The KNBR Morning Show pointed this out earlier today, but we thought we’d share the photographic evidence: Barry Zito’s recent surge/success/sprezzatura is almost decidedly a result of his newly-grown beard. Last night, he tossed yet another gem (eight innings, two runs) against the first-place Cubbies. Of course, the Giants still managed to blow it, but Zito clearly (hopefully) has his confidence back.
And you know why?
The Beard brings Swagger.
We saw what it did to Baron and the Boys during that magical playoff run.
Think about it. Last week, we spent some time comparing the 2007 Giants with the team from Major League. You fabulous commenters, however, made the best call of the day: pairing Barry Zito with the yuppified version of Rick Vaughn from Major League 2. Perfect fit, right? Right.
Well now, just like the end of the sequel, the Wild Thing version of Barry Zito has returned.
For Rick Vaughn, it took a leather vest, zigzag haircut and orange glasses.
For Barry Zito, it just took a shaggy beard for him to rediscover the free-wheeling, guitar-strumming, always-smiling Barry Zito everyone knows and loves.
We missed you Barry. Welcome back.
(Bonus: Here’s the video clip where the Wild Thing returns. It’s in Italian, but since everyone knows the lines anyway, it makes it even better.)
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.”
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 earlier, we’re taking a trip through sports hell, with the help of Dante.
The ninth and final circle of hell enslaves the worst of the worst: the traitors. Each of the sinners in the deepest realm–and there aren’t many in the exclusive club–betrayed someone important to them. There are four sections, each progressively worse, with the nadir coming in the final section: those who betrayed benefactors. In Dante’s original, Judas (who betrayed Jesus) suffers with Brutus and Cassius (who betrayed Caesar).
Who will be our un-holy trinity?
Well, which three, ahem, big Bay Area stars betrayed their ultimate benefactor, the sport of baseball?
The Ninth Circle: The Traitors
To Kindred
Michael Vick: PETA just got mad on behalf of canines everywhere that we lowered dogs to Michael Vick’s kindred level.
Rae Carruth: Conspiring to kill your lady friend will get you on this list, unfortunately.
Orenthal James Simpson: If OJ did kill his wife, here’s the circle of hell we’d put him in.
Bay Area Reps:
The DeBartalo Family: Granted, they haven’t killed each other like the others here, but for heaven’s sake, can’t they get along? Bicker, bicker, bicker! Sue, sue, sue!
The NBA ref betting scandal. The steroid mess. Dogfighting. It’s a terrible time to be a sports fan, so like we mentioned earlier, we’re taking a trip through sports hell, with the help of Dante.
The penultimate circle of Dante’s inferno contains all types of frauds, as you’ll see. The thing that differentiates these sinners from the earlier ones is the use of reason to knowingly do, um, bad things. So no Mike Tyson.
The Eighth Circle: The Fraudulent
Panderers & Seducers:
Mark Chmura: “No judge, I do not know why I was in a hot tub with my 17-year-old babysitter at her prom party.”
Chris Henry: “No judge, I do not know why I served two underage girls lots of alcohol in a hotel room.”
Marcus Vick (Michael’s younger brother): “No judge, I do not know why this girl is suing me for $6.3 million because I had sex with her when she was 15.”
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.
With all this talk about the NBA ref betting hoopla and how it may have affected the outcome of the Spurs-Suns 2007 playoff series, we couldn’t help but make the leap to baseball’s steroid crisis. To be sure, there are some key and obvious differences, but for the sake of argument, both scandals broke the sacred trust between the sport and the fan: the fact that the games (and their outcomes), for one reason or another, weren’t legitimate.
In this day and age, given Barry Bonds’ cringing home run chase and the Giants’ own struggles, there presumably aren’t many true baseball fans who don’t want to see performance-enhancing drugs abolished from the game. But in the same way that Suns fans are upset about this year’s playoffs, should the Giants’ own steroid-spurred (no pun intended) success run from 2001-2004 (or thereabouts) ignite ire in their National League foes?
Because of the BALCO case, a home run chase and a looming grand jury indictment (gulp!), the Giants have been at the epicenter of the steroid crisis, and have had many a non-Bondsian player under suspicion. In no other season is this more evident than the epic 2002 run to the World Series. Take a look at that year’s lineup.
C: Benito Santiago: implicated in BALCO case; had a career year in 2002 (All-Star)
1B: JT Snow
2B: Jeff Kent
SS: Rich Aurilia: heavy suspicions; (home run tallies from 1998-2004: 9, 22, 20, 37, 15, 13, 6)
CF: Marvin Benard: implicated in BALCO case (note: Lofton picked up at trading deadline, Shinjo platooned with Benard.)
RF: Reggie Sanders
P: Jason Schmidt: heavy suspicions abound after noticeable 5-8 MPH drop in velocity after steroid testing; had career year in 2002
So, six of the nine regulars have some type of link (granted, some are more speculative than others) to performance-enhancing drugs, which leads us to this question:
If you could eliminate steroids from the game, would you have given up that magical, memorable playoff run?
That season may have been the finest moment in recent Giants history. Bonds was must-see television. Schmidt was the most dominating pitcher in the league. Snow, Kent, Aurilia and Bell put together a scrappy infield. Kirk Rueter and Livan rounded out a lovable pitching staff. That was also the year that the great Robb Nen sacrificed his arm/career for the team. So Rally Monkey mental anguish aside …
We hope you enjoy this video of a Big Wheels race down Lombard Street. Don’t lie; you know you’ve always wanted to try it yourself.
In many ways, this is the perfect metaphor for both Bay Area teams’ 2007 seasons, rife with twists and turns that everyone saw coming: Rich Harden injured. Milton Bradley a menace. Barry Bonds old. Barry Zito overpaid. Mike Piazza useless. Armando Benitez awful.
“John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.”–Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Forgive the brief foray into literature, but we swear this makes absolute perfect sense. With yesterday’s announcement that he would not partake in the Home Run Derby, Barry Bonds garnered the wrath of baseball fans, sports bloggers and the general population of the country. Many say he owes it to the fans to participate, arguing that he should put a show on for the fans who have tolerated his trials, tribulations and general mockery of the game.
Hold that thought.
In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt is a brilliant man whose innovative mind was taken advantage of by the populus; he finally decides to stop the motor of the world–and he succeeds. He, along with all the other great thinkers/industrialists/”world movers” of the country, go on strike. They disappear and go on strike because they are tired of being derided for profiting from their great minds, for succumbing to the general population’s view of morality (i.e., the money you work for should be shared, greed is not moral). John Galt does not believe in the guilt that society’s morality tells him he should have. According to Rand, “Man–every man–is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake … Objectivism rejects any form of altruism–the claim that morality consists in living for others or for society.”
This is what the world movers do in the book. America wants them stop doing what they do, so they do. They leave America to crumble, and it does. They basically say “screw society; they’ve looted our minds long enough.” This is Objectivism (in a nutshell).
For the last several years, the public has been calling for Bonds to quit. They want to see him gone, like Mark McGwire. So when he finally gives America what it wants (albeit with a subtle “fuck you”), America cries out that he would make the Home Run Derby much more entertaining (which he undoubtedly would) and he owes it to the fans to participate.
Bonds hopped on the steroid bangwagon because that’s what America wanted, only he did it better than anyone else. He topped the McGwires and Sosas and Brady Andersons. He provided countless ooohs and aaahs. He led the Giants to the World Series. He’s made himself millions of dollars. And what did he get for his efforts? He’s become the most villified man in sports. He’s become the face of steroids, for no other reason than he did it better than the dozens of other users. But America hates him. For the last several years, America has crucified him for being an objectivist of sorts.
So, much to the dismay of everyone, Barry is going on strike for one night.
Why should he entertain us? Why should we profit from his ability? Who is John Galt?
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.
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 
This is what the world movers do in the book. America wants them stop doing what they do, so they do. They leave America to crumble, and it does. They basically say “screw society; they’ve looted our minds long enough.” This is Objectivism (in a nutshell).
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.
