Two for Elbowing

Saying "Thanks" to Peter Magowan

Killion: Perfect storm sends Magowan into retirement - San Jose Mercury News:

Magowan said on Friday, in announcing his retirement, that he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren.

We interrupt the hockey talk for a minute to thank Peter Magowan for everything he's done for the Bay Area Sports fan.

It's easy to forget, or choose not to remember, just what his contribution to the Bay Area is. Before Magowan stepped in, we were staring at 100 loss seasons by a team playing in Candlestick park (a place that made the Cow Palace look attractive, and still does), at least until that team moved to Tampa.

Remember when the Tampa Bay Giants was a done deal? No, most of you probably don't.

Magowan was a key player in stopping that. Magowan brought us Barry Bonds, back when Barry Bonds was merely a stupendous baseball player. He found a way to get a new ballpark built, and a gorgeous one, despite a lack of cooperation from the city, continuing hassles by the NIMBYs, and without public funding.

And now he's going to retire, leaving the next cycle of the Giants to others. Unfortunately, most of the media seems too be forgetting what he's done in favor of whacking him for his mistakes, and while I'm not minimizing those, it seems to me if anyone deserved a day where people just said "hey, thanks", Magowan did.

So hey, Peter?

Thanks. Enjoy not having to deal with the local media any more. Enjoy your grandkids. you deserved it. And some of us recognize what you've done, and appreciate it more than you might think.

(p.s: to Anne, and Mark, and Ray, and Tim: when your time comes and your last columns are written and your cohorts take you off to lunch to say goodbye, I hope they all stand up and call out a toast in your honor, and then spend the rest of the afternoon making fun of all of the stupid columns you've written over the years, rather than reflecting on all of the good ones you've done. It's only fair and balanced, ya know?

It's not about ignoring the mistakes, it's about putting it perspective. that all could have waited for a second column a little later, you know? But heck, that's just not how things are done, right?)

The Mitchell Report: Bud Selig’s buddy does fine - Talking Points with Tim Kawakami - San Jose Mercury News sports blog

The Mitchell Report: Bud Selig’s buddy does fine - Talking Points with Tim Kawakami - San Jose Mercury News sports blog:

It should be no shock that George Mitchell, who is both a canny politician and a friend of Bud Selig, produced a canny political document that is fairly friendly to Bud Selig.

The Mitchell report, which was released today, is the best thing Selig could’ve asked for given the unruly circumstances of its origin, and maybe the commissioner did ask exactly that.

Why? Because Mitchell produced some names and knocked some heads (for credibility), proposed some tough new testing procedures (for the future), gave Selig the option of punishing particular players (Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens), yet walked away from the hard, ugly stuff.

is anyone really surprised? I'v read through some of the report, and basically, it confirms our worst fears for what was going on. the league has the advantage that they can point loudly at the player's association for stonewalling attempts to institute drug testing, while hoping nobody notices they didn't in fact try very hard to push the union on it. The union looks bad (and IMHO, with justification) -- but that doesn't make the league pure as snow.

What the report said to me can be broken down into a few talking points:

Players take these things for a couple of reasons; a few (like the alleged Bonds) to push their performance further, but most in fact were taking them for a different reason: to heal faster and to be able to play longer. It wasn't to improve their performance, but to keep their job.

That is one of the huge issues with this: while we focus on the Big Names playing the steroid and HGH game, it's the journeyman and marginal players that are really stuck here, because they're on the bubble, or fading to black at the end of a career -- and that's when you're willing to try anything to keep it going, or get it going again.

THOSE are the players that need to be protected from themselves. I frankly don't care if someone like Bonds wants to hose out his future life in the name of a home run chase; stupid players do stupid things. But that marginal player needs to be protected from his own desperation.

The other thing that struck home was that athletes and teams have to stop playing the "not a role model" game. Andro sales grew 1000% after McGuire was outed with it, and its use among the OTHER group that needs to be protected from itself was stunning.

That group is the kids -- high schoolers and young adults -- who see what the athletes do and take it as confirmation actions and decisions are okay. Not only are these kids not old enough to really understand (or care -- I remember when I was young and immortal, weren't we all at that age?) the implications of what they're doing. Athletes can't pretend that young athletes won't look pu to them and take what the pros do as a model for what they can do. Even if you don't care about what pro athletes do to their bodies in the name of your enjoying the sport -- we can't NOT care about the kids that will follow the lead of their heroes, for good or bad.

The winners here?

Bonds, in a minor way -- not because he gets cleared of anything, but because he's no longer alone as the scapegoat for the league. He has plenty of company now, and that doesn't minimize what he did, but it puts him in pretty good company.

And Mark McGuire... Whatever you think about Andro, it WAS LEGAL when he took it, and you could walk into any GNC and buy yourself some. Mitchell makes that point strongly, and frankly, if you start going down the slippery slope of retroactively excluding people from the Hall for things that were acceptable and legal at the time they did it (but not today), you're opening up a real can of worms you really don't wnt to deal with.

Those nutty 49ers! (Is John York the last one to know he’s not the owner any more?) - Talking Points with Tim Kawakami - San Jose Mercury News sports blog

Those nutty 49ers! (Is John York the last one to know he’s not the owner any more?) - Talking Points with Tim Kawakami - San Jose Mercury News sports blog:

Just finished listening to the 49ers conference call to announce the hiring of Andy Dolich as chief operating officer and lord of all that is financially wonderful.

Sounds like a good guy, and I’ve heard plenty of good things about him. Probably a very good hire.

Naturally, Dolich will probably be terribly misplaced–a regular, self-effacing, experienced human sports executive? that’s crazy!–in the 49ers wacky world of absolute befuddlement and screaming York family contradictions.

Remember when the 49ers were the franchise that other franchises modeled themselves after and wanted to be?

And now they're -- the warriors? no, the Warriors have their act together better than that.

How sad. And why? it's not that the owners have no money, this isn't the Kansas City Royals. It's all ego driving decisions that aren't made by the right people for the right reason, starting with hiring the right people and letting them do their job.

Even George Steinbrenner (well, mostly) and Ted Turner figured that out. Hire good people, give them a good budget, and get the hell out of their way. The more owners meddle, the more they tend to regret the results.

(I could probably tie that back into why I think Jim Balsillie would be a rotten owner of a team in the NHL, but that's stretching it for the purposes of this post...)

Sports + Money = Less Viewer Choice - Silicon Alley Insider

Sports + Money = Less Viewer Choice - Silicon Alley Insider:

On the road to ubiquitous sports coverage and super-serving the sports fan, there certainly seems to be a few fumbles, interceptions and technical fouls... the NFL has limited its "out of market" package exclusively to one channel (DirectTV) and it’s damn near impossible to watch a Thursday night game on the NFL Network. After years of having no problem watching my alma mater, Michigan, play football on television in NYC, I now have to scramble to find bars that carry the Big Ten Network. What happened to that “any place, any time, anyway…power to the consumer” chant that media executives used to throw around like it was the next verse of "Take Me Out To the Ballgame"?

Simple: saturation.

We need to remember: we aren't really the customer here. Our eyeballs are what the networks are selling to their advertisers, and the programming is what they use to attach those eyeballs to the advertising. That in some cases they can convince us to PAY a fee to have our eyeballs sold to the advertisers is a bonus.

What the sports networks have found out, not surprisingly, is that it is posssible to saturate the market and we now have so much choice, so many options, that this is putting the squeeze on things. There's only so much advertising inventory willing to be bought, and so many eyeballs willing to be attached to that programming to sell to the advertisers. Sports fans are only willing (or able) to watch so many games over a period of time, and there are now more options for those eyeballs than eyeballs. Ratings slip, and advertising rates go down (partly because ratings are down, partly because there are more advertising slots being sold than advertisers want to buy, so it's a buyer's market, unless it's a special event of some sort)

So if you're producing sports and selling advertising, how do you keep your income up? By doing what you can to make sure eyeballs are attached to your program instead of someone else's program. And one way of doing that is by creating restrictions preventing people from seeing other programming.

Not good for the fans, who want maximum options and maximum flexibility, but then, these people aren't interested in what you want, really. they are interested in what makes their advertisers happier and gets them more advertising revenue. And so restricting access to other programming to encourage you to watch their programming instead makes sense -- to them.

San Jose Mercury News - Baseball & Drugs: Do you believe in Santa Claus?

San Jose Mercury News - Baseball & Drugs: Do you believe in Santa Claus?:

There were a hardy few of you who still trusted that an important, tangible portion of baseball's great players were and are completely, triumphantly and provably clean.

Great players and good guys like Matt Williams.

And now... There is no other conclusion worth making, even for the true believers: Baseball was dirty from top to bottom in the 1990s and early 2000s, period, end of innocence.

Nice guys, bad guys, nobodies, superstars, pitchers, executives, everybody. Everybody either was using performance-enhancers or thought about using or knew people who were using and stayed silent about it.

EVERYBODY!

Quite conveniently, George Mitchell's report on baseball's performance-enhancing drug problem is expected to be released by the end of the year or sooner.

I'd want more specifics, but I'd applaud Mitchell's document if it included only this single statement: The game was unclean, all of it, let's not try pretending otherwise.

That pretty much sums it up. Baseball seemed pretty willing to let Bonds take the fall and move on, but now, it's startling to leak over players we aren't predisposed to dislike. And baseball's going to have to deal with it. Will they?

Do we actually care? I'm not sure I do. Does this suprise me? not at all.

Not EVEN Matt Williams.

Sigh. baseball meets my expectations again. And that's not a good thing.

NHL Players Be Puppets?

KuklasKorner : Canucks and Beyond : Must NHL Players Be Puppets?:

In short, when a hockey player expresses a personal opinion that offends anybody at all, there’s an attitude that it should be kept behind closed doors; that he’s undermining the team somehow.

That's because -- well -- it does. Or at least, can.

This subject really deserves a longer, deeper discussion, but I tend to think that people who don't "get" this sort of thing didn't spend much time in a locker room in a competitive league.

For a team to function to its potential, the members of that team have to buy into the idea of "what's best for the team". Think about some of the catch phrases you hear out of athletes and coaches all of the time: "I have my role", "we have to follow the system", "do what's best for the team" etc.

That's not just cliche (but it IS cliche, as well!) -- it's what makes a team work. Players have to commit to the best interests of the team OVER their own personal best interest. As a simple example, do you honestly think any sane player PREFERs laying down and blocking shots when they could be scoring goals? You really think fighters prefer playing six minutes a night and fighting?

So when a player then "breaks rank" (notice the military symbolism here -- the dynamics of a sporting team and a military organization are quite similar here; both are structured so encourage individuals to bond with their team and work to the team's ultimate benefit over personal benefit, on the assumption that the individuals gain benefit from the success of the team, for some larger good), what message is that sending? That this player isn't part of the team, is above the team, hasn't committed to the team.

Well, heck, that does kinda sound like Kovalev his entire career, no? Oh, never mind.

But speaking out can cause problems. If you think about it, even a noted loose cannon like Brett Hull tended to include himself is in commentary on the team ("we suck! Oh god, do we suck!"), but more so, he tended to speak at league issues and maintain the players vs. teams dynamic. And yes, Hull did get himself in deep, too, and not all of the teams he was on functioned well as a team. the question that would need to be asked was whether his public outbursts were because the team wasn't committed to itself, or whether it caused that, and what might have been said privately before he chose to take it public.

When a player joins a team, he gives up part of his individual by committing it to the team. this is no different than what we do when we join a company and go to work for them, or share a life with a partner and family. There are things that you do within that group that you don't splash over the pages of a newspaper or a blog. Ditto a hockey team. Or a football team. Or any team.

Kovalev shot his lip here, and screwed up. What he really did, and why he's being criticized by his team, is show he's not really committed to the team. This IS the kind of thing that gets hashed out in the locker room, not blabbed to a reporter -- unless it's one of the "spokesman" members doing so for a purpose, and Kovalev is definitely not someone the team has defined as "speaking for the team".

But then, is anyone surprised that Kovalev isn't on the same page as his teammates? Has he ever been?

But this isn't about being a "puppet to the man" and toeing the league's happy-happy line. It's about committing to the team and your teammates. A functioning team is in many ways its own individual with its own personality, and members OF that team have to give up some of their own individuality to make the team function. And when they don't, you have a room of individuals, not a team, and it's a rare team that succeeds without that commitment.

San Jose Mercury News - More time off for Stealth; league cancels season

San Jose Mercury News - More time off for Stealth; league cancels season:

The San Jose Stealth of the National Lacrosse League will have an extended off-season in 2007.

All the way to next year.

On Tuesday, the NLL canceled the upcoming 2007-08 season, scheduled to begin Dec. 27, after failing to reach a labor agreement with the union.

The executive committee of the Professional Lacrosse Players' Association rejected the last collective bargaining agreement proposal, the league said.

"The plan is to take the season off and try to get with the union and negotiate a deal that works for both parties and get back playing in" 2008-09, NLL Commissioner Jim Jennings said.

well, looks like we can cross lacrosse off as the Next Major Sport. At least for now. The chances the league comes back after this, much less comes back and thrives?

I"ll take the under.

TSN : NBA - Canada's Sports Leader

TSN : NBA - Canada's Sports Leader:

Former Dallas Mavericks forward Roy Tarpley filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, claiming the NBA and the team violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to reinstate him to the league.

Tarpley, who was permanently banned from the NBA in 1995, claimed in his lawsuit that the league and the Mavericks discriminated against him on the basis of his disability as a recovering drug and alcohol abuser.

anyone else consider this an insane interpretation of the ADA?

While I fully support the need to legislate acccessibility and protection from discrimination, I've seen so many abuses of the ADA over the years that I'm thinking maybe it's time to toss it out and try again...

Bengie Molina vs. Barry Bonds: And the Willie Mac Award goes to anybody but Bonds - Talking Points with Tim Kawakami - San Jose Mercury News sports blog

Bengie Molina vs. Barry Bonds: And the Willie Mac Award goes to anybody but Bonds - Talking Points with Tim Kawakami - San Jose Mercury News sports blog:

The Willie Mac Award, obviously named after beloved Giants Hall of Famer Willie McCovey, has been handed out since 1980 to the Giants most inspirational player, as voted on by players, coaches and training staff.

It’s not a media vote. It’s not a fan vote. It’s not a vote by Bonds’ sychophants. It’s by the people in the clubhouse, on the team, who live and breath the Giants.

And Bonds has been with the team for 15 years and NEVER WON THE WILLIE MAC AWARD. Does that tell you something?

that pretty much sums it up on Bonds. He actually had a decent season this year, but did he make the Giants better?

the end of the Bonds era.

San Jose Mercury News - Killion: Let me grab my handkerchief:

If you were expecting emotion and sentiment think again. If you were expecting a Tony Gwynn-like farewell or a Cal Ripken-like embrace, sorry to disappoint.

The announcement came in typically, weirdly Bondsian fashion. Bonds was informed of the team decision by Peter Magowan during Thursday night's game. Always the mercenary, he posted the news on his personal Web site Friday.

Within minutes of the posting, the scrambling Giants called a Friday-at-rush-hour press conference.

In the interview room there were three seats and three bottles of water and two participants: Peter Magowan and Brian Sabean. Bonds was not there for what should have been a sentimental moment but ended up being a clinical discussion of the surgical removal of No. 25.

And so ends the Bonds era, as it probably should. Not with a "final tour" and celebration, not with a stadium full of fans cheering one of the best players in baseball into the sunset, but with a press release and a press conference where the guest of honor(?) simply didn't show, leaving his bosses to tap dance and try to spin Barry in as positive a light as they can -- and finding it tough to do.

Is anyone really surprised? Because as good as Barry has been, and I'll be the first to acknowledge it, he's been a constant PR nightmare for the Giants and league, because he's always believed that he deserves every accolade, and refused under any circumstance to reach out back to fans, to teammates, to the team or the league.

The top superstars have known they need to at least put on a show of reaching out to the fans -- think Cal Ripken when he was more or less bodily assumed into heaven -- but Barry? if jesus returned to earth to get his autograph, Barry would have him go though his agent. For the fans to want to connect to a player, the player has to at least put on the act that they don't deserve all of the fanfare. Barry has always acted as if it was never enough; more than enough to put off many fans.

And so again, this leavetaking from the Giants won't be a proper send off for Barry; he deserves more, he's earned more -- and yet we have to remember he orchestrated this. Something about Barry always seems to end up setting things up so he can walk away feeling bitter and disappointed about how it all ended.

And somewhere, deep inside, that seems to be how he wants it to be. He had everything going for him, steroids notwithstanding, to be the kind of player and person that owned the team and town and fans. Instead, we have this.

And if there are two things I would have guaranteed about this situation, it's that (a) it was going to go down something like this, and (b) Barry will find a way to blame everyone else for it because we, his fans (and owners and teammates) don't show him the proper respect, teh respect he earned.

Problem is, he only earned part of the respect he was due: the part on the field. His play is unquestionable. But he chose not to get involved with earning respect from others as a person, only as a player, and so he left a huge part of his legacy missing. He never seems to have figured out that the truly great players are both players AND people -- just ask Tony Gwynn.

As someone who would fall into the "love watching him hit the ball, no asterisk (unless you put asterisks on a lot more entries), he is a scapegoat for a larger problem allowing other better-loved players to skate around the problem (but he earned that by being distant, whiny and pissy -- but while I'd watch him play, I wouldn't invite him to dinner" category of Bonds fan, I'm goin to miss watching him play, but not the rest of the mini-drama that comes along with Barry. That mini-drama that is always surrounding him, and never his fault.

And so it ends, not with a bang, but with a whine.

Frankly, as it should be. which is too bad, but it's what Barry wanted. Why? maybe not even he knows. But he'd be a happier person if he figured it out, I think.