You'll have to forgive us for not watching the Home Run Derby last night. Batting practice is only so interesting and when you throw in the ESPN baseball team it's not getting any more appealing. Vladimir Guerrero won but no balls ended up in the bay which really makes it seem like our decision was the wisest one.
There is an interesting piece in today's Times about the role Barry Bonds is playing at the All-Star Game. San Francisco is his town, of course, and he's playing the role of emcee for the festivities this week. He spent nearly an hour talking to reporters (including Jerry Rice), which may be more than all the time he's spent with them this season to date, and during the conversation he touched on the response he gets from the fans around baseball.
Speaking directly to the fans who jeer him from the rafters, Bonds said: “You’re judging me on a third party when I’ve actually done nothing wrong. I’ve just gone to your stadium and tried to entertain you and tried to play my game the best I can.”
He added: “Why are you booing me? That would be my question. Why?”
“They boo, but all those cameras flash every time I swing,” Bonds said. “Click! Click! Click! Click! Click! The fans like baseball, guys. They enjoy the game of baseball. Regardless of what anybody says, they’re going to come. They want to see it happen.”
People don't get many chances to boo baseball as an institution. They can not go to games and/or not watch them on TV but as Bonds says, they like it and that creates a problem. So they boo Bonds instead but can't help themselves from being impressed and interested in what he does when he swings the bat because, again, they like it. They loved it when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were crushing the homers that were credited with "saving" baseball, they loved it when Bonds hit 73 homers in 2001 and they still love it now.
And they like or respect what Bonds has done enough to vote for him more than 2,000,000 times during the balloting for tonight's game. Bonds himself might have summed that up when he introduced some members of his entourage to the media crush surrounding him yesterday.
“These are all the people who say I’m disgusting and still want to stand next to me,” he said.
He could use the same introduction for baseball fans and remain right on target.
(Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency)
Hey,
Here's a video and a photo of David Ortiz hitting baseballs into McCovey Cove at a large inflatable model of his new Reebok cleat. Hope you like it.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbthfFewxrU
Photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15512283@N00/763874874/
Posted by: Chris | July 10, 2007 at 12:49 PM