Hey kids! Long time no blog. I know it’s been a while; I have been a bit distracted recently as I was being hunted by a eerily methodical killer armed with a pressurized cattle gun. But the front baseball page at ESPN.com bothered me so much today I just had to share my rage. Observe:
In case you are unfamiliar with the sport of baseball, Barry Bonds is the most productive hitter in history. That is, whatever you think of the man personally or whatever crazy substances he injected into his butt, Bonds did more with his bat than anyone else who has ever touched a baseball.
Aaron Rowand is a scrappy white outfielder who bilked the Giants out of money because he had a career year. Also, he wears a goatee.
Barry Bonds has a career OPS of 1.051, with a career OBA of .444. Those are respectively the 4th and 6th best in the history of baseball, behind slackers like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and the deadball star/asshole/racist John McGraw. He has a career OPS+ of 182, meaning he is literally 82% better at baseball than the average player of his era.
Even in his (probable) final year where he only played 126 games and in half of those games was replaced by the fifth inning and had all of his limbs prosthetically replaced a la Darth Vader (skip to 1:30) and negotiated a contract clause stipulating that if a ball was playable in left field, he didn’t have to field it, but could, in fact, stand there eating a bowl of Rice-A-Roni, he still had a baseball-leading OBA of .480 (excuse me – .4-fucking-80) and hit 28 home runs. Oh, and one of those home runs broke the most hallowed record in all of sports.
Aaron Rowand, in his career year, got on base 37.4% of the time (mostly from his strong batting average) and hit 27 home runs in 36 more games than Bonds. His career OPS+ of 106 confirms that he is basically a slightly above average player. The flukiness of his 2007 was so apparent that when Tony La Russa allowed him to bat in the most high-leverage at-bat of the All-Star Game (instead of that Pujols guy), an an-bat in which a hit would have won the game for the National League, the manager was excoriated in the press. Because, deep down, everyone knows Rowand sucks.
So how the fuck does Aaron Rowand replace Barry Bonds?
The use of the qualifier “basically” suggests that, deep down, the layout editor of the ESPN.com MLB page knows that this is complete horseshit. Maybe they meant, “Aaron Roward basically replaces Bonds, in the sense that Bonds used to stand in one area of grass at AT&T Park and Rowand will also stand in a slightly different area of grass at AT&T Park.” Or, “Aaron Rowand basically replaces Barry Bonds, because in 2008, Rowand will make almost as much money as Bonds did in 2007.”
Jerry Crasnick’s story clearly focuses on the Giants’ youth movement, such as it is, and the change in the clubhouse post-Barry. It’s not a bad story: good, anticipatory, spring training filler stuff. Aaron Roward is 15 years younger than Bonds, but he’s still 29. That’s middle age in baseball terms. Wouldn’t it have been more effective to have a picture of Matt Cain and subtitle it, “Matt Cain basically replaces Barry Bonds as the face of the Giants”? The current headline insults the intelligence of knowledgable fans who know that Rowand ain’t replacing shit.
We miss you, Barry. Looking forward to the trial.
