Instead of merely discussing yet another bad All-Star Game article, I've decided to make up a little screenplay that occurs during the writing of Gene Wojciechowski's latest article. I figure it's more interesting this way. Let's meet the cast of characters!
Gene Wojciechowski (GW): A writer for ESPN.com, and our story's protagonist. He struggles to prove to the audience why 2 baseball players should be in the All-Star Game
Gene Wojciechowski's Train of Thought (GWTOT): A metaphorical entity that represent's GW's line of thinking. GWTOT is often forgetful.
Conductor: The personified, fictitious "conductor" of Gene Wojciechowski's Train of Thought. Gene cannot hear the Conductor.
pnoles: A dashing, handsome young man who serves as the antagonist of the story. He struggles bravely for reason and opposes GW's article's completion and publication as written at all costs.
Scene: Gene Wojciechowski is sitting at a computer typing. Gene's Train of Thought and it's Conductor are present inside Gene's head.
Enter pnoles, who stands behind Gene and watches him type
GW: (unaware of pnoles's presence) Let's see now, what do I call this masterpiece?
Sammy and Barry have earned their All-Star roster spots
GW: EXCELLENT!
GWTOT: Barry....Sammy.....they cheat a lot.....steroids......I'm on the introduction.....should make this attention-getting.....Conclusion: MAKE FUN OF THEM!
GW: Maybe a quick joke or two will liven up the ol' readers eh?
I think Barry Bonds' and Sammy Sosa's home run numbers, circa 1998-2004, are as fake as silicone breast implants. I think they cheated, just like I think Mark McGwire did. I think the only way they should get into the Baseball Hall of Fame is if they pay the $14.50 admission fee.
GW: Ho ho....Bah-ZING! I'll be here all week folks.
Conductor: BACKTRACK!
And yet -- and I'm going to need years of therapy to deal with this one -- I think Bonds and Sosa should be named to the 2007 All-Star Game rosters.
Conductor: Train is stalled briefly, hold on just a second!
GWTOT: I've got nothing. Rephrase last thing.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig is going to suffer dry heaves at the thought, but Bonds and Sosa belong on the AT&T Park first- and third-base foul lines when the National League and American League lineups are introduced the evening of July 10.
Conductor: Ready to go!
GWTOT: We just made a claim......next step: EVIDENCE!
They belong in San Francisco because of precedent,
pnoles: (to himself) Irrelevant.....
because of MLB's own All-Star selection rules,
GW: Genie boy you are on a ROLL!
and because this might be the last time Selig and Bonds are in the same ballpark together.
pnoles: Who cares?
GW: Eh? Who's there!?!?!? G-Dubs cares, that's who!
Conductor: HELP! THE TRAIN'S STUCK ON FULL SPEED AHEAD!
GWTOT: WHEEEEEEEE!!!!!! Selig! Paulie Walnuts! pitching machine! Dr. James Andrews! Henry Aaron! 600-homers! Rafael Palmeiro! Mark McGwire! Sosa no speak English! House of Representatives! Marky no testify! Hall of Fame!
If it were up to Selig, he'd have Paulie Walnuts make Bonds' career home run chase, uh, disappear. There'd be a tragic pitching machine "accident" in the stadium batting cage. Nothing fatal, just something requiring Dr. James Andrews and the permanent use of a walking cane.
Selig adores Henry Aaron, as well as Aaron's baseball and personal legacy. But the only thing separating Bonds from passing Aaron's record 755 home runs is seven more dingers. And steroid allegations. This is why Selig has yet to announce whether he'll be in attendance when Bonds eventually breaks the most cherished record in American sports.
Sosa, who just reached the 600-homer mark, isn't a threat to surpass Aaron. But he is an annoyance, a reminder of that seminal congressional steroids hearing in 2005 when Rafael Palmeiro and McGwire committed career and Hall of Fame suicide, and Sosa conveniently forgot how to speak English.
Palmeiro pointed at the House committee members that March day and said he had never used steroids. About five months later he was suspended for -- wait for it -- testing positive for steroids.
Meanwhile, McGwire didn't want to testify about "the past," which is what you say when you don't want to lie under oath. And Sosa, who needed a lawyer that day to read his statement, must have done some serious Berlitz work since then. He hasn't had any difficulty lobbying reporters, in perfectly understandable English, for his inclusion into the Hall of Fame.
Conductor: WHEW! Finally got it! We're normal again.
GWTOT: Wait....what were we talking about again? Oh right, All-Star game.
GW: Hey...wait...what's going on here??? None of this stuff I wrote has anything to do with anything! And to think I spent 3 hours on those 5 paragraphs. Well, I most certainly don't want to delete them.....hmmmm....this calls for one of those transition sentence thingamajiggers.
Conductor: HALT! REVERSE!
But the All-Star Game doesn't have anything to do with home run records, legacies and induction speeches at Cooperstown.
GW: Good thing I thought of this to justify everything I already wrote.
Conductor: The train's stuck! It can't go anyplace new for awhile......
GWTOT: All-star game - define? Selected by fans. Once Cancelled. Decides home-field in World Series.
It's an exhibition game whose rosters are primarily determined by baseball fans. It's so screwed up that Selig once called the game with the score tied in the 11th inning. That led to the equally screwy decision to give World Series home-field advantage (no small thing) to the league that wins the All-Star Game.
GW: Everyone knows these things. Why in the world am I writing them? ::points to head:: What's going on up there!?!?!
pnoles: Just delete the damned thing and take the day off.
GW: NEVER!
GWTOT: Repeat article thesis. Joke. Describe current status of article's goal.
Even if you think Bonds and Sosa are slimier than the Delaware River mud they use to rub up baseballs, they deserve All-Star jerseys. The latest fan ballot totals had Bonds trailing the Chicago Cubs' Alfonso Soriano for the third and final starting outfield spot. Sosa was in 13th place in the AL outfielder voting.
If the margins holds up, Bonds and Sosa would need help from their peers (the players choose the backups), or managers Tony La Russa (NL) and Jim Leyland (AL), or from online voters (who pick the final roster spot). For what it's worth, La Russa was noncommittal when asked recently about picking Bonds.
pnoles: You can't print this crap. You haven't done anything yet except say what the All-Star game is, how to get to play in it, and how Sammy and Barry are currently doing. Plus for some reason, Rafael Palmeiro's name came up.
GW: DAMMIT! Get out of here! Which one of us has a job writing about sports? ME! THAT MAKES ME INSIGHTFUL!
Conductor: Whew! We've got her up and running better than usual!
GWTOT: Barry Bonds.....legitimate reasons he should be in the All-Star game. Every team needs a guy. Bonds's teammates suck.
MLB rules say that each team has to have at least one All-Star representative. The Giants, who will finish dead last in the NL West, need somebody, so that somebody ought to be Mr. Martyr instead of the other two San Francisco candidates: catcher Bengie Molina and pitcher Matt Morris.
Molina's batting average and RBI totals have tumbled during the month, and Morris has given up 12 runs and 22 hits in his last two starts. That leaves Bonds, who can't throw, can't run that well and is nowhere to be found among the league leaders in batting average, RBIs, hits, total bases and extra-base hits. But he does have those 15 home runs (OK, so only four in his last 105 at-bats), a .293 batting average and more walks and intentional walks than anybody in the majors (you'd walk him, too, if you saw who was hitting behind him).
GWTOT: ::SCREEECH!::
Conductor: Don't worry, just a minor spike in the power here....we'll be back up shortly!
Plus, the Giants' own Web site implores fans to "Vote Bonds."
pnoles: (nearly falls over laughing)
GW: You're a cold-hearted bastard.
pnoles: Dude....you were sooooo close to a good paragraph there! Didn't it occur to you that every team implores fans to vote for their players? Just delete it and redeem yourself.
GW: Ah what do you know, anyway!? Why should I change anything just because you, a no-sports-writing-job-man-bloghead-wannabe says so? ::to himself:: Fuck....he's got me there.
Conductor: We're up and running, but going the wrong way!
GWTOT: Bonds...anyone else get into the game on legacy without great stats? RIPKEN!
GW: Eureka!
Bonds' '07 numbers aren't All-Star worthy, but they don't have to be. That's because the game has a history of sticking stiffs out there long past their prime. Example: Cal Ripken.
Ripken made his final All-Star appearances in 2001, even though he was hitting just .240 and had only four homers and 28 RBIs at the time. The fans voted him in. Ripken homered in his first at-bat and got the MVP award as a parting gift. It was dramatic stuff, but the simple truth is that Ripken wasn't an All-Star-caliber player that year.
GW: Muhaha.....now they'll HAVE to believe me that Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro will never make the Hall of Fame! I mean, uh, Bonds should play in that game!
GWTOT: Ripken = loved by fans, long honest career, set record for consecutive games played showing dedication and durability, clear Hall of Famer at retirement. Bonds = hated by most, cheated, chance of not making Hall of Fame due to aforementioned cheating. Conclusion: SAME SITUATION.
Bonds isn't either, but if you made an exception for Ripken, you've got to do the same for Flaxseed Man.
GWTOT: Isn't there another guy I'm sorta supposedly writing about too? Yeah, give him a token appearance here.
The same goes for Sosa, whose 13 homers and 59 RBIs are actually respectable numbers on a Texas Rangers team without a no-brainer All-Star candidate.
GW: That's enough about Sosa....he's not even in the title of the article, so let's not mention him again.
GWTOT: I bet there's some guy out there that agrees with me. Good ol' logical, sane....Ozzie Guillen? Whatever, go with it.
"What, you take [Ripken] because he 'saved baseball?'" said Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who managed the AL All-Stars a year ago. "Bonds should play."
Guillen meant no disrespect toward Ripken. He said Ripken belonged in the '01 All-Star Game, no questions asked. But if Ripken, and that .240 average, was in the starting lineup, Bonds' .293 average should at least be in the NL dugout. Perceptions and steroid allegations shouldn't matter, he said. Bonds is an active player who deserves the same courtesy that Ripken got six years ago.
Conductor: We're stalled again!
GWTOT: Repeat last thing. No new thoughts.
He'll get no argument here. This isn't a steroid/performance enhancers issue. It's about what's fair. The beloved Ripken got an All-Star freebie in '01. The arrogant, smug Bonds should get one in '07.
pnoles: Hey man, who are you to decide what's fair? That isn't cool. If the fans love Ripken and vote him in purely in recognition of a great, honest career, and hate Bonds for his dishonesty and don't, it IS fair in the minds of many. You can't publish this.
GW: I CAN......AND I WILL! And as for YOU! ::takes a baseball bat, swings, and nails pnoles in the shin::
pnoles: YEEOOOUCCCCHHHHH!
Conductor: Still stalled here, c'mon Gene come up with something!
pnoles: Whatever man, you're a jerk for that, I was right. I don't care how much that hurt.
GWTOT: Repeat last thought. No new thoughts.
GW: No I'M RIGH-.....hey....I've got it!
Right is right, even when it hurts to say so.
GW: Heh. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, nay-sayers.
::end scene::
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