Seven Reasons Why The Giants Should Sign Melky Cabrera And Three Why They Probably Won’t By Bill Morgan The Big Question: Should the Giants invite Melky Cabrera back to play in the postseason this year and/or should they sign him to play in 2013? The pluses for such a move are several: 1. Without him, the Giants have run away with their division against a good Dodger team that pulled off the trade of the year. Now, imagine Pagan, Scutero, The Panda, MVP candidate Posey, Pence, & company plus Melky? That’s offense! 2. His stats were very, very good. He has a good chance to be the NL batting champ; out of 113 games played, he had 52 multi-hit games; he runs and fields very well. 3. Melky’s former hitting coach, one D. Mattingly, asked if he was surprised at Cabrera’s breakout year, responded, "Not at all… I thought he was going to get better. I saw what he did in Kansas City. It wasn’t off the charts or anything.” So what if he’s only a 200-hit, .305 guy like he was at KC last year? I’ll take that in a minute! 4. The Giants took Guillermo Mota back after his second offense. This is Melky’s first, and his value to the team as a day-to-day player would be much greater than Mota’s. 5. He did a dumb, selfish thing, but he paid for it by losing his livelihood for 50 games. Under the rules, he’s eligible to play now like anyone else. He’ll be under a magnifying glass and probably wouldn’t even think about taking anything – cough medicine included - again. 6. The fans love him and would take him back with open arms. 7. The Giants could sign an All-Star MVP, a possible batting champ, for peanuts on the dollar. This fact alone should convince Sabean, Baer, and the money boys. But it probably won’t. For one, the Giants are sensitive to the charge that they are at the center of the ongoing Juice scandal. Five of their players have been busted. Only Seattle has had more. Victor Conte had a disturbingly close relationship with the team. Any hint that they are “soft on steroids” would reflect badly. Sabean has been known for his gut reactions. Remember his comments after the Posey - Cousins collision? Scribes close to the team have reported that Sabean is furious with Cabrera for betraying the team and its chances to make the postseason. Mike Krukow, one of the Giants’ broadcasters, remarked, “He never addressed the team, and it pissed them off.” So, taking Melky back might compromise the team’s chemistry, which is one of the Giants’ biggest assets. The worst, though, is the comic-book episode that took place after the failed drug tests. “See, this company lied online about the testosterone level in its product and Melky was taken in…” Yeah, sure. It was a cheap trick and severely undercuts his apology and confession. But forgive him, I say. It wouldn’t be easy for him to come back, nor should it be. He would need to openly and honestly address his teammates and ask their forgiveness. He would need to convince Sabean and all the front-office skeptics that he’s truly contrite. Will that happen? Probably not. But he would sure look good back in that #3 hole.

The Fan's Game 3

Baseball is about character. It couldn’t be about anything else and remain so popular for so long. Sure, we admire expertise and we root for our team. But in the long run, fans are theatergoers, and the thing that attracts us, like any theatergoers, is the revelation of character. Within the confines of that visible sliver of a players’ life that we see, day after day on the field, fans decide that a given player, beyond his mere ability, is “reliable,” or a “hot dog,” One is an “example for our youth,” while another is a “head case,” a “malcontent,” or, worst of all, a “choke up.” To the discerning fan, numbers are just the beginning. It is character that counts – what we call a player’s “game.”

For example: Most fans, even casual ones, know who Willie McCovey is. Hall of Famer. 500-plus homeruns. Holds the NL record for grand slam homers. But among these ciphers and trivia-game answers, there is a deeper reality. Yes, McCovey won the NL Rookie of the Year Award playing barely two-thirds of the 1959 season. But in 1960, he was a bust. His homers fell off sharply. His average dove into the low .200s. He would overswing on off-speed stuff and chase bad pitches. He was a poor baserunner, and an indifferent fielder.

 Worse, he was a tall, gangly, African-American man with a southern accent who fit the racist stereotype that many white fans still harbored. The Giants, under manager Alvin Dark, were not so secretly known in some Bay Area venues as “Dark’s Darkies.” Besides, he was booed and ridiculed, and – finally – sent down to the minors.

Baseball history is filled with players, who do well until – inevitably - their weaknesses are discovered in the glare of everyday play. Most are never heard from again. It seemed to many that McCovey was, after all, one of these. But fast forward ahead to 1965. I attended a night game, Giants against the Cincinnati Reds. In this quite remarkable game I saw McCovey:

1)   Bunt for a base hit

2)   Take second on a grounder which he expertly punched through an overshifted defense.

3)   Steal second on a delayed steal with an expert slide.

By now, he was laying off the high pitch. Twice, he led the league in walks. Defensively, he made all the routine plays and many of the very difficult ones. For several years, along with people named Aaron and Mays, he was the NL’s most feared slugger. He had worked, and worked hard, to repair his shortcomings and fill the holes in his “game.”

And it is the fan's game to notice such things, to look beyond the numbers and see the person and those indications of humanity, of character reflected in the game.

4-18 Giants 1, Phillies 0

April 18 –
Baseball at its best: a warm April night, and two ace pitchers working against one another. Matt Cain of the Giants against the redoubtable Cliff Lee of the Phillies. The Giants had a chance in the first, runners on 1st and 3rd and no one out. Forget it. They blew the chance with the first of four double plays, and Lee settled in. He threw ten scoreless innings and didn’t break 100 pitches. He was at his very best, didn’t walk a man. He threw a slow curve – changeup thing that made several Giant’s’ batters, Posey and Sandoval among them, look downright foolish. He mixed in a 90-91 fastball. He threw grounders when he needed to. One of the few good swings the Giants had was Pill’s double in the sixth. A “there-is-no-better-lefty” game. Many who were in the park will never in their lives see a better pitching performance.
For his part, Cain was magnificent, if more workmanlike. No longer the hard-luck fireballer of years past, he has turned into a young vet, changing speeds and moving the ball around like a master, but always backing it up with a plus 90 fastball and matching slider. He took over from where he left off after one-hitting Pittsburgh, and now has allowed only 3 hits in 18 innings. After his ninth, an entire stadium rose up and cheered like hell when he left the field. The Phillies did get a couple of hard knocks, especially in the fourth, and later when Pence and a “homer anywhere else” fly ball that Shierholz ran down. Apart from that it was flies and grounders and excellent defensive plays. If only Crawford would begin to hit! He made several difficult plays to keep the mares off the board.
Sure, my Philly friend says, no Howard, no Utley. But also no Wilson, no Sanchez.
It was defense that finally did them in. Bastardo pitched well, but gave up a soft-liner single to Belt, and had Victorino mishandle Pagan’s hard grounder. With runners on first and second, Cabrera lined a single to right to end the evening. This was an important game, because Philadelphia is again the team to beat in the National League, and the Giants with this win took the first season series between the clubs. But more important, it was a staring contest, will against will, and the Phillies blinked first. The Giants matched their best pitcher zero for zero, defense against defense, bullpen vs. bull pen, and the Giants won. Sure it’s early, it don’t mean nothin’. But it does. Both teams know it does.
And games like this build that magic that the Giants had a year and a half ago.

The Fan's Game

Baseball's Drug Problem

"We went through a real difficult time in 1994, with the strike," Towers told ESPN. "Then some amazing things happened. Home runs were up. Fans were flocking to ballparks, lining up to watch batting practice. But we all realized that there were things going on within the game that were affecting the integrity of the game. I think we all knew it, but we didn't say anything about it."

"I hate to be the one voice for the other 29 GMs, but I'd have to imagine that all of them, at one point or other, had reason to think that a player on their ballclub was probably using, based on body changes and things that happened over the winter."
-Padres General Manager Kevin Towers

No one seriously condones the use of performance enhancers of any kind in professional sports. The whole point of the thing is to see who is better that day, based on practice, dedication, teamwork, luck, and the other fundamentals that go into a game. The reasons for this are quite intriguing. The main reason of course, is to have something to bet on. No one wants to lose money on a bet that turned out to be crooked. Besides, people get personally attached to that kind of theater we call sport. They root for their home teams or their favorite players. The relationship is, strangely, often a very strong one.

So players have used steroids. can anyone deny it? And baseball's hands are dirty. Didn't know? Between 1901 and 1997, players hit sixty home runs in a season exactly twice. Ruth and Maris. From 1998 to 2007, it happened eight times, and one player - Sosa - did it three times. Players hit 50 or more home runs 23 times between 1901 and 1997; from 1998 to 2007, they did it 18 times. Players have been quoted saying that parks are smaller and the ball is harder. You could also say that the strike zone was squeezed, so hitter saw many more fat pitches than before, as pitchers were forced to groove pitches to get strikes. so, maybe steroids were just one of several factors in the homer boom.

At his point, baseball's official reaction has been a lot of handwringing, scapegoating, and hoping- it'll - go - away. Bonds and Palmiero and Clemens, among many others, are blamed. We watch as their stories fall apart and it's bad because baseball is about character. It couldn't be about anything else and be so resilient. So when players lie to reporters, they are lying to us, as well.

Where does it all come from? Is it just a bunch of players who want to get rich and get famous? Of course not. The truth is, as Kevin Towers says, management and administration knew about the problem. The truth is, baseball owners have always manipulated the game to make more money. In this case, a players' strike had caused a dip in attendance. The solution? More home runs. And steroids were part of that strategy.

It had happened before. After the famous scandal when the White Sox threw the 1919 World Series, owners went to the homerun for salvation. They outlawed the spitball and other variations - the "shine"ball, the emery ball, and all the rest, and they provided for clean balls to be regularly introduced into the game - all to cut down on the advantages that pitchers enjoyed. It happened again in 1968, when dominant pitchers like Bob Gibson and Denny McLain shattered records, Yastrezmski won the batting title with .301, and the collective ERA in both leagues was below 3. At that point, the owners lowered the mound and squeezed the strike zone, as they did in '98, to the point where, as one pundit observed, the strike zone is "from a point just above the belt to a point just below the belt."

There are other examples as well: keeping black and Latin players out of baseball (when 3/4 of active players indicated that they had no objection); rigging the salary schedule and blackballing activist ballplayers; colluding in the 80s to prevent expensive bidding wars, etc. The game and its structure have always been manipulated by and for the owners, and the recent steroids scandal is no exception. Baseball's favorite drug is not steroids, or cocaine, or even liquor - it is money.