SB Nation User Blog: oneflapdown

Baseball when you were a kid

oneflapdown — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:24:49 -0000

As thrilled as I still am about last night, all of this has made me nostalgic for the baseball days of my childhood years, the stuff of fathers and sons. It's the good stuff, and the not-as-good stuff, that gets churned up every time "Field of Dreams" is on TV, and every time Barry swings and connects.

I'm curious to hear some of your memories as well, especially as a Giants fan who grew up on the East Coast and did not have as geographically close a connection with the team as many of you did.

And a big tip o' the hat to Baron and her awesome post for bringing some of this back to me.

The good:

*I miss Will Clark, the "Nuschler" as Krukow dubbed his game face, and everything about the way he played. I'm a righty, but I learned to swing the bat left-handed so I could imitate his swing. I had an album containing hundreds of Clark, Mitchell, Williams, and (later) Bonds cards. He is the only athlete I've ever truly idolized, I supposed mostly because he came along at exactly the right time.

*Every summer my family would stay for a couple of weeks at my grandmother's house in suburban Philly, and we always timed it to coincide with the Giants' series against the Phillies. And every summer, while the others headed for the shore, my dad and I would go to the concrete soup can of Veterans Stadium to watch the Giants. The best seats we ever had were wasted on Terry Mulholland's no-hitter (when he was a Phillie, of course, not during one of his 17 stints with the Giants).

*On one of those trips to the Vet, my dad and I got there really early and hung out by the players entrance to try to meet a Giant, any Giant, and we would have settled for a Phillie, I guess. But we met Harry Kalas, and he was such a classy guy, and extremely nice to me, and as a 9 year-old wearing nothing but orange and black, I thought that was pretty damned cool.

*I remember breaking an overhead light in our kitchen when I jumped up to celebrate (of all things) a JT Snow home run.

*When I was in elementary and high school, my Dad used to leave Giants updates for me on the bathroom sink ("The Hand SportsTicker," as he called it- Hand being our last name) to fill me in on stuff that happened late the night before. Don't ask me why, but the one I'll always remember is "THE GIANTS SIGN WILLIE MCGEE!"

The not-as-good:

*In 1987, Jose Oquendo made me cry.

*On an early July morning in 1993, I was watching "SportsCenter" and they showed the win/loss record the Braves would have to have for the rest of that season to catch the Giants, assuming the Giants played at a certain winning percentage. I literally said, out loud, "Yeah, right."

*That Mulholland no-hitter.

*The entire '96 season. My senior year in high school, and the lamest Giants season of which I've ever been fully cognizant, and that includes the season in which we currently find ourselves.

I'm leaving a lot out. Thanks for indulging me. What say you?

ESPN and Bonds

oneflapdown — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:51:54 -0000

ESPN's anti-Bonds bias is, I think (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), well-documented and well-known by the McCoven.

From Karl Ravech openly pulling for A-Rod to break the career HR mark Bonds doesn't even hold yet so that it's more "pure" (no link or video, but I saw this on "Baseball Tonight" with my own eyes), to the current asterisked cover of ESPN: The Magazine, to the plague that is the ongoing Pedro Gomez commentary, ESPN has made their feelings on Bonds crystal clear.

But this article by Wayne Drehs (currently front-paged on ESPN.com), ostensibly about the security personnel who guard Bonds during games, is the closest I think ESPN has come to actually wishing someone would take action to stop Bonds's pursuit of 755.

Okay, so maybe I'm overreacting. But (after comparing a potential attack on Bonds to the Robert DeNiro character stalking Wesley Snipes in The Fan), did Drehs really have to include this line:

"So, as it pertains to Bonds, could life horrifically imitate art? Nobody knows."

I have mixed feelings about Bonds and the allegations and all of that, but I am increasingly annoyed with the way ESPN has covered his career, and this Drehs column goes just a bit too far as far as I'm concerned.

Someone please shoot me down if I'm way off here.

An alternate, totally irrelevant universe

oneflapdown — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:53:03 -0000

Okay, so I am officially looking forward to football season.

I love the Giants, and I always will, and as much as I'll bitch and moan about how much they suck this year, I know I'll still soak up every minute of their games that I can catch on TV (I live on the East Coast).

But, having said that... I prefer the Giants that are in the World Series. This year.

I speak, of course, of the Giants of EA's MVP 2005.

These are the bizarro Giants, the Giants where...

... Noah Lowry just pitched a perfect game in Game 2 of the World Series against, of all frigging teams, the Anaheim/Los Angeles/Hollywood/Springfield/Quahog/Mudville Angels.

... In the same game, Jason Ellison went 3-for-4 and was a homer shy of the cycle.

... Merkin Valdez is in the starting lineup right now, and went 13-4.

... Their record was 114-48.

... Kirk Rueter was released before the season started. Presumably, he was either put on a bus out of town, or hit by one.

Of course, these Giants also have a budget of $128 million, Todd Helton playing first, and Ichiro (who hit 40 triples) playing in right.