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It was announced today that Barry Bonds had just barely snuck by Alfonso Soriano for the last fan-voted outfield position in the All-Star Game. Here's how ESPN framed the news on its home page:  It has frequently been the case in the years since fans began voting the starting rosters that aging players have been given the nod over more deserving young ones. Everybody's favorite "sport-saving" white guy Cal Ripken Jr. -- whom I always liked, incidentally -- was one of the most egregious examples in his last season, getting voted in with some of the worst numbers of any starter at his position. The bias bothers some, but, like most players, I can live with it. What drives me batty, though, is the idea promulgated in the lead-in to the ESPN story, that Barry is having a "lackluster" season and therefore only an All-Star because of his overall career numbers. Don't believe me? Check out the "OPS" category on the stat sheet, a number that combines on-base percentage and slugging. In his best years, Bonds led all of Major League Baseball by a wide margin. This year, however, while playing on a terrible Giants team with no hitters of consequence to protect him in the line-up, his advantage has slipped. Yes, he only leads the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez by a little. I guess that's what qualifies as "lackluster" for the mainstream media. And that's all you need to know, really, about the antipathy journalists direct Bonds's way. Like the majority of the Giants' hometown fans, I say, "To hell with them." Tags: rant, sports
Current Location: 85704
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All-Star voting is a joke, of course, with each team pushing fans to vote for their own players. It was especially bad at China Basin the last week or so ... we were constantly reminded to vote for Barry, reminded we could vote 25 times at once, reminded that it was up to us to put Barry in LF for the start of the game, just where he belonged (he does belong, of course, just noting the probable reason his vote count surged at the end).
After today's game was over ... sorry for bugging you with those text messages! It's our annual "contact Charlie" day :-) ... they immediately announced that Barry had made the starting lineup, which elicited a great cheer from those of us who were still around after the rout of the D-Backs.
This will give Giants fans a chance to speak to the country, as it were. One aspect of the Barry hatred over the years has been an additional dismissal of Giants fans as ostriches who refuse to believe our hero is dirty, or even worse, Giants fans as amoral douchebags who happily cheer for a cheater. The more this happens, the louder we cheer Barry. The All-Star Game will be our national soap box. When we cheer for him, we'll be cheering for our local fave. We'll also be thumbing our nose at the haters. We'll be giving the raspberry to all those who associate our fandom with the decline of civilization.
And it's worth nothing that we'll also be cheering for San Francisco. The Bay Area knows what the rest of the country thinks of us, knows that the Barry hatred that extends to the fans is also a hatred of what they think San Francisco stands for. When we cheer Barry on national television, we'll be saying fuck you to the haters. At that point, even the local bigots will be siding with the crazy diversity of the Bay ... we may have gay people and liberals and Marxist professors and medical marijuana, but by god, no one else is gonna tell us we suck!
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