Fountain of Youth

Brian Sabean is a busy man these days.  This week alone, he’s managed to add All-Star Moises Alou to the San Francisco outfield, and is on the verge of signing a deal with the Rolling Stones that would allow the Giants to coordinate their road trips with the Stones’ U.S. summer tour.  Rumors are swirling that the Giants are also prepared to offer a bullpen spot to Pat Summerall, but neither side has confirmed the talks.  The San Francisco Giants have been an old team for years and continue to get older, made to look downright geriatric when compared to the daycare center now being housed in the Oakland Coliseum.  But the Giants also represent the Bay Area’s best hope for a playoff team in 2005, in any sport.  This is crucial for me, because I’m running out of creative ways to say that my teams suck (there’s a limit to the number of times you can write things like, “for the 11th consecutive year, the Western Conference playoffs will narrowly elude the grasp of the Golden State Warriors”).For Giants fans, this anti-youth movement is nothing new. The boys from Pac Bell have long preferred older players, avoiding anyone under the age of 30 like a bad case of scabies. Heck, even the ballboys are old in San Francisco. But while Sabean continues to guide this team like Kramer and the Saab salesman tearing down the freeway with the needle on empty, the Giants’ G.M. always manages to keep the team in contention. The reason the Giants as an organization have managed to defy their collective age is because of two men: Sabean and Barry Bonds, who actually appears to be getting better as he approaches age 40. In a league of undergraduates, Bonds is the only man with a master’s degree in hitting; at times, watching Bonds hit is like watching the dodgeball scene in “Billy Madison”. Last season, only 4 players had a slugging percentage higher than Bonds’ on-base percentage (a preposterous .609%), and he set the single-season intentional walks record before the All-Star Break. But while Sabean has earned the respect of even those who hate the Giants, Bonds grows more hated by the day. Two men, working for the same team, but with opposite reputations.

Of course, if he were anyone else, Bonds would be the feel-good player of the decade. Old-timers like Brett Favre are showered with praise nowadays just for remaining competitive, while Bonds is so good that the best pitchers in the world refuse to even attempt to get him out. But because he’s Barry Bonds, things are never easy. The reason for Bonds’ lack of popularity used to be his attitude, which put him on par with only Kobe Bryant among modern players who have managed to dominate their sport while remaining utterly unlikable. But then came the BALCO scandal, which led to Bonds’ recent admission that he used steroids, though he claims he did not know they were steroids at the time. Needless to say, this didn’t win him any new fans.

Bonds’ grand jury testimony only heaped more scrutiny onto his unnaturally strong shoulders, and gave his critics more reason to speculate that his enhanced physique is the product of illegal substances. Looking at pictures of Bonds when he first broke into the big leagues and seeing him now, it’s like looking at Wesley Snipes in “Major League” and Wesley Snipes in “Blade”. But where Willie Mays Hayes gradually became a comic book hero over 10 years, Bonds did it in less than 2. Bonds still has a standing offer from 50 Cent to see who can reach the furthest around their own body, a challenge that has Pay-Per-View companies salivating. And the mysterious disappearance of Marvin Benard only lends more credence to the theory that Benard was never actually a real person, but rather a creature that shot out from one of Bonds’ steroid-infested muscles, much like Athena springing from the head of Zeus.

Of course, if steroids were really the big story here, not many people would care about Barry Bonds. After all, Jeremy Giambi admitted to taking ‘roids, and he’s managing a Jiffy Lube somewhere. The reason people care so much about Barry Bonds is because he hits home runs. And he hits lots of them. In fact, he’s so good at hitting home runs, he has become the closest thing to a one-man team baseball has ever seen. No other Giant hit more than 22 homers last year (Bonds hit 45), and none of Bonds’ teammates had drew than 70 walks (Bonds had 232), yet the Giants still scored more runs than any every other National League team not named the Cardinals (the NL Champs edged the Giants by a hefty 5-run margin). The only statistic more bizarre than that is the fact that the Warriors are only 4 games out of the playoffs right now.

Having the best hitter in baseball and the second-best pitcher in the National League (Jason Schmidt) brought the Giants to within 1 game of the playoffs in 2004, which is truly remarkable considering the lack of help each man received. So Sabean retooled the team this winter, bringing in Alou, Armando Benitez, Omar Vizquel, and Mike Matheny, all of whom have World Series experience. Vizquel and Matheny, specifically, were brought in to improve San Francisco’s defense up the middle, which was necessary because second baseman Ray Durham plays with a shoe on his left hand and Marquis Grissom is starting to grow roots in center field. Because of these changes, the Giants should actually be better in 2005 than they were in 2004, especially now that they have that all-important “pees on his own hands” intangibles guy in Alou. Some guys get the shoe commercials and cereal boxes, but it’s always the players who urinate on their own hands who are still playing in October.

Just like always, the Giants will continue to squeeze every last ounce out of Barry Bonds and this current team, the way kids will keep rolling up their tube of toothpaste until they’re forced to get a new one. It’s not a bad strategy, really, so long as Bonds stays uncharacteristically healthy for a man his age and continues to hit like he invented the sport. And so the Giants will continue to make one-year runs, which leads to fewer and fewer draft picks (San Francisco won’t pick until the 4th round in 2005) and leaves fans who dream of a younger team feeling as lonely as I felt when I tried convincing my friends to see the “Spongebob Squarepants” movie with me. The 2004 Seattle Mariners are a perfect example of what happens when you try to walk this tightrope a year too long, attempting to defy fate one time too many. But Sabean has perfected this art, finding gems where others find dusty vets. For San Francisco, Bonds is the here and now, the identity and center of the team. But Sabean is the caretaker, and he’ll be around long after Barry. And if he’s anything like his players, Sabean should only get better with age.