I do not plan to ramble on about the Giants in all their glory too obsessively in this blog.  Truth is, there might not be much to say this year.  But I think that it is appropriate to start my relationship with the forum by making an effort to come to terms with another.  I read this article from espn.com this morning, describing how Giants management plans to scour AT&T Park of nearly all things Bonds before the beginning of the 2008 regular season.  As a rule, I don’t read much about the Bonds saga these days—for the most part, I know how I feel about Bonds, and about him being indicted.  And at the very least, I don’t want someone else telling me how to feel about it.  But I think that the way that the club and the fans treat the new era of Giants baseball will be extremely interesting. 

When we were growing up, and even when we were in high school, we ignored the critics.  PacBell was “The House that Barry Built.”  He was our Babe—perhaps a bit snarky or standoffish at times, but plenty of ballplayers have flaws (see Brett Myers).  In particular, I remember a Page 2 article from some time ago describing San Francisco’s love for Barry as that of a sibling or relative of some kind.  Sure, they might make regrettable mistakes.  But that doesn’t mean that you all of a sudden resent them or disown them, because you’ve already built a relationship based on all of the good things that you’ve shared previously.  At this point, I willingly admit that there is no doubt that Barry used performance-enhancing drugs.  But who’s to say that our guy has to be saddled with more of the blame than anyone else’s?  Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. 

This is all getting away from the original thrust of the piece, which has to do with removing Barry from the park.  What exactly is the organization trying to say?  I agree that, from a baseball perspective, we need to move on and invest in young players to be competitive later (hopefully not too much later).  And I don’t care what this kind of thing might mean for the relationship between the organization and Barry himself.  But it seems pretty clear that the Giants simply used him and his record to sell us the fans tickets, but now that we spent our money, want to act like it never happened.  Dodgers fans, among others, have said that my memories aren’t real, but now the Giants themselves?  Should we really be running from Barry as fast as we can, and even if we do, will we get anywhere? 

It makes me feel like the Giants, and for that matter all of baseball (at this point, I think the place to point fingers is at an era, rather than individual players) need some kind of truth and reconciliation commission: “if you admit that your favorite player was wrong and that your world series-winning team had many steroid-using players, you are allowed to keep believing”.  In college, I took a Spanish literature course titled “Memory and Identity,” which dealt with much of the Spanish people’s current attempt to simply live as though the era of Fascist regime under Francisco Franco, and what that meant.  What I remember from the course is that, above everything else, this is a complicated issue.  It’s great to be able to deal with something like this head on, but what if that means perpetual vendetta a la Grangerford-Shepherdson?  Are we dealing with this issue in baseball?  Sure there are absurd congressional hearings, but what about the actual relationship between the fans, players, and owners?  Baseball as a body has never said “I’m sorry”—what seems to be the most common response is one not dissimilar to what the Giants are doing now.  That is, sweeping it under the proverbial rug.

But in reality, SBC is the House that Bonds Built, regardless of whether or not, in retrospect, anybody likes it.  Even as people condemn players for using performance-enhancing drugs and question the legitimacy of individual stats, I have heard almost no one calling for World Series titles rescinded or money returned by either players or owners.  It seems to me that we can’t have it both ways while and maintain a straight face.  There is no doubt that baseball needs to fight against steroid use, among other things (which I’m sure to touch upon in future pieces), to promote fair play.  But baseball needs to either fess up to both actively and passively acquiescing as steroids became pandemic for a period of baseball history, or it needs to stop scapegoating a limited few players, which in my mind only insults our collective intelligence as fans.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 1:27 am and is filed under Barry Bonds, Giants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.