No one is ever going to confuse me with someone who actually likes the Los Angeles Dodgers, but I will say that one of the perks of living in Southern California is the opportunity to hear Vin Scully’s voice on television—and in the Dodgers Stadium bathrooms. There are some other good play-by-play men in the game, but in my opinion, Scully has been the best. He has announced that he will likely retire from the booth at the end of next season. Here’s to hoping that the Dodgers will honor him with a fantastic farewell tour and a monument befitting the man whose voice, in the words of my wife, “Sounds like baseball.” She said that when she hears Scully’s voice, it feels like summertime.

Here’s a bit of trivia: with over 60 years of experience, Scully called many memorable moments, including a home run in the 1988 World Series that will not receive further mention here—may it long be forgotten. He was not only involved with baseball games, however. He called the 1982 NFC championship game for CBS that resulted in one of the greatest finishes in NFL history when San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Joe Montana rolled right, threw the ball to the back of the end zone, and Dwight Clark made “The Catch” against the Dallas Cowboys. So even if he worked for the hated Dodgers for six decades, Scully can’t be all that bad. Here is the that final drive with Scully’s play-by-play commentary.

We don’t have cable or satellite, so we had to get one of those converter boxes. The switch to the digital television signal has proven beneficial for this sports fan. I’m slowly falling in love with Universal Sports, a network of NBC that shows year-round the sports they usually only air during the Olympic Games. Normally, I have to wait four years to watch water polo on television, and even then, it’s usually aired for just a half an hour on a Saturday afternoon. Today I got to watch two whole matches from the World League on the Universal Sports network. Too bad the US lost in the bronze medal game. Still. Water polo! On a non-Olympic year! Huzzah! 5 meters and backhands and exclusions and drives galore!

Stumbling across perhaps the greatest ruling from an NFL penalty. It came from referee Ben Dreith in a 1986 game between the Jets and Bills. I don’t remember ever seeing it before. Enjoy the creativity and eloquence.

Michael Silver, writer for Yahoo! Sports has a nice column on the San Francisco 49ers new starting quarterback, J.T. O’Sullivan. Even though it’s been a while since I’ve given much attention to the NFL, the Niners are my team and what school did O’Sullivan play his college ball? UC Davis. Ah yeah, an Aggie leading the 49ers to victory. It doesn’t get much better than that for this sports fan. (Except for five Super Bowls in 15 years.)

61 years ago today, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. We’ve still got a long way to go, but thanks must go to Robinson and Dodgers president Branch Rickey for having the courage to move us forward.

Now that the Mitchell Report is out and available to read (you can view a PDF here and a fair summary of who gets named can be viewed here), we baseball fans have some serious thinking to do. My love of the game grew up and matured during an era when two of the greatest players of their generation—Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens—appear to have taken performance-enhancing drugs. I’m disgusted. I’m outraged.

Senator Mitchell is right, I believe, to lay blame across the board on players, owners, clubhouse officials, management, the union, the commissioner’s office, etc. The thing that makes me most upset, however, is that the people who may actually lose their jobs are those least in the spotlight. Yes, Clemens and Bonds may never sign new contracts—both are free agents—and their careers will end in ignominy. The memories of the careers of the former players named will be tainted. These are reasonable outcomes. Current players, however, with productive years left, such as Miguel Tejada (who won the AL MVP whilst playing on my team, the Oakland A’s in 2002) will continue playing and continue making mounds of cash even if their public image is marred. The management in the teams will likely stay the same, as will the leaders in the Players Association and the commissioner’s office. Some heads might roll, but these will be lower-level folks, like the clubhouse management.

Players cheated and management turned a blind eye. How in the world Bud Selig can be held partly responsible for this disgusting era and maintain his job as commissioner of baseball is far beyond me. Well, it’s not that beyond me mentally, but it is beyond me ethically. The revenues of baseball have expanded greatly under Selig’s watch, and that’s what matters to the business folks in the sport. Also, the commissioner is picked by the owners and Selig comes from the ranks of the owners. They’re not going to throw one of their own out to the wolves. Selig should resign. The owners need to choose a new commissioner who is not an owner of any team and whose interest is in the integrity and total well-being of the game, not primarily in the financial health alone. We need a Bartlett Giamatti. The leadership of the Players Association also needs to leave. Their charge is to represent and protect the players, but they sacrificed the good of the game in shielding their players from reasonable demands of accountability such as drug testing and consequences for failed tests.

I agree with Senator Mitchell that MLB needs better testing and stricter consequences. The most recent policy, while better than what existed before, is still horribly toothless. MLB ought to adopt the policy found in most international sports: a first positive test leads to a year-long suspension, and the second positive test leads to a lifetime suspension. Despite Selig’s claims yesterday, I doubt that until there is a change in leadership among both the owners and the players, that any major transformations in MLB’s drug policy will occur.

This controversy is worse than the pettiness of the strike of 1994. As of now, I will likely boycott MLB next season, which saddens me because I love the game. Living in Southern California has afforded me the first time in my life when I can see games in person at a reasonable cost and I try to go to several games each summer even though I despise both home teams here. My boycott will likely extend until I see significant changes in how MLB handles itself and the integrity of the game. I want to see a competitive, honest game, not professional wrestling run by greed.

Today, ESPN Radio is going to air Senator George Mitchell’s press conference on steroids in Major League Baseball live (2pm EST) and hours of commentary on the Mitchell Report afterwards. I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for years, but have held off on my indignation until they disclosed the Report’s findings. Shame on the players who cheated, the Players Association for defending the cheaters while they mocked the game, and the owners and Commissioner’s Office for allowing this crap to happen.

I’m reminded of the following interaction in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:

“Who is he anyhow—an actor?”

“No.”

“A dentist?”

“Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”

“Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated.

The idea staggered me. I remembered of course that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.

“He just saw the opportunity.”

Can we now agree that the Bowl Championship Series is just utterly ridiculous?

In case you were wondering, UC Davis beat Sacramento State in football last weekend 31-26. That makes eight straight Causeway Classics the Aggies have won. Go Ags!

A friend of mine called me last night with an offer to go to the Dodgers game on Thursday. I’ll go see a Major League Baseball game no matter what teams are involved, so it didn’t matter who the Dodgers were playing. It just so happens that the Dodgers will be playing the San Francisco Giants. As of this moment, Barry Bonds stands two home runs shy of owning the all-time home run record. I could conceivably see him tie or even break the record on Thursday—heck, the Dodgers gave up the record-breaking home run to Hank Aaron when he passed Babe Ruth in 1974. We’ll be sitting high in the left field bleachers, so the chances of us catching the home run are incredibly slim unless Bonds breaks his tendency and hits a deep, opposite field blast. But Bonds does play in left field, so I will get to bask in the creative and utterly foul heckling that only disenfranchised Raiders fans in the bleachers of Dodger Stadium can produce. I for one do believe that Bonds has broken the spirit of the rules of baseball and has taken performance enhancing drugs—people generally don’t grow two shoe sizes in their late thirties—so I am not a fan of him breaking this record. Aaron was and is pure class. Bonds, suffice it to say, is not. But if Bonds does break it, I’d like to be there.

Here is my question to you: if you were at the game, how would you respond to Bonds tying or breaking Aaron’s record?

1. Cheer wildly for Bonds, one of baseball’s greatest players breaking a monumental record.


2. Cheer wildly for the record, an historic feat that though perhaps not gained entirely fairly, is still a sizable achievement.


3. Clap politely with respect for the career of Bonds and/or the record.


4. Sit silently or turn your back on Bonds as he rounds the bases as a protest of contempt for someone who has no respect for the game and only sought personal glory.


5. Whenever Bonds comes to bat, leave the stands. (A kind of a further step of the previous option.)


6. Boo, cry to the heavens in lament, rip your clothes in shreds, bring a container of ashes, pour them on your seat, and sit in them for the rest of the game.


7. Moon Bonds, give him the finger, make such a spectacle that you get yourself thrown out of the game and banned from all future MLB games anywhere.


8. Other. Please describe.

My friend says he wants to bring a giant foam asterisk. I told him I would dig up a giant foam syringe or a giant foam medicinal tube. I doubt we’ll be able to find these items before Thursday night. Also, I’m an Oakland A’s fan so I have no love or loyalty to either the Giants or the Dodgers. My concern is more as a fan of the game and respect for its records. Unsavory characters have held all sorts of records in baseball, such as the all-time hits record. The last two men to have that record were Ty Cobb and Pete Rose—people who were both ugly marks on baseball. I’d still rather see men of good character succeed. Aaron is one of those men.

UPDATE: We didn’t witness history last night. Bonds went 1-2 and two walks. His hit was a single into right field in the second inning. After the Dodgers walked him in the seventh inning, the Giants pulled him for a pinch runner. The left field pavilion actually proved underwhelming. The fans were loud and incessantly heckled Bonds when he was on defense, but the jeers were generally uncreative. Lots insults calling him a cheater, chants of “ster-oids, ster-oids,” several BALCO statements, but nothing all that original. Aside from seeing a couple fans entering the stadium wearing lab coats with BALCO references, the one truly creative piece of heckling I saw was an inflatable syringe with muscular arms wearing Bond’s number, 25. Of course security removed this item, but not as quickly as you might think. Giants fans received a lot of grief, and that is to be expected because of the rivalry between the Dodgers and the Giants, but I wish Los Angeles fans would find some more interesting and original insult than calling any San Francisco fan some version of a homosexual epithet. That stereotype was old twenty years ago. One unintentionally funny statement came when a fan made an attempt at eloquence when he said in response to something his friend yelled to Bonds, “Sorry Barry, he went too far. On behalf of myself, I would like to apologize.” I think the intention was to apologize on behalf of his friend. It reminded me of Mrs. Slocombe’s repeated declaration, “And I am unanimous in this!” in Are You Being Served? (I bet you didn’t think I would drop a 1970’s British sitcom reference in a post on baseball, did you?) I thought the fans did a better job heckling Colorado Rockies’ left fielder Matt Holliday last year as he was just starting to make a name for himself. The Dodgers fans didn’t know who Holliday was from Adam, which forced them to be creative in their insults.