star representative. Send the guy who actually cares about wins and losses. Plus, he’s leading the team in hitting (.294). As for the 1996 team, catching duties were split between Rick Wilkins (who could hit but not throw), Kirt Manwaring (who could throw but not hit) and Tom Lampkin (who just sucked). Edge: 2007
1st Base: It’s bad when the ESPN stats page doesn’t even recognize your team as having a starting first baseman. It’s worse when your two-man platoon of Rich Aurilia and Ryan Klesko (five homers combined–at a power position, we remind you) might not hit more homeruns than the quite possibly the single worst regular first baseman in memory: Mark Carreon. The Klesko/Aurilia combo is hitting exactly .260. Carreon hit exactly .260 with nine homeruns in 1996. Heavens. Edge: 1996, because Carreon was one person and Klesko/Aurilia are two people. In theory.
The scene: The Warriors’ locker room, about an hour before Game Two.
Don Nelson [sipping on a can of Bud Light]: Ok, fellas, we’ve got to have this game tonight. We don’t want to go back to Oakland down 2-0. Now, does everyone know what we have to do to win?
Matt Barnes: I’ve got to hit the open shot and create chaos on the court.
Jason Richardson: Play good team D, make our layups.
Baron Davis: Take care of the ball, rebound the ball–
Baron’s Beard: I’m gonna stare the shit out of Deron Williams’ chinstrap-beard thing! The little thing’s gonna piss its chin! We gonna intimidate the shit out of it. Just watch, man!
Mickael Pietrus [to himself]: Je saute … je saute … je saute …
Stephen Jackson [screaming]: Fuck them mutherfuckers, I don’t duck them mutherfuckers, I say fuck them mutherfuckers!
Andris Biedrins [grinning crazily]: Yes! Yes! Kill Jazz! Kill Jazz!
Don Nelson: Now, now, let’s calm down. Those are all excellent suggestions. Excellent, but wrong nonetheless. Our new secret strategy lies behind this door. BEHOLD!
[Nelson opens door, revealing Adonal Foyle]
Adonal Foyle [with two thumbs up]: Look at me! I am going to participate in the athletic contest!
The scene: Sunday night, at a ritzy Bay Area bar/club, shortly after the Golden State Warriors’ monumental Game Three victory over the Dallas Mavericks.
Baron Davis [entering bar]: Alright Beard, we’re supposed to meet the team here and celebrate our big win.
Baron’s Beard [looking around]: Awww yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ ’bout!
Jessica Alba [at the bar]: Hey Baron! Great game tonight!
Baron Davis: Hey, thanks for coming to the game, Jessica. How are you doing tonight?
Baron’s Beard: A-hem!
Baron Davis: Oh sorry. Jessica, have you met Beard?
Baron’s Beard: Hey lil’ breezy! Whaaaaaas crackulatin’? You want some Beard love?
Jessica Alba: Excuse me?
Baron’s Beard: You know what they say about full beards …
Jessica Alba: Pardon?
Baron Davis: Beard, shut up!
Baron’s Beard: Once you go Beard you never go back.
[Jessica Alba slaps Baron's Beard and storms away.]
One of the more poignant tales in the long history of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry is undoubtedly the 1965 Juan Marichal-Johnny Roseboro brawl. Now, just about every article about the fight–and Marichal’s subsequent nine game suspension–mentions the poetic justice involved: Marichal missed two starts and the Dodgers eventually won the pennant by two games.
However, after an astute commenter wondered if the Giants actually lost Marichal’s two missed starts, we decided to do some po-lice work to determine whether or not Marichal actually cost the Giants the pennant that year. The problem, of course, lies in trying to figure out exactly which games Marichal would have started. Therein lies the po-lice work.
[Sidenote: If you don't get the reference to "po-lice work," then you're missing out. The Wire is the best show on television.]
Posted by Say Hey
Posted by Say Hey
Posted by Say Hey
Eddie Griffin: A word of advice to young drivers–don’t drive while watching porn in your Escalade; it’ll only lead to 
At 30-41, the Giants are on nearly the same embarrassing pace as the last Giants to team to finish in last place: the 1996 wonders that finished with 94 losses.
One of the more poignant tales in the long history of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry is undoubtedly 
