Giants/Phils Preview

Sort of a big series coming up.

Tim Alderson will probably not have the career we (meaning Giants fans) wanted him to 24 hours ago, but I am really surprised we couldn't get more for him than a guy with a career .336 OBP.

I don't hate Sanchez; in the context of the current NL, there really aren't that many better 2B. 

But I thought we could get an actual bat for Alderson.

Phils come in for 4.  Here's how it sets up:

Lincecum, shockingly, has good success against the Phils (Howard 2-9, Rollins 1-11, Utley 2-11, Victorino 4-15). 

They haven't seen Sadowski and there aren't many ABs against Sanchez.  Feliz is 3-12 against Zito, Ibanez 8-47, but Rollins is 4-10 and Utley's 3-5. 

The other way - you know who's had good success against Blanton is Garko - 5-14, 3 bombs.  Winn's 3-10 with 4 walks. Molina however is 2-15 and Uribe's 1-7. 

Molina also hasn't hit Chad Durbin, 1-8, but Uribe's 4-10.  Scott Eyre comes back to the Bay; Edgar is 4-5 against him.  I don't know what they'll do with their rotation, who we'll miss and who sits with Lee coming in - but who it would have been nice to have against Hamels might be Richie, he's 5-12 lifetime.  Renteria and Winn are both 3-14.  Edgar's 4-14 against Lee; Rowand (when's he back?) is 6-22.  Winn (yikes!) should maybe sit against Lee, he's 2-19. Uribe however is 10-35 with 2 homers.  Renteria's never hit Lidge, he's 3-14.  Lopez goes tonight - maybe Molina should sit for Whiteside - he's 1-15 career and Renteria should join hin, he's 2-16 while Uribe's 3-8.  Winn's 2-14.  Lopez is maybe not our best matchup.

We've hit Madson a little bit.  Renteria's 4-9 and Winn's 3-8.  Winn's almost the only guy you want against Moyer (doesn't it seem like the Jamie Moyer's always mean a 6 hit shutout?) Aurilia's 1-12, Molina's 11-48, Renteria's 3-13, Uribe's 2-17.  But Winn is 10-25 and Rowand's 7-18. 

I'd take a split.  Go Giants.     

Repost: The Michael Jackson Blogs

(Michael Jackson died.  I wrote about it at the other place.)

Here's what would have been great to hear from the Governor of South Carolina, somewhere in his litany of apologies to dudes named Cubby:

I've done a lot of moralizing in the past; I voted to impeach Bill Clinton, I said that lying within a marriage broke God's law; I explicitly campaigned as upholding Christian values - maybe I shouldn't have done any of that, not because I failed to live up to those beliefs, but because the connection between those beliefs and good government is tenuous. The truth is people can completely botch their personal lives and still be good at their jobs. In fact, most titans of public life have had disasterous patches that just went unexplored in earlier times. The combination of the media's neverblinking eye and our choice to hurl incredible invective has turned personal shortcomings into scarlet letters.


These are challenging times for the United States, and perhaps we need a paradigm shift. It could start today. I had sex with a woman who wasn't my wife. I don't think it's any of your business. Who I have sex with doesn't in any way impact how I do my job. I shouldn't have gone missing the past couple of days, but I needed a vacation anyway. You take days off. So do I.


And just like who I sleep with isn't any of your business - who you sleep with isn't any of mine. I've opposed gay marriage, and people of my political sensibility have long opposed attempts to end discrimination against homosexuals in the same way that, under the color of states rights, we used to stand in the way of attempts to end discrimination based on race.


Life is short. And often ugly. One day you stand triumphantly, the biggest celebrity in the world, the next you're on TMZ, being carried out of your house on a gurney, dead at 50 years old. We all triumph. We all fail. We all love. We all hurt. We should stop condemning each other and instead just support each other when we can and leave each other alone otherwise.


In debates about the morality of homosexuality, mainstream media permits as viable biblical passages that condemn those acts as an abomination. It is to my advantage that pundits will not be allowed on Fox News or CNN tonight to serious argue that I should be stoned for having committed adultery, as is commanded by Leviticus. It is time that we stop acting like a theocracy. We are not Iran; we are not to be governed by anyone's superstition. Not yours. Not mine.


I am committing myself to the following principle - my personal life belongs to me and yours belongs to you. When we come together as a society, in public life, we will do so in a way that is mutually supportive and minimally intrusive.


I have been wrong and I apologize. Not to my wife; I will apologize to her in private, because our relationship has nothing whatsoever to do with you. I have been wrong in much of my legislative history and political rhetoric. I will support measures to end discriminations based on who one chooses to love. I will immediately stop the drumbeat that my personal religious views should be yours and should guide the way our country is governed. I would not want to be treated in the fashion that my governance has treated others.


Something like that.

Dying is the best thing that could have happened to Michael Jackson, at least from a legacy perspective, and it would have been better had he died in 1992.

But it's not too late, the folksinger Dan Bern in "Too Late to Die Young" sings:

the day that Elvis died it was like a mercy killing


America breathed a sigh of relief

Elvis wasn't Elvis anymore in 1977; he was a joke and only a joke, a Hollywood Squares punch line; he was sideburns and percocet and flexible waistband jumpsuits. His career arc wasn't going to improve; age would have just given him more time to devalue his brand.

Like Brett Favre.

But fast forward 20 years - and Elvis gets to be all things to all people. He can be young, hip swiveling Elvis, he can be on postage stamps, he can have pilgrimages to Graceland. He's transcended his immediate circumstance of 1977 and the full flavor of his life can be viewed in broader context.

(and commodified, of course, Elvis is less person than product, he's Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse, more myth than man, but he only gets to be that guy 'cause he'd dead.)

Michael Jackson's gonna get to be that guy, I think. Not today, 'cause he didn't die in 1992, he died yesterday, and for the past 15 years he's been more freak than star, his brand eroded largely at his own hand. Anyone younger than 30 sees Jackson far more as sideshow than superstar.

But that's gonna change. And it'll happen quicker than you think. Something struck me few months ago while watching American Idol; they did a Michael Jackson theme week; the most watched tv show in the US spent 2 hours doing nothing but singing Michael Jackson songs. Apparently, Fox is going to repeat this Monday.

What struck me was how it wasn't about pedophilia; Fox made a corporate decision that, in 2009, Michael Jackson's personal sins didn't overtake his professional merit. Absent a litany of highly disseminated and widely believed new information that comes out now - the summer of 2009 will be the worst it gets, the low ebb going forward, for Jackson's persona.

Consider this - ESPN didn't do a 2 hour tribute to OJ Simpson last year. His football accomplishments have been subsumed by the homicides. But Jackson still got to be Jackson to enough of an extent for the American Idol tribute.

And like Elvis, as we get further away from today, Jackson gets to be young again. He can be Jackson 5 Michael and the Wiz Michael and Off the Wall Michael and moonwalking Michael. The full flourish of his accomplishments gets to be viewed, and when there's money to be made, he can be mythologized, the sins receding in our public memory.

Michael Jackson was done. Broke. Headed toward a diasterous and probably truncated comeback tour. All that was left for him were drugs and the Vegas shows, and when he died, there wouldn't be anything that looked like grief.

But not anymore. Now he gets to be Michael Jackson again.

I mean, he doesn't care. He's dead.

But we get him back.  There's shit to buy, after all.  And when there's buying to be done, we'll be there. 

William Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy is the most influential work to come out of the "Wisconsin school" of American historical interpretation; his narrative of United States as empire is the pivotal work done in New Left historiography. His work has been re-released in honor of its 50th anniversary. Williams's view that essentially, while imperalist, the American establishment has largely been motivated by a genuine belief that American global economic and military domination was good for the world - that the US was building the globe's first beneficent empire was considered radical, dangerous, and sympathetic to communism when it was first published (and that was by the liberals like Arthur Schlesinger), but now seems overly generous in light of the past two and a half decades. It's worth noting that the thesis of US as empire was considered incendiary when published in 1959, but barely more than a year later the outgoing Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, coined the term "military industrial complex" in his farewell address; Ike warning that the amount of potential profit to be made by the defense industry would make war economically desirable to corporate America in future generations. Read that speech sometime; if Obama gave that speech he would be burned in effigy on Fox News.
Michael Jackson was the King of Pop.

Here are the Top 10 Michael Jackson songs or passages from The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
10. "I'll Be There"
-An upset in its relatively low ranking, partially owing to my disinclination to like kid singers, partially because there's a law of diminishing returns with this song and I just have heard it as many times as I need to.

9. "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough"
-Disco Michael is historically underrated - and Don't Stop had cowbell, the most magnificent of all the bovine instruments.

8. History is a mirror in which, if we are honest enough, we can see ourselves as we are as well as the way we would like to be.

7. It is only by abandoning the cliches that we can even define the tragedy. When we have done that, we will no longer be acquiescing in the deadly inertia of the past...realism goes nowhere unless it starts at home.

6. "Rock With You"
-When you consider Don't Stop... and not on this list but still dancetastic Workin' Day and Night, my vote goes to Off the Wall as best Jackson album.

5. "Smooth Criminal"
-Is this song on my Blackberry? Yes. Was it there before last Thursday? Yes? I want to know if Annie is going to be okay and I'm unashamed to admit it. Bad's underappreciated; I underappreciated it - at the time it was just snowed under by all of the hype; Michael was the biggest star in the world in 1983, to a level that's hard to communicate in a world where everyone's entertainment options are so personalized; Thriller was just so ridiculously massive that the expectations for the follow couldn't possibly be met. They weren't met, but Smooth Criminal and Dirty Diana and The Way You Make Me Feel would all be on my list of 20 best MJ tracks. So, by the way, speaking of underappreciated Jackson tracks, would be "State of Shock."

4. Here is a primary source of America's troubles in its economic relations with the rest of the world. For in expanding its own economic system throughout much of the world, America has made it very difficult for other nations to retain any economic independence...American corporations exercise very extensive authority, and even commanding power in the political economy of {developing} nations. Unfortunately, there is an even more troublesome factor in the economic aspect of American foreign policy. That is the firm conviction, even dogmatic belief, that America's domestic well-being depends upon sustained, ever-increasing overseas economic expansion. Here is a convergence of economic practice with intellectual analysis and emotional involvement that creates a dangerous propensity to define the essentials of American welfare in terms of activities outside the United States. Chamone.  (that one turned into sort of a blend).

3. "Who's Lovin' You"
-This contradicts my previous claim to dislike songs by children, as the Jackson 5 version of this Smoky Robinson song was released 40 years ago when Michael was 11 - but my predispostion toward disliking this kind of thing should be testament to how ridiculously great it is. Michael Jackson was a prodigy. Like Jodie Foster and Alexander the Great.

2. {The belief in required overseas expansion} is dangerous for two reasons. First, it leads to an indifference toward, or a neglect of, internal developments...And second, this strong tendency to externalize the sources or causes of good things leads naturally enough to an even greater inclination to explain the lack of good life by blaming it on foreign individuals, groups, and nations. This kind of externalizing evil serves not only to antagonize the outsiders, but further intensify the American determination to make them over in the proper manner or simply push them out of the way.

1. Billie Jean

Another One on Professor Gates

Over the weekend I wrote about Henry Louis Gates. I shouldn't be, given that I did just hear a US Senator do a Ricky Ricardo impression during the confirmation hearings of the first Hispanic ever nominated for the US Supreme Court, but I've been surprised by the degree of apologizing that seemingly moderate thinking people are doing for the behavior of the police. Hell, apologizing is too weak - I just heard Chicago attorney Lester Munson on Dan LeBatard's Miami radio show essentially say that Gates was uppity.

He had met Gates; Gates had that "Harvard arrogance" and he could see a scenario where that arrogance could have manifested into arrest being reasonable in this circumstances.

Honestly - and this tells you how far I am from the current "everyone's a little at fault" view that we've settled on as a society about this - if Gates had cut a full on Rocky III promo, said that he would find the cop's wife and show her what a real man was like, that still wouldn't give rise to an arrest in a free society (note, that's different than saying people aren't arrested in circumstances like Gates - although prominent white people aren't - and it's different than saying disorderly conduct doesn't provide legal cover for the actions of that cop and cops all over this country - I'm talking about a free society, not the United States of America in 2009 which jails its citizens at a rate higher than any industrialized nation in the history of mankind).

I'm not sure, absent an actual threat, if there's any pure speech that should give rise to being arrested in this factual circumstance. Students of mine want to go the other way - I keep hearing the same refrain "you shouldn't talk back to a cop - what do you expect the cop to do?"

Which is good practical advice - but what does that have to do with law?

I find myself in the curious position of agreeing with, of all people, Tucker Carlson (except for his version of the uppity black guy slur that starts this quote) from today's Washington Post:


So I wasn't surprised by what happened in Cambridge. Yes, Gates is a self-righteous whiner who probably cries racism every time he gets the wrong order at Starbucks. What happened to him likely had little to do with race, but it's still appalling. His crime? Failing to be polite to a policeman. Except that's not a crime, or shouldn't be, and the rest of us ought to do all we can to make sure it doesn't become one.

The police are not law. They serve the public. We deify power in this country - to "talk back" to authority - even if you're a Harvard professor (maybe especially if you are a Harvard professor) means you are stepping out of line. Stepping out of place. Carlson is right - you don't have to be nice to the police.

You don't have to be nice to anyone.

Maybe you should be. Maybe it's wise or decent or will keep your train running on time.

But the penalty for rudeness is not arrest. You should not be arrested for yelling "do you know who I am" to a cop. This is not a police state. This is the United States of America. We don't pull people out of their homes in handcuffs for saying unkind things to police.

Has everyone gone mad?

Next we'll have the government reading our emails and listening to our phone calls and holding suspects for years without charge and torturing prisoners and...

Huh.

Authoritarianism is our civic religion.

War - torture - the death penalty - domestic surveilance - abuse of police power -

How much of our civic discussion is really a discussion about power - about authority - about bowing down before the man? How much of the political stances taken by people can be cleaved into muscular terms?

I learned as a very young person that to be pro gay rights meant I'd be labeled as unmanly, as soft - saying "gays are people too" in 1986 would get you looked at as if you were weak, soft.

The same reaction, literally, exactly so - was how my anti-death penalty stance, was my anti police abuse stance - my anti-war stance - was framed.

Liberal positions have been put in this box as insufficiently tough - from torture to animal rights, from Iraq to Cambridge - you either line up with the powerful, either line up with principles of muscularity or you are labeled as feminine, as insufficiently hard minded, as fragile, as effete.

I don't know what to do with that; if our love of authoritarianism is a symbol of patriarchy and/or how much of that, how much of that is our attempt to grab some control in our "lives of quiet desparation" to quote Thoreau. I don't know how much of that patriarchy relates to the version of Christianity, the "my god is bigger than your god" version that holds so much sway in the US (as opposed to the sandal wearing, prince of peace version - I can't tell you which reading is superior, that's inside baseball stuff and I don't play on that field).

But I do know that throughout my life I have felt the same sort of "what are you, a fag" response whether I was opposing the death penalty or opposing beating dogs or in favor of the exclusionary rule or the equal rights amendment. There is an authoritarianism strain in American civic life on which I'm just never going to sign off.

I don't know what role race played in Professor Gates's getting taken off his front porch in handcuffs, but this need to worship at the altar of authority certainly plays a role in our reaction to it.

(Tuesday, Glenn Beck said that Obama's reaction to Gates demonstrates his "deep seated hatred of white people".  My reaction to Gates is stronger than is Obama's.  Does that mean I have a deep seated hatred of white people?  And why aren't we talking about how the Republicans - considering Sotamayor, considering the birther movement - are playing the race card?  When it's Johnny Cochran defending OJ Simpson, we derisively throw the phrase race card around.  When it's a black activist like Al Sharpton weighing in on an issue - we say he's injecting race into another issue again.  But Glenn Beck just said the President of the United States hates white people and....and what?)

Repost - The Mickey Rourke Blog

(Pete Rose is being considered for reinstatement, apparently at the prodding of Hank Aaron, who also said those implicated in the steroid scandal should have asterisks in the record books. Yesterday's repost was the Mike Vick piece, which also included steroid talk. I figure it's time to start with the steroid reposts. So, here's one.)

When I'm a wrestler, I behave as a wrestler.

That was Mickey Rourke responding to a Men's Journal question if he used steroids to aid in his nearly 40 pounds of muscle weight gain for his role in The Wrestler.

I don't know if, as non-denial denials go, that puts Rourke in the same category with Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past," but adults can look at the rapid change in middle aged Rourke's physique and comfortably speculate about how much flaxseed oil he had to inject to make that happen.

So, what am I not understanding?

I mean, I assume that, if Rourke took some steroid it wasn't done by happenstance; he didn't find it mixed in with the chocolate syrup on Kim Basinger's ass in some unfortunate 21st century sequel to 9 1/2 Weeks. I assume if he took steroids for a film role it was for cosmetic purposes, for purposes of authenticity, to better enable him to train and recover for an athletically demanding role. I assume that, if Rourke took some steroids that was a step beyond which some other actors, had they had a chance at this part, would have taken. I assume that the widespread acclaim, the career rejuvination which Rourke has received will translate not only to awards but to dollars. I assume this will be a lesson not lost on young actors, actors hoping to emulate Mickey Rourke - acting is as highly a competitive marketplace as exists; every now and again you'll read that the average yearly acting income for someone with a SAG card is like 6 grand - actors will do virtually anything to scratch and crawl their way into exactly the position in which Mickey Rourke has found himself, a position solely existing because of the authenticity of his protrayal of a professional wrestler.

So, what am I not understanding?

I turn on the TV, I read the entertainment magazines - and I see Mickey Rourke showered with acclaim for his work in this film. It's a rebirth, a rejuvination - he tells jokes on the talk shows, he's given the full star treatment by the celebrity journalists, and he won the Golden Globe last weekend for Best Actor in a Drama.

If Rourke isn't now the favorite to win the granddaddy of them all, the Academy Award, he's second in a hotly competitive race to Sean Penn.

I don't use the word competition loosely - this is a competition - movie studios spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaigning, tens of millions of people in the US and far more than that across the globe tune in to see who wins and who loses, there's a significant difference in the trajectory of Rourke's career with the words Oscar Winner for Best Actor attached to his name than if he's defeated by Penn.

I have yet to see Milk, but I'm guessing Penn didn't use performance enhancing drugs (edit, I've subsequently seen Milk and all of the significant films from 2008; my favorites were Synecdoche and Dark Knight - Penn deserved the Oscar).

So, what am I not understanding?

How else would you classify whatever drugs Rourke seems to have taken for this role? He gave a performance. His performance was enhanced to some degree by his look and ability to train and do stunts (even if he didn't really take as many bumps as they'd like to have us believe) I don't have a metric to quantify how much his performance was enhanced - but given the downward trend of his career path, the few hits he has been able to produce, what clearly looked like the normal end of a career - given that it has wildly spiked outside of normal levels - I think it's not unreasonable to correlate that wild spike with the use of performance enhancing drugs.

So, what am I not understanding?

Where's the Congressional hearings? When's the grand jury convening? When's the raid on his house, gym, doctor's office? When will Sports Illustrated start a jihad to see that he is viewed in the same league as OJ Simpson? When will we talk about the children? The innocent, impressionable children?

What am I not...

Oh, you know what - things make more sense after I read this:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AmVKR0i8rg8m8d1YjOnOr8c5nYcB?slug=li-clear011409&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

You should read it, it's the biggest sports story of the year so far.

I'll short version it for you.

1. Use of the Clear, the drug Bonds is accused of taking, wasn't illegal.
2. The active ingredient wasn't classified as a steroid.
3. There are no studies to indicate that the clear enhances muscle growth.

I have been saying for years that the degree to which the federal government has attempted to imprison Barry Bonds for his miniscule part in a miniscule crime (less than $2000 worth of drugs was uncovered in the BALCO raids) is an utter abuse of power. I've been saying for the past 18 months that Bonds was going to beat this charge. And I've been saying for the past year that Barry Bonds is going to the Hall of Fame.

History will regard as silly the persecution of Barry Bonds, and of virtually all of those branded with the scarlet steroid S. Less because we'll decide that steroids were okay to take after all (although, we will) but because justice, legal and moral, requires some level of proportion and evenhandedness. Jason Giambi gets his own moustache day at Yankee Stadium; Andy Pettitte and Evander Holyfield get to keep their reputations as good guys (both overtly Christian, huh, imagine that) Arnold gets to be the Governor of California, everyone associated with the Bush Administration goes into the private sector, Mickey Rourke gets a Golden Globe, and Barry Bonds goes on trial in March.

I guess I understand it pretty well after all.

Repost - The Mike Vick Blog

This repost is necessitated by two happenings - Mike Vick got reinstated today, which makes sense, under the way the NFL discipline process goes, and Mike Florio, of profootballtalk.com, said on KNBR that he doesn't think any political disconnect between the lefty culture of San Francisco and a 49er (speculative) decision to sign Vick would be an issue as he thinks those are decidedly different populations. 

A couple of years ago there was a piece written for espn.com (don't feel like finding a link - I'm also not going to link to the SI site, but you've got to check out the current issue; without any sense of irony the magazine begins by blasting ARod, then deifying Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods, then aiding in the rehabilitation of Jason Giambi. The sports media doesn't have the slightest idea what it's doing.

Oh, and yeah, I assume Tiger's taken PEDs. Yup. And LeBron. And Jordan. And every other damn superstar athlete for the last 20 years. Any "ageless wonder", "workout warrior", "look how he's chiseled in stone, he's a physical freak" any of them. Hanley Ramirez is up 25 pounds since last year, we hear uncritically reported from the Grapefruit League. Okay. How about Ray Lewis recovering from a multi-year slide last season? Or Shaq? Brett Favre and Cal Ripken never missing a game? Hey, I'll throw one of my guys under the bus for fun - Jerry Rice. Boom.

I don't know. I don't care. Not even a little bit. But good god does the sports media not have the slightest idea what it's doing.)

Anyway, there was this piece at espn.com ripping Giants fants who continued to support Bonds as being beneath the cosmopolitan, socially aware station of the city of San Francisco. The premise was that in (insert cold weather flyover city here) they swallow whatever their local sports star serves up, but San Franciscans were too bright to act similarly.


It wasn't a badly written piece.


It was wrong, however, on at least two fronts. The political analysis was faulty; a city that tilts as left as does San Francisco contains a hefty percentage of people for whom the war on drugs propaganda hasn't taken hold. It could be that San Franciscans reject the almost purely artificial constructs we make separating "good drugs" (nicotine, alcohol, Viagra, anti-depressants, painkillers) from "bad drugs" (pot, steroids, street drugs), that a good, upstanding member of society can be medicated all day long in every aspect of his life - professionals can use adderal to keep their focus sharp (I sort of want Obama on adderal, right? I mean, let's decide that in 2009 we need a President working to full capacity, don't you want him to take full advantage of whatever science there might be to aid him?) musicians can be pumped full of beta blockers

http://www.ethanwiner.com/BetaBlox.html

and every man over the age of (how old am I again..let's make this one year older than me..) 38 is required to pop Cialis before making the sex. Uppers to get going in the morning, Downers to unwind at night. One pill makes you bigger, one pill makes you small.

Pharmaceutic is the grease that lubricates the machinery of western civilization.

And that goes double for athletes - cortisone, epidurals, Lasik, sewing their ankle tendons to their socks - constant, lifelong medical treatment as part and parcel of the sport itself - but if you take the wrong drug - the "bad" drug - then you are a cheater, a bad, evil person, on par with OJ Simpson and you'd better apologize the right way and you'll never go to the Hall of Fame and we'll lock you up if we can catchya lying to us!

Rooting for Barry Bonds might have been a socially conscious act. It sure felt that way when he got taunted by 45,000 fans of the all white Houston Astros (hey Houston - one word - Bagwell). 

I mean, whose side do you want to be on? Lupica's?
But the second fault of the piece is that a San Francisco Giants fan and a Cincinnati Reds fan might have very little in common, except for the most important thing - they root for their guys, 'cause that's how it works.
I'm a good San Francisco lefty. Anti-corporate power. Pro high marginal tax rates. Pro gay and anti gun.
And I'm a sports fan.
And not a "let's bounce the hacky sack and pass the granola from the left hand side" sports fan - I'm a lifelong fan of the machine, big time, full on corporatized, establishmentarian - pregame prayer, there's no I in team, defer to the captain, the coach, the owner and then the Big Man upstairs sports fan.
Giants baseball. Niners football. The god awful Golden St. Warriors. And even USC sports.


USC! The University of Spoiled Children - where John Wayne played. Yup. True story.

To borrow a line from another endeavor, a lefty who is invested in big time American sports is like a chicken cheering for Colonel Sanders. I recognize that virtually every value I hold is rejected by virtually every member of every organization I've devoted so much passion toward. Dave Dravecky was in, like the John Birch Society. Garrison Hearst was homophobic. Sleepy Floyd may have eaten babies, but that's just a rumor I made up right now.

In 2004 there was a breakdown of what candidates received donations from sports figures - then Giants Owner Peter Magowan gave the maximum to Bush - Dodgers owner Frank McCourt gave the maximum to Kerry.

Virtually every athlete for my entire life has professed either political disinsterest or complete support for American wars and tax cuts. Sports arenas are havens for suppression of dissent, rejection of personal liberties, forced compliance with jingoistic values. There's really never been a second in my conscious life where I thought the teams and athletes I most loved would give me the slightest time of day; never a moment where I didn't get that, in my "real" life almost certainly everyone I cheered for would want nothing to do with me, and I'd almost certainly feel the exact same way about all of them.

Sure, I could root for Steve Nash and Etan Thomas. But I don't. Giants. Niners. Warriors. Trojans.

Forever. No matter what.

Except for this.

Mike Vick got out of jail today. His house arrest will be over prior to the next NFL season.

There's been talk recently of where he might land. Most of that speculation has been about San Francisco.

Now, I don't think this will ever happen. I don't think Vick's going to play this year. I don't think he'll ever play quarterback in the NFL again, at least not as a starter. I don't think the Niners are looking for a veteran QB; we have lots of needs (pass rusher, right tackle, safety, fullback, running back, wide receiver) that all have to be filled before we look to replace Shaun Hill.

But more than that - I think where the espn.com piece was wrong about Bonds - I think the premise is stronger about Vick.

And if I'm conflating my own views to speak about the city of San Francisco, well then, I'll do it this way.

There is no circumstance I will ever root for Michael Vick. None. If he is leading the Niners down the field to win their 6th Super Bowl, I will not be cheering and it won't be a difficult decision. I'm a Niner fan to the bone. Through thick and thin - and there have been a lot of skinny, skinny days the past decade.

Dump Bill Walsh. Trade Joe Montana. Cut Jerry Rice.

I'll stay. It's sports. It's what we do.

But no Mike Vick. Never. Never, ever, ever.

I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that.

I've written about Mike Vick before, here's an excerpt:

Real quick – I have zero sympathy for Michael Vick, imprisoned for dog fighting. I’m just glad he’s not one of my guys.


Except…not for nothing, but I eat pork.


And in terms of measurable brain activity, the only difference between dogs and pigs is pigs are smarter.


So – we torture a dog and call it prison.


We torture a pig and call it breakfast.


(I don’t want to walk down the road with you regarding how pigs are raised and treated on their way to slaughter, but it’s bad, sister, b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-ad.)


Maybe there’s some small difference between the two things, some small difference that one could point to between torturing dogs and torturing pigs.


But probably not enough difference to justify the difference in treatment.


One is prison. One is breakfast.


Don’t misunderstand, I do it too. Not only wouldn’t I torture a dog, I’ve stopped kids from being cruel to animals in a way I’d never stop someone from being cruel to a, you know, person. If you were to tell me “yup, I regularly kill and eat kittens for the meat” there is literally zero chance I would ever speak civilly to you regardless of what level of beaver worship you promised me.

But I eat pork.


It’s delicious.


And I have no moral justification for it. None.


If it turns out that I’m wrong, and above us isn’t only sky, and someone is there at the pearly gates after I’m dead to say I’m not allowed in because I didn’t pray to Mecca five times a day or I didn’t confess my sins to a guy in a robe or I never had my head dunked in a lake to be born again –


Well, you know, okay.


That stuff is so antithetical to the way I view the world, that if the world actually works that way, it would seem incomprehensible to me that this was the result. I wouldn’t want to be a member of that club. I’ll go somewhere else, thanks.

But if St. Peter is actually a giant bear sized beaver, and he says I’m going to hell for all the bacon I ate.


I’d have absolutely no defense.


I’m guilty.


100% Guilty.


So, I'm not saying he should never be allowed to play football again; not saying that his crime should be viewed by the league as unforgivable; I get that the ethics of the situation are harder than "Jim Jividen good, Mike Vick bad."

I get that. I'm not a cartoon. Bobby Jindal can use his grown up voice when he talks to me.


But I'm not going there with Michael Vick. I'm just not.

I love my Niners.


But I won't do that.