Manny Doin' Stuff

Sam from a website called Portal-A sent me a nice email in which he kissed my butt a bit about liking my writing (thanks, Sam!) and told me to check out a video he had made. Well, I checked it out, and it really made me laugh, so here it is. Watch it all. It's worth it. Enjoy!

The guy doing the Manny impersonation is pretty awesome. But my favorite part? Referring to the Kobe movie as a "reach-around." Hilarious.

Vote!

Click the graphic below to make your "final vote" for the All-Star ballot. I'm not saying you have to vote for Matt Kemp, but I sure do think that would make a lot of sense. Oh, and it appears there is no limit to the number of times you can vote, so a real fan would spend the day developing carpal tunnel syndrome.

What Am I Supposed to Say?

There are people who feel like anyone who cheers Manny Ramirez should go straight to hell. And most of those people, strangely enough, are those who get paid to write about the game of baseball. As the title of Jayson Stark's column on ESPN.com says, celebrating Ramirez is "terrible." Plaschke has been his usual pompous self (I hate to link to anything he writes, but it's something you should see) with regard to the whole thing, and if you didn't hate the dude (and his really atrocious writing style) before, you really should now. Stark and Plaschke, among others, feel as though they should be the moral authority on this situation. Fans who think differently from them are looked down upon, as though they are too stupid to consider the whole situation, or too blind to understand just what an awful thing Ramirez did.

Plaschke and Stark want us to boo Ramirez, I guess. They want us to not forgive him, to stop giving Frank McCourt money just for the privilege of watching Ramirez play, and probably to stop watching baseball altogether if this sport can't promise to be the bastion of upstanding moral citizens that they want it to be. Nevermind that Stark and Plaschke would be out of jobs should any of those things happen. It's the principle of the matter, damn it!

You're getting the gist of how I feel about this particular reaction to the Ramirez situation. And you know I'm a Dodger fan, so I suppose you can take my opinion with a grain of salt. Who knows if it would be different were I a fan of any other team. But I would like to believe that I would react negatively to those who seem to think it's just so easy to know exactly what the the right thing to do is, and who believe it to be nothing but a black and white issue.

Yes, Ramirez cheated. Apparently. We still don't really know what he was taking, or for how long (which may be the more important part). Ramirez himself is not likely to ever tell us, at least not as long as he dons a Major League Baseball uniform. And different rumors will tell us different "facts." But the bottom line is that he tested positive for a substance that was not supposed to be in his body. So, he got suspended. Under the terms negotiated between the players and MLB, Ramirez was suspended, without pay, for 50 games. I don't necessarily think it makes any sense that he was allowed to rehab before those 50 games were up, but that's also part of the rules, and it's not like Ramirez is the first to take advantage of that allowance. So, Plaschke can whine all about how stupid it is, but he really needs to stop acting like Ramirez has been granted some special favor by being allowed to play in Albuquerque and Lake Elsinore.

The thing is, Ramirez is not the first to do this. He's just the most famous of those who have been suspended under the rules. And I don't think I have to remind you that steroids have been around for quite a while in the game, and ignored by managers, other players, executives, and, yes, sportswriters, all because writing about the drug use in baseball was not convenient at the time. Why ruin the Sosa/McGwire home run chase in the late '90s by acknowledging that their bodies looked kinda funny? The people wanted to see the long ball, and the reporters gave the people what they wanted. But then the steroid rumors started to break, and everyday citizens got themselves into a tizzy, and sportswriters went where the wind was blowing them.

To guys like Plaschke and Stark, serving one's time is not enough to make one worthy of forgiveness. To them, there must be some sort of ritual bloodletting, or at least a hell of a lot of booing, before they will be satisfied that the punishment has fit the crime. The fact that these rules were negotiated and written into a contract is of no importance; Plaschke and Stark will be the judge and jury here.

Here's what Stark says at the end of his column:

Does Manny Ramirez deserve a second chance? Absolutely. But does he deserve to be celebrated by anyone who isn't a tunnel-visioned Dodgers fan? Absolutely not.

Considering Ramirez hasn't even made his return at the time of this writing, it's hard for me to understand exactly what information Stark has that indicates that those other than "tunnel-visioned Dodgers fan[s]" (gosh, aren't fans stupid, guys?) will welcome Ramirez with open arms. He won't be in Dodger Stadium until July 16, and I for one am expecting him to be openly booed and jeered everywhere he goes until then. He'll be playing against the Mets in New York, for god's sake, Stark. What do you think those fans are going to do?

Frankly, after 50 games and nearly two months of waiting, I still don't know what I think about Ramirez. But I think not knowing (or at least admitting that fact) is what automatically makes me a better human being than any sportswriter who feels like "taking a stand" is the most appropriate response. The condescension in the articles by guys like Plaschke and Stark is just plain sickening. Who are you to tell me how I am supposed to react? Perhaps I realize that I (literally) buy into the system that gives men millions and millions of dollars to play a game. Perhaps I never have, and never will, consider these men to be role models of any kind. Perhaps I always tempered my love for these players with a healthy dose of realism, knowing that they are, in fact, just men. And mortal men at that. And perhaps that realism allowed me to understand that there was a good chance that, at some point, these men would disappoint me. Maybe that disappointment would come with a strikeout in the bottom of the ninth of a playoff game, maybe it would come with the admission of an extramarital affair, or maybe it would come with a positive drug test, but whatever it was, the disappointment was always possible. And as long as that disappointment didn't involve a serious crime like rape, child abuse, or even murder, there was also always the chance that I would be able to forgive and move on, perhaps slightly more jaded, but still a fan nonetheless.

But I suppose that "gray area" is what Plaschke and Stark have a problem with, right? No waffling allowed. If you hate the guy, you're morally superior, and if you love him, you're a moron. Case closed.

Ramirez is an unusual case for me, since I was a Red Sox fan when he unceremoniously dumped that team, only to come right to my other favorite team. I had to deal with the betrayal (perceived or otherwise, since there seems to have been a large dose of "heaping on" happening in the media when it came to that situation), and also with the insane amount of Ramirez love that began immediately upon his arrival in Los Angeles. I remember going to my first Manny game at Chavez Ravine, and just being amazed at the ferocity with which these fans loved that man. And I remember being a little bit annoyed that they couldn't have mustered that enthusiasm for our homegrown boys who had been working so hard. But I cheered right along with them eventually, because Manny is fun to watch, and because he hit home runs for my team, and my team won some games.

So, it's about three hours until Ramirez will be announced in the starting lineup at Petco in San Diego. And I keep asking myself what I would do if I had decided to go down there and see this game in person. All I can think of is that I would be silent. Not on purpose, or be ornery and make some point, but really just for the lack of something better to do. I'm not ready to cheer, but I'm also not willing to boo because I do know that he has served the required time for his transgression. So, silence would seem to be the best course of action. Not everyone will follow my lead. Certainly, San Diego fans will boo (and since they're 15.5 games behind the Dodgers, I guess those fans have just been waiting for a reason to make noise anyway), and Dodger fans in attendance will cheer. From my couch in Los Angeles, I think I'll just take it all in, and keep quiet.

But if the dude socks a homer to deep center in that pitcher's park, especially if the game is tied or, heaven forbid, the Dodgers are behind, all bets are off.

My apologies to Stark and Plaschke. I guess we can't all be so perfect.

Steve Sax at Sons of Steve Garvey wrote a post about this today. I suggest you read it.

Finally, A Win

I ask you, are there many things better than watching a walk-off homer in the thirteenth inning, then driving home while rapping 2Pac's Life Goes On (one of my hidden talents)? Oh, and also, it's your birthday.

Thanks for making it a memorable one, Andre.

More to come tomorrow.

NOTE: The inspiration for my syntax in the first paragraph came entirely from probably my favorite all-time Deep Thought, by Jack Handey.

Home Sweet Home

Looks like my quasi-hometown of Niceville, Florida (which I have written about here and here) got a little shoutout on True Blood tonight. I almost screamed when I saw this. Pretty damn awesome. In case you're wondering, I took this picture of my television screen with my iPhone, and brightened up the t-shirt image, so the rest of the image is blown out. That should help explain the quality.

You can learn more about the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival here, but just so you know, that shirt isn't vintage. The image may be, but the 3rd annual Mullet Festival would have been in 1978, and there's no way that shirt is that old. Apparently some company called Tailgate Clothing makes it, but it's out of stock on Bluefly.com, where I found it just now when I searched. So that blows, because I would totally own the thing if I could. I mean, I own two of my own Mullet Festival shirts, but neither is as cool as this one, and one of them even boasts a Confederate flag. A small one, but still. They're actually both part of my dog's bedding right now, which gives you an idea as to what I think of their quality.

One day, maybe I'll share some snippets of the documentary I made about the Mullet Festival way back in 2000. If you're lucky.

Highway Robbery

Last night, the Dodgers lost. And I was there. And it was rather depressing. But knowing that Brian Wilson blew a lead in the bottom of the ninth to give the Brewers the win over the Giants made the loss a little more bearable. Still, though, I'm heading to the game today, and again on Monday (which just happens to be my birthday), and so far the Dodgers are 1-2 in games I've seen live this season. So they better win the next two so I can at least be .500 on the season.

Christine and I had some really obnoxious fans sitting behind us at the game last night. They were a bunch of guys who were only interested in screaming at Griffey and/or trying to get a beach ball hit over to them in the middle of the game. We have seats only about five rows from the field, to the left fielder's right, so they were even louder than they needed to be to get Griffey's attention. To their credit, Griffey did look over at them more than once, even though their jokes and "insults" were far from original (stuff about him needing an oxygen mask because he's so old, for instance). But the constant yelling meant that we decided to find new seats by the third inning. So, we headed over to section 35 on the field, and sat in one of the back rows.

Turns out, we were sitting behind Russell Martin's girlfriend, Marikym Hervieux, who was hosting a bunch of kids from a children's hospital for the game. They showed a video of the on-field pre-game stuff they had done with the kids after the third inning, so that confirmed my suspicions that this woman was, in fact, a Dodger wife or girlfriend. She was very sweet with the kids while watching the game, and it was nice to see, even though I strongly dislike Russell Martin. Christine definitely hates Martin more than I do, and was annoyed when I showed her this more provocative picture of the girlfriend, saying, "I wonder if they met at book club." Zing!

In other news, the Dodgers want to charge me $59.99 to download a 5X7 version of this image the "FanFoto" people took of me and Christine at the Phillies game on June 6, 2009:

To just get a print of it, I think a little larger, is $19.99, which is absurd already, considering taking and printing the picture costs maybe $1.50 altogether (and I'm including what it costs to pay the person taking the photo). Quite the profit, huh? But $59.99 for just a downloaded image? Good lord.

Overreaction?

Over at Sons of Steve Garvey, Orel relayed a story that started on the MLB message boards, got picked up by a Nationals blog called Federal Baseball, then by Big League Stew. And now I'm mentioning it. The gist of it is this: a Red Sox fan was heading down to D.C. for the Sox/Nationals series, and he asked Nationals fans if they could recommend a bar. They recommended a gay bar, the guy went there, everyone had a good laugh.

Except for me, of course, because I am the killjoy when it comes to homophobic content, no matter how vague it may be. Here's what I wrote in the comments section over at SoSG:

My first reaction was to laugh about this. But then the gay rights activist in me was like, "Okay, so he was sent to a gay bar. So what?" And the guy had to get out of there as fast as he could, I guess just in case he was raped or something. Those gay boys just can't keep it in their pants, am I right?

I guess my issue just lies in the idea that the worst possible punishment the Nats fans could think of for this guy would be to send him to a gay bar. And as long as this is the prevailing mindset, I'll continue to have an uphill battle.

I'm not trying to get totally up in arms about this because it's certainly not the most blatant example of anti-gay "jokes" I've seen, particularly since I spend my time reading a lot of sports blogs. Fanerman, another SoSG reader, responded with this:

...maybe it's just easy for me (a straight male) to say, but it doesn't seem that... bad.

The joke does play on homophobia (and the guy seemed to have some), and that mindset does indicate the uphill battle. But, to me, it doesn't feel much more than the kind of politically incorrect practical joke that guys do to each other. As far as how bad the punishment is, how many kinds of bars are there?

Yes, we could get into the whole "oh, everything has to be so PC now that no one can make a joke argument," but I don't know if I have the energy for that right now. The bottom line for me is that the mindset is the problem, and as long as it's considered even borderline acceptable for jokes of this type to be made at the expense of gay people, we have a problem.

Any sort of event that furthers the attitude that it's okay to make fun of gay people, however innocuous the joke may be, is grounds for complaint from the gay side of things. The idea is to change people's minds, and to make them see that we are the same as everyone else, and only want equal rights. Now, you might say, "okay, if you're the same as everyone else, then we should be able to make jokes about you." But the thing is, a lot of people aren't joking. A lot of people see the "gay rights movement" as a call to arms, a reason for them to stockpile weapons and spew hate whenever they get the chance. And if we continue to further this notion that "gay" equals "stupid" or "wrong," we simply lend credence to the idea that gay people are somehow less than human, and therefore not as deserving of the same rights the rest of you get.

Steve Sax of SoSG wrote me and had this to say:

[Maybe they were] just sending him someplace they figured wasn't consistent with what the BoSox fan expected (whether they knew for a fact or assumed). It's like Victoria Beckham rolling into town and asking for a furniture store and sending her to Ikea.

That is definitely a fair point. But when you actually go to read the message board (which you can find here), there is one post that jumps out at me. After the man came back from his gay bar adventure, and posted a comment thanking the fans for directing him there, one fan had this to say:

The original poster wanted to know of a good bar near the park, I just recommend [sic] the place where I thought a Red Sox fan would feel most comfortable.

Since it's clear the Nationals fans had a problem with the Sox fan asking for some advice about their city (their absurd reaction is an entirely different post that I won't bother with), you can almost create a syllogism out of this thing:

All Red Sox fans are stupid and awful for invading our ballpark to cheer for their team.

Gay people are stupid and awful.

All Red Sox fans are gay, and would therefore feel "most comfortable" in a gay bar.

Does that make it more obvious why this would bother someone like me? Hey, I'm not innocent, believe me. I have called someone who offended me a "fag" (though not to his/her face, ever) on more than one occasion, and I can't promise I won't do it again. So I'm part of the problem, for sure. But I'm working on it, which is more than I can say for most everyone else who makes these kind of jokes. This country is almost completely desensitized to the use of "gay" as a pejorative, and that doesn't make the fight for equal rights any easier.

I felt like I had already written about this, and it turns out I was right, as this post (the important part is after the baseball stuff, halfway into the post) from this time last year ago attests. And damned if that post isn't much, much better than this one.