Now that the all-star break is nearly upon us, we can look forward to endless Peter Gammons trade rumours, approximately 1/2 of 1/4 percent of which come true. Though I can see why some fans enjoy rumour season, I confess that I loathe this time of year.
For one thing I get dozens of e-mails from people asking me if I think the A's are going to trade Miguel Tejada for Carlos Beltran and Mike McDougal. As if I have contacts swarming inside the A's front office. One of those e-mails is enough, but it seldom stops there. For another thing I can't stand Gammons. He should really get a job for CNN or the Washington Post, because he uses more un-named sources than those two fine schools of journalistic integrity combined. "A senior Red Sox official confirmed that the team has interest in Carlos Beltran." At its most naked level, that statement is, of course, true. Who doesn't have interest in Beltran? People will indeed be moved from now until July 31, but most likely not the people Gammons and others think; and even when Gammons is right about a player he is invariably swapped to a team nobody would have expected. Who saw the White Sox getting Carl Everett and Roberto Alomar? (Perhaps the question should now be, who sees them being traded again?)
This is also true during the off-season, when various free agents are rumoured to be flying hither and thither. Nobody ever mentioned Kevin Brown going to the Dodgers, for example, and certainly nobody envisioned the Rangers picking up A-Rod. Perhaps it's the curmudgeon in me, but I for one like to wait before any deals or signings are made before I begin in pointless speculation. I do concede that it can be fun to play lap-top GM, but that is why I play fantasy baseball.
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Everyone in the baseball world knows the A's need help in their outfield, among other locales, and everyone has known this since before the season started. But Billy Beane recently said he sees no need to upgrade the team. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but is it possible Beane is, as some have suggested he would, experiencing some blowback to his comments in Moneyball? Is he being re-buffed in his efforts to improve the squad and putting on a nice public face to cover this? Is he thus preparing A's fans -- and the SF Bay Area media, venomous for whispers of Beane's desired targets -- for disappointment when Ken Macha continues to fill out "Long, RF, McMillon, LF, Hatteberg, 1B" as August arrives?
All reports I've heard about Beane indicate he very much likes himself, and he's obviously a very bright man, but there's no way he can look at the A's and not see the holes in their lineup. Beane may be bluffing, and I am not suggesting one thing or another about the effect Moneyball may have had on Beane's ability to deal, but the idea that the A's don't need offensive help is ludicrous to the point of high comedy.
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The A's did call up David McCarty, the number-three overall pick, from Stanford, of the 1991 draft, but he is unlikely to provide the impact the club needs. I was able to see McCarty play whenever Stanford came to USC, and I was awfully impressed with him, much more so than I was with other Stanford stars like Ed Sprague, Jeffrey Hammonds, or even Mike Mussina. And actually the player I liked the most from Stanford was Stan Spencer, a former San Diego Padres pitcher and who, according to my best friend who also happened to play for the USC baseball team, had better stuff than Mussina. (You think my name is difficult? The friend's name is Mike Mastroyannakis.) I became a fan of McCarty right away, drafted him in my fantasy league's farm system, and followed his minor-league career right up to the point he reached the majors with the Twins. Needless to say, I was disappointed and surprised with McCarty's performance when he reached the show -- but probably not as much as the Twins.
One of those odd events that happens to us came during one of my spring-training trips to Arizona, when I saw McCarty in a Safeway in Peoria, a town 35 minutes north of Phoenix and the spring home to the Padres and Mariners. I don't recall the exact year or what team McCarty was with at the time, but he had been established as a disappointment. Most likely the year was 1996 or 1997, when McCarty played for the Giants. In any event, it was about midnight, and a friend and I were getting the munchies and looking to secure food for the morning when we saw McCarty. The day had been unusually warm, even for Phoenix, and, in addition to the goodies, I also needed some sunscreen and aloe. We grabbed some Hostess donettes and some Pop Tarts, the requisite Tropicana SPF 45, and headed for the cashier.
On the way there Randy, my friend, caught sight of McCarty, who was very tall even from a distance of about 75 feet, even taller than I remember him when I saw him at USC's Dedeaux Field. He and his girlfriend or wife (I assume that's who she was) were in the eye-care aisle, squabbling over something; we were too far away to know exactly, but it seemed to be about which contact solution to get. McCarty was in blue jeans, a white polo shirt, and had a red cap that was neither Stanford nor a MLB team. The girl had dark hair and wore tan shorts along with a white tank-top. She, like McCarty, was attractive.
Randy, who knew I was a McCarty fan, urged me to ask him for an autograph, since, along with McCarty and his girlfriend/wife, we were the only customers in the store. But I didn't want to violate his privacy, even though I suspect he would have been flattered at being recognized, and I am glad I did so. Almost immediately after we saw him, McCarty threw up his arms and abruptly walked away from the girl, leaving her somewhat upset. Embarrassed, I turned away and headed for the register, my carcinogenic snacks and my carcinogenic-blocking sunscreen in tow.
But as I walked away, I took a quick look back at the eye-care aisle. McCarty was still walking away, arrogantly, it seemed to me, and the girl was still perusing contact solutions, somewhat absently at this point. I remember very much wanting the girl to look up at me, so I could offer some sort of lame smile or acknowledgement that she wasn't alone. (Whatever that would accomplish I could not say then nor can I say now.) She never did look up, and for all I know it was entirely her fault McCarty flew away, but suddenly a huge wave of compassion hit me. I had no reason to feel sorry for McCarty or the girl. Already at that point McCarty had established a reputation for being something of an attitude problem (I never did hear anything concrete to that end), and, being a Stanford graduate, he obviously had a future outside of baseball. In addition to the huge signing bonus he received, he was probably pulling in over $200,000 even at that stage of his career. As his girlfriend/wife, the girl would reap those financial benefits, while simultaneously taking the less-than-splendid -- i.e. the reality of being with a former organizational darling who had fallen from the precipice to a skulking career played out in forgotten towns from Bakersfield to Tacoma and the drab points in between.
That night I felt an acute sense of McCarty's failure not only to live up to the expectations of being a high-round draft pick, but also even to carve out a Wally-Joyner-type career. He was only 26 or 27 then, but it was clear he would never make it as even a minor star. But it was more than that. Hitherto I had only thought of McCarty's baseball life, but his personal life loomed right in front of me, and it seemed to be going as well as the baseball portion. Here were two real people, dealing with the vagaries of relationships, of midnight voyages to procure sundries, of their own questions and devils that I could relate to, if not in empathy at least in sympathy. Our troubles are always different, but their essence is the same.
I was also but 26 or 27 at the time, and even though I was in the middle of a mild early-life crisis (discovering you want to be a writer is not the solution to these kinds of things), I was generally happy and shielded from the effects of failure, having lived a sheltered life in Marin County, one of the wealthiest regions in the wealthiest country in the world. USC, with its urban setting, offered a different view of failure, but one of civilisation's failures, and as such it is not relevant here. But when the effects of failure present themselves to you in the form of one of your previous favorite players at midnight in a Safeway in Peoria, AZ, you tend to remember it. While I am remiss on this notion more than I care to admit, I do remember that night when I prepare to criticize, for example, Terrence Long, who is perhaps right now having a row in Safeway with his significant other about whether to buy Alcon or Renu for their contact lenses, and who is no doubt right now dealing with his own questions and devils.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20030711050447999