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Monday, October 27, 2003
No baseball is a sad season

By Brian Murphy
Special to Page 2

When we were kids, the change back to Daylight Standard Time was always a huge bummer.

Turn the clock back? Now, darkness fell at 5:30 p.m. and carried with it all the attendant baggage:

-- No more playing in the street till 9 p.m.

-- No more false belief that bedtime was way, way away.

-- No more light.

In its place, the darkness:

-- Have to be inside by 6 p.m.

-- Have to concentrate on doing your homework.

-- Have to eat your vegetables, go to school and generally see the bummer side of kid-dom life.

So, was there not gloomy poetic closure to the 2003 baseball season ending mere hours before we turned our clocks back last Saturday night?

Talk about a double punch to the solarplexus. No more baseball on the radio -- and we do hand-to-hand combat with Seasonal Affective Disorder, the acronym SAD all too appropriate.

It's almost enough for us to dust off the Giamatti Excerpt. You know, the one that seemed spiritual and perfect the first time you read it, then lost its juice when, years later, you began to get it on mass emails.

In it, Giamatti wrote of baseball, "It breaks your heart ... the game begins in spring, when everything else begins again ... and leaves you to face the fall alone ... just when the days are all twilight, when you need it the most, it stops."


	Josh Beckett's Game 6 performance will be talked about for many years to come.

Apparently, ol' A.B. wasn't living in California when he penned that ode.

Saturday night, as young Josh Beckett carved his initials on the old oak tree in the Bronx, an autumnal chill may have settled over the rest of you. But we here on the West Coast were sweating as if in a South Beach sauna. Baking in record heat, it was tough for us to watch Beckett wear a turtleneck at the Stadium while our Fahrenheit fell only 360 degrees short of 451.

If Giamatti were on the West Coast, he might have written: "It leaves you to face the fall alone ... to pull on your shorts and T-shirt in a sad and mournful fashion ... to blast your air conditioning at full tilt and think, 'I haven't sported such back sweat since I went shirtless at spring training.'"

Ah, the poetry of an Indian Summer.

But we will not let baseball slink gently into that hot, steamy night.

It is the best our nation has to offer, and deserves commensurate respect. Before it goes away until next year, let's review this all-important primer: Five Things We Learned From the 2003 Baseball Season.

1. Money Can't Buy Me Love
Bud Selig's theory about competitive imbalance being caused by financial issues continues to carry the unmistakable stench of irrelevance. He has to be utterly dismissed, as much as the MTV exec does who green-lighted those "All-Star" competitions between old cast members of "Road Rules" and "Real World."

To wit, the Florida Marlins just won the World Series with an Opening Day payroll of $49 million.

Last year, Anaheim won the World Series with an Opening Day payroll just north of $60 million.

Those are the essential stats. Period.

The Yankees just spent the equivalent of the GNP of France on their team -- and go into the winter more dissatisfied than the Detroit Tigers.

The Tigers, at least, won enough at the end to avoid losing 120 games. They'll hit the holidays with a little bounce in their step, perhaps receiving gold pendants from their significant others at Christmas that features the number "120" with a circle-slash symbol over it. Heartwarming.

I have a pal who says, "But these teams can't keep it together! The payroll disparity will eventually crush these teams and keep them from staying competitive!"

To which I say, as baseball players have so thoughtfully articulated over the years: Horse-stuff. (Except not with the "stuff", if you know what I mean.)

First off, you can't put a price on the lifelong glow a fan gets from one World Series. Angels fans can never bitch again, ever. Marlins fans, two-time champs, enjoy an embarrassment of riches. And, as the A's prove year in and year out, you can stay competitive in the regular season if you draft smart and run your organization like a winner.

Sort of like the Dodgers.

Oh, wait. Bad example.

Or the Mets.

Oh, wait. Bad example.

Yeah, right. Money's the answer.

2. As a Corollary, Has Anybody Recently Considered the X-Factor of Homo Sapiens?
People are crazy, man. They do weird things.

Mo Vaughn goes to the Mets and implodes, never to be heard from again.


	Ivan Rodriguez cemented his "legend" status with a World Series win.

Pudge Rodriguez goes to the Marlins and becomes a legend.

Shawn Green goes to the Dodgers and spends 2003 lost on the freeway.

Miguel Cabrera arrives at spring training an unknown; and six months later, you realize his name means "Roy Hobbs" in Venezuelan.

Jason Giambi, at $120 million? Downer.

Dontrelle Willis, at about $8.75 an hour? Start building the statue.

This year's Red Sox proved as much. Taken individually, Kevin Millar, Todd Walker, David Ortiz and Bill Mueller look like the dregs of a lineup after a series of double-switches. But put 'em together, give 'em a hair razor, throw in a video of "Born in the U.S.A." and you have cult heroes for New England kids to remember forever.

3. Texas: We Would Have Won the Alamo if We Used the Fastball
Roger Clemens -- 95 on the gun.

Kerry Wood -- 99 on the gun.

Josh Beckett -- 100 on the gun.

Texans all; fireballers all.

Don't mess with Texas, it turns out. If Rhode Island is a knuckleball, Texas is a big ol', chin-buzzing, Nolan Ryan blast of heat.

If this postseason taught us anything, it's that Texas produces pitchers with repertoires as subtle and nuanced as the foreign policy laid out by its native son, G.W. Bush.

Hope the prez doesn't see this. His next idea: "We can tame the Sunni Triangle with Clemens, Wood and Beckett, then pray for rain on the fourth day."

4. Red Sox Nation and Howling at the Moon: A Comfort Zone
I've been mostly amused and otherwise baffled by this utter certainty -- certainty -- that Grady Little lost the ALCS for the Red Sox. I was watching, like the rest of Red Sox Nation. I know Pedro's pitch count was up, and that Jeter and Bernie had stroked back-to-back hits.

But I also know this: Red Sox fans are driving their cars into snowbanks because Grady Little didn't bring in ALAN EMBREE. I've heard the theory that the Sox bullpen was outstanding this post-season; but all I can think of is Scott Williamson in Game 5 in Oakland, looking like the last place he wanted to be was on the mound and the last thing he wanted to throw was a strike.


	Grady Little will forever be remembered for leaving Pedro in too long in Game 7.

Listen. I understand Embree had looked good striking out Jason Giambi on occasion. But I'm a Giants fan. I know Alan Embree. Alan Embree was a friend of ours. And Pedro Martinez? You are no Alan Embree.

Given the Vitriol Overdrive still plaguing Red Sox Nation over leaving Petey in, can you imagine -- imagine -- the Legend of Grady Little if he took out Pedro Martinez and replaced him with Alan Embree? Or, as he would be known forever more, Alan (Bleeping) Embree? If I'm Grady Little, I take that chance with Martinez.

Hideki Matsui was 0-for-10 off Martinez in the regular season. That ain't a trend. That's a fact, even if Godzilla did hit a hard double off Pedro in Game 3 of the ALCS.

And Pedro got to 0-2 on him. In one of those life occurences, Matsui came through. It happens!

And Posada's game-tying single was a jam job, a bloop single, a flare with eyes. It happens.

And it happened. So if I'm Grady Little, I do three things. I say: 1.) I'll be happy to go down in ignominy as the guy who took Petey over Alan (Bleeping) Embree; 2.) I live in utter envy of those who can so accurately and eerily predict the future; and 3.) I'll be happy to not manage this team anymore, just for the love of flipping sanity.

5. We Learned Our Parents Were Right All Along
Turns out they do know better.

The two best managers in the game this year were the Giants' Felipe Alou, 68, and Series champ Jack McKeon, 72.


	Jack McKeon deserved a victory cigar after what he did for the Marlins this season.

These guys are so old, they remember the first time they heard Elvis. They probably thought he sucked, that rock-and-roll was a passing fad, and headed down to the local store to buy the latest Sinatra.

But nobody was cooler than Jack and Felipe, Felipe and Jack. Alou, the Dominican Yoda, dispensing life-affirming statements daily. Told a win in mid-summer had put his career record above .500, Alou responded: "That may be, but I know that I am over .500, as a man."

Testosterone shots for everyone! Bring your own lime.

And McKeon: The lasting images are twofold. One is the stogie, ever-present, and reeking of confidence. The other is his defiant stand in June when the Marlins got spanked at Fenway Park, allowing 25 runs. McKeon thought the Red Sox had acted out, and roared in anger at the opposition. The next night, the Marlins overcome a seven-run deficit in the 8th inning and won when Juan Pierre speared a Johnny Damon smash for a line-out double play.

A World Series champ was born that day. And I'm sure McKeon celebrated with a smoke.

Damn. I'm gonna miss this stuff over the winter.

Brian Murphy of the San Francisco Chronicle writes every Monday for Page 2.