Notes From The Nat

There’s been a lot of stuff written, and said, (and whined) about Oakland’s recent trades of former Vancouver Canadian Nick Swisher, and former ‘afterthought’ of the Mark Mulder trade, Dan Haren.

Some thinkers are liking the deal, understanding that the worst that will come of it is one player as good as Swisher coming through in the next season or so, while the upside could mean THREE Swishers dropping into the roster by 2009. Others think it stinks, and that it’s just a continuation of the Oakland habit of trading away stars for kids, being cheapskates, and looking towards a future that will never come.

One noted blog pundit, on Elephants in Oakland, thinks Oakland boss Billy Beane "has made so many bad moves that his ‘positive’ moves are really just scabs on the A’s organization wounds he himself inflicted," reasoning that  the two trades "are a stinging rebuke of Billy Beane’s management of the OaklandAthletics Baseball Club, and if you will - the populist Moneyballtheory."

Swisher was one of several first round draft picks for the A’s in 2002.While Lewis spent much of the book explaining (not very well) varyingstatistical analysis methods the A’s purportedly eschewed - NickSwisher was the player the scouting crowd and stat heads could ‘agree’on. The definable stats and the indefinable intangibles and the toolsin-betweens were all there with Nick Swisher.

What Swisherbecame for the A’s was a loudmouth, publicity-whore and/or the face ofthe A’s franchise. Swisher was not a disappointment if you read columnsby Susan Slusser and Mychael Urban. If you look at the projectionsbased on stats and the hopes based on talent and ability - Swisher hadfailed, to date, to live up to the expectations of both the stat headand scouting communities. Swisher’s ability and talent havedeteriorated into ‘old player skills’; power, walks, low average, lackof speed. In 2007 Jack Cust clearly showed that those old player skillsare not worthy of a 1st round draft choice - they could be had,twice-over, (the A’s had Cust in Sacramento for 2005) at the minorleague level.

Now, he makes a good point that the A’s got Cust for nothing, and ended up with someone as good, if not better, than first round draft pick Swisher when they did so. That, to me, would seem to indicate that there’s value in the A’s tendency to steer clear of big money draft picks, and find replacement parts on the market when the need arises.

But Mr EiO goes on to harp on the Octavio Dotel [seen right] and Arthur Rhodes trades (which nobody will deny sucked), decry Oakland’s scouts and draft team as being incompetent, and points out the obvious - that Eric Chavez is a giant hole of suck, in trying to demonstrate that Billy Beane is a very average GM.

In my opinion, he not only cherry picks his data, but he also misses some very important points.

What better way to storm back onto the blog after a few months rest than by coming back on and directly refuting the guy who has been keeping the hot seat hot in my absence? (Thanks for keeping the blog a-rockin’, Jez. You are, and shall continue to be, the man.)

Yes, today Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s did what few saw coming and traded favorite son, Moneyball 1st round draft pick, and sometime switch-hitting slugger, Nick Swisher, to the Chi-Town Chaussettes Blanches for a handful of solid prospects.

The collective wisdom on this from A’s fans is "booo."

I say otherwise. I think this is a great move, and here’s why.

Frankly, Nick Swisher is ass. Sorry, I know he’s a homegrown talent, and I know he’s a former Vancouver Canadian, and I know he’s a bubbly dude with a great personality who lights up a clubhouse and treats the fans with respect, and I know he’s been a great return on a first round draft pick…

But he’s also a tubby dude who doesn’t hit nearly as hard and long as he should, labours around the outfield, is more suited for the first base spot that’s usually reserved for harder hitters than he, and is prone to long bouts of slumpishness.

Young? Check. Cheap? Check. Better than Eric Chavez? Well, duh.

But still ass.

If we go by batting average (and yes, I know how flawed a stat BA can be), Nick Swisher hasn’t hit above .269 over a full season since his High-A minor league days - and most of those seasons have been far below that level. Yes, he hits home runs, but last year he hit quite a few less (22) than the season before (35), and experienced some horrible dead spots where the only thing he could hit without striking out three times was a nightclub.

In short, he’s a younger Gary Matthews Jr - overrated, full of holes, and despite much promise, unlikely to deliver on anything close to a grand scale. 

So look at it this way - Swisher *might* have a breakout season in 2008 and smack 45 home runs, and if he does, both myself and Beane are fools. But he also might hit *less* dingers than he did in 2007, or, just as bad, the same number. And then he won’t be ‘a kid with great promise who might hit 45′, he’ll be ‘a kid who’ll hit 20 homers a season for you and not be too terrible in the outfield’. 

Swisher’s value is, right now, as high as it’s likely to be, in my opinion. I might be wrong, but I think it’s more likely that I’m right. So by selling him now, before he has a chance to hit .220 next season, the A’s made sure to get the utmost return on their Moneyball investment. 

Look at it this way; clearly, the A’s aren’t looking to compete in year 2008. But with what they’ve got back, they’re a shot at not only competing in 2009, but also the three seasons following - right through the time when their new stadium will be built. 

Now, I’m not going to say that Beane’s odd desire to keep Eric Chavez as he nosedives, season after season, is clever. Nor will I say that I understand why Mark Kotsay hasn’t been traded to the Yankees for a rosin bag, a salted pretzel and a 2-for-1 dry cleaning coupon. But if you understand and adhere to the theory that you sell high (think Mulder, Hudson, and Swisher), buy low (think 39 prospects acquired in the last two weeks), then you’ll see not only what Beane is up to right now, but why he HASN’T sold off Kotsay and Chavez - yet.

Trust me - if Chavez starts the season in good form, he’ll be gone by the end of the first month. And if Kotsay just manages to avoid needing more back surgery - ditto. 

It’s going to be a bad time to be an Oakland A’s fan, but if you’re a fan of the system, and of the future, this is going to be an interesting ballclub to be watching up close.

(NOTE: To those who have emailed and called over the past few weeks/months, sorry about being out of reach. I’ve been selling my business and dealing with the imminent birth of kid #2, and making a concerted effort to just leave baseball alone until things get interesting again. That time is here.) 

Got a few emails of late asking when we’ll start regular updates of the blog again, so I figured I’d drop by and discuss. 

It’s tough to really do much updating about a low-A short season team around this time of the year. The team isn’t pushing out press releases, the players are only playing in Venezuela and Hawaii, if at all, and aside from a little movement in the Rule V draft, there’s not much to tell on the personnel change front.

And there’s one other thing that’s keeping me from the keyboard of late - the news that the Oakland A’s might be considering taking on the narcissistic criminal fraud that is Barry Lamar Bonds for season 2008.

To put this in terms impossible to confuse, if Barry Bonds wears Oakland green in 2008, this blog will not cover A’s games ever again. I’ll buy myself a Mariners jersey, and start learning the names of Everett Aquasox players.

Not that we’ll stop covering the Vancouver Canadians (or whatever incarnation they may end up as in 2008 - go Capilanos!) - we’ll totally go wall-to-wall on the C’s as we always have, but once the players leave the friendly confines of Little Mountain, we’ll be following them and only them - not the system they play for.

I don’t make this threat easily - I love the A’s with a passion - but part of the reason I love the team is because of the way they RUN the team. I see Billy Beane as being a smart guy willing to use technology and outside the box thinking and business sense to get ahead, but also as someone who has a sense of moral and ethical fortitude, which leads him to bring in people who a reasonable person can not just support as a player, but like as a person.

Nick Swisher, for mine, is what’s great about the A’s. Milton Bradley, for mine, was not.

And Barry Bonds, for mine, is Milton Bradley with anything remotely likable stripped away and replaced with poison, bile, ego and complete vacuum where his character should be.

History will not be kind to the 80’s/90’s A’s, who absolutely rode to glory on the back of steroids, ego and more steroids, but I’ve always justified my passion for the team by saying "that was a different time - a time when I didn’t know the A’s from a hole in the ground - and that isn’t today’s A’s."

If they repeat that loathsome time, for the sake of a few extra tickets sold to casual Giants fans who, collectively, have willingly held Barry’s pecker as he peed all over the record books for the last several years, I’ll have nothing to do with it.

Life is too short to spend it watching someone you hate.

UPDATE: In season 2006, Kane County Cougars catcher Raul Padron hit 2 home runs in the Oakland system. In 2007, for the Stockton Ports, he hit 13.

Today, he was handed a 50-game suspension for steroid use.

Previously, 2003 Vancouver Canadians catcher, David Castillo, has been suspended THREE TIMES for steroid use, while 2004 NWL MVP, Javier Herrera, got nabbed once.

Does Oakland still have a steroid problem? Perhaps, but you can’t really fault them for a couple of minor leaguers doing dumb things to get to the top. If they bring in Barry Bonds, however, "Does Oakland have a steroid problem" becomes a statement, rather than a question.

Unsure if this is considered a contravention of the Jake Kerr State Secrets Act or not, but I’ve heard now from two different sources now - one close to the C’s and one on the periphery - that the C’s could be looking at creating a new logo for the team.

This, if it happens, would be awesome. Not just ‘that’s cool’ awesome, but something close to ‘yes, that is Natalie Portman sliding her hotel key across the bar towards me’ awesome.

Well, okay, not quite that awesome. But you get the idea.

The current C’s logo is, or was (as the case may be), a mistake. It should have been a ‘V’. It should have been created using something better than Microsoft Word’s image-maker. It should have included a symbol that could be turned into a mascot, or at least been stylized enough that it would be wearable off the field. I mean, come on, what’s with the tiny baseballs? That’s Little League-standard… and to think, the old management paid money for that thing.

First off, if you’re going to do the single letter as a logo thing, it should almost always be the first letter of your city, not your nickname. You don’t see an ‘RS’ on the Boston Red Sox cap, you don’t see a ‘B’ on the Atlanta Braves cap, and you don’t see a ‘D’ sitting atop a Dodger.

Admittedly, you do see an ‘A’ on the Oakland Athletics cap, but that’s because the team has been known as the A’s through three different cities and over a century of history. Nobody else that I can think of goes the same route.

[Update: Upon further thought, I’ve remembered that the Minnesota Twins now go with a ‘T’ logo, but only because the old ‘TC’ they used was ass, and despite having a World Series history with the old ‘M’ logo that should have been permanent. The Seattle Mariners also used to stock an ‘M’, back in their old ‘trident logo’ days, but only because the M fit with the actual look of a trident.. and to be honest, that too looked kind of ass.]

The options for the Vancouver Canadians when it comes to a logo are one of two: either you go with a single letter (as the Spokane Indians and Eugene Emeralds did) or a funky mascot that you can sell to the kids (like the Everett Aquasox and Yakima Bears did). There’s really no other option.

The C’s went for the letter, mostly because it’s tough to make a mascot out of a ‘Canadian’. I mean, what would you use - a Mountie? A hockey player? A Tim Hortons donut? A stylized Tommy Douglas? An underpaid doctor? The Vancouver Canucks, with pockets much deeper than the Canadians, have struggled both with how to portray a Canuck on a logo, and how to utilize the straight ‘C’, for years, so I can see why the Canadians would take the easier option.

But when they went for the single letter, they really botched it up. When someone in Eugene or Boise or even North Van sees a giant C on a cap, what’s their first thought about where that cap comes from?

Cincinnati? Chicago? Chilliwack?

‘Couver?

Let’s set aside the fact that we totally ripped the concept, font and appearance of our logo from the Boise Hawks logo [seen left] - you know, the one they just trashed because it was old and outdated?

Let’s ignore the fact that the Spokane Indians did the exact same logo as ours, only did it eighteen times better [seen right], even getting input from local First Nations folk and using their own font design, rather than just selecting the ‘Playbill’ font in Word.

Spokane’s logo is sellable and relevant to the area. Eugene’s logo is sellable and relevant to kids.

Everett’s logo is so good, in fact, I actually considered buying one of their caps. But the C’s? I have nothing in my wardrobe with that big ugly C. The alternate ‘flying V’ I have plenty of.

But not the C.

Granted, the C’s logo isn’t as terrible as the Tri-City Dust Devils mess [seen left], which was actually stolen from the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL.

And it’s not the brewery-logo-inspired crap that ours used to be back in the Triple-A days [seen right] (thank God we weren’t owned by Kokanee, or the team would be wearing Yeti suits during batting practice).

But it’s not good. And it needs a change. And the fact that word on the street says a change is gonna come, means the C’s are STILL listening to the fans and giving us what we want.

Crazy massive props, yo.

One final word on the topic: Please, whoever makes the decisions on merchandising, please talk to me before next season. The C’s have never got their merchandising right, and it’s an area I have masses of experience in. Let me design one single t-shirt, and I guarantee it’ll outsell anything else you might come up with by 50% or more. I’ll even give you the team’s next ad slogan for free:

"Small ball, redefined."

Boom.

A few weeks back, I bought a small knick knack on eBay - an Ottawa Lynx paperweight. At least I think it’s a paperweight. It doesn’t seem to serve any other kind of purpose that I can see.

Ibought it because, come Labor Day, the Ottawa Lynx will be no more, andthe Vancouver Canadians will be the last remaining Canadian minorleague baseball team.

Think about that for a second - no affiliated minor league baseball anywhere in Canada… except for Vancouver.

Ofcourse, this is a shameful course of events, and one that could havebeen avoided with just the minimal amount of care and concern, but careand concern aren’t words that sit well with baseball executives.

From today’s Globe and Mail:

On Labour Day, the Ottawa Lynx will play the final game of their15-year existence when they close out a six-game homestand against theSyracuse Chiefs, ending an era during which minor-league teams weredotted across Canada.

Less than a decade ago, there were Triple-A teams in Vancouver,Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa. In addition, Canada played host toseveral other major-league affiliates in places such as London, Ont.,Welland, Ont., and Medicine Hat.

Yet when the Lynx depart after this season for Allentown, Pa., theSingle-A Vancouver Canadians will become the only Canadian outpostamong the dozens of major-league farm teams in North America.

Granted, the game isn’t as big up here now that the Blue Jays aren’t incontention and the Expos are gone to Washington, and the ridiculousborder line-ups (mostly heading in a southerly direction) haven’thelped the situation.Nor has the fact that, up north, during April and May, it’s usually either raining, has just rained, or is about to rain.

Andthe fact that US towns and cities are happy to pile loads of taxpayermoney into building stadiums while Canadian cities view socialinfrastructure as something to be avoided is another factor.

Butif you want to know the REAL reason that there’s no minor league ballin Canada, I can sum it up in three words: the Blue Jays.

The Lynx were born when baseball interest in Canada was peaking. The franchise played its first game only five months after the Toronto Blue Jays captured their first World Series, as baseball participation, television audiences and attendance hit record highs.

Ottawa sold out most games during those early days, setting an International League attendance record in their new 10,000-seat facility and becoming the jewel of Canada’s minor-league scene.

But when interest in both the Blue Jays and Montreal Expos began to decline in the mid-1990s, so do did the minor leagues suffer in popularity.

Then there were the economic forces. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a low Canadian dollar made teams more valuable in the United States than Canada.

Economics, schmeconomics. The failure of baseball at the minor league level in this country is down to the Jays.

And not their lack of results so much as their lack of resolve.

Put simply, the Blue Jays could have seen the game failing in their own backyard and done something about it beyond compelling people in the cheap seats to "Make some noize!" They could have showed a little charity, and helped out surrounding areas to keep their teams. They could have played exhibition games outside of Ontario, or even the occasional in-season game. They could have made their stars into nationwide heroes on the same level as Joe Carter or Larry Walker once were. They could have drafted more local kids, or traded for one or two. They could have dragged a minor league team or two BACK to Canada.

But they did none of this. Instead, they figure wall-to-wall Blue Jays coverage on Sportsnet is enough to keep the kids in Nunavut and the oldies in Thunder Bay interested. The result of that misguided thinking? If Vancouverites want to see a ballgame, they go to Seattle. If Calgarians want to see one, they go to the independent Northern League. If Regina folks want to see one, they’ll head for Chicago.

Sure,there’s no law that says the Blue Jays have to spend money or exacteffort in helping keep minor league ball in Canada. There’s noprovincial or federal directives that say they should sling a fewmillion to cities to help them build stadiums that could have helpedthem keep their teams. There’s nothing in the bible that says "thoushalt build the sport in your own backyard if you want people to give adamn when the Yankees and Sox own your ass."

But the fundamentals of business dictate that, if you wantyour company to grow, your industry should grow too. and thefundamentals of sport management suggest that, if your team is playingaway for a week, but your Triple-A team plays just down the street, youkeep the locals interested in baseball ALL. THE. TIME.

TheMariners get this. Their minor league affiliates are as close as theycan be to Seattle, and the results are overwhelmingly positive. Do youhonestly think that Everett Aquasox fans don’t get to Safeco Field towatch the Mariners as often as they do the Flipperkids? Do you notthink Tacoma ball fans convoy past the airport to see their Triple-Aheroes playing in The Show?

Meanwhile, where do the Blue Jaysminor leaguers play? Not Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton and St Johns, butrather New Hampshire, Florida, New York, and Michigan.

The BlueJays love to call themselves Canada’s team, but where’s the incentivefor Canadians outside the 416 to give a damn about the Jays,when they send their kids to the US to play? Where are baseball fans inWinnipeg, Quebec, Calgary and Edmonton supposed to go to get theirbaseball fill, if the Jays aren’t concerned with supplying it?

Now,I understand how the minors work. I get it that decisions such as theone to move the Lynx to Pennsylvania are not made by the Rogers board,but that board can damn well have a say, and when the city of Ottawacouldn’t or wouldn’t raise the cash to upgrade the ballpark there (oreven build parking for it, or even not destroy the existing parking),the Jays could have ridden in like local heroes, offered to build a newballpark, and taken over the affiliation of the team while doing so.

For$10-25m, the team could have exploited a great real estate opportunity,anchored itself among Ottawa’s ball fans as ‘their team’, and securedthe ability to have their call-ups a short drive away, rather than ashort flight - for decades to come.

But they don’t. And themotards who don’t think these things through will say "Canadians don’tlike baseball", even as the Vancouver Canadians attendance figures spikeup dramatically (for Low-A short season ball, at that), and thousands of Vancouverites tackle the bordercrossing every weekend to see Mariners games some four hours away.

City officials will say "I won’t waste taxpayer money on stadiums",even as stadium developments across the United States, from Memphis toBalitmore to Albuquerque to Round Rock, rejuvenate downtrodden areasand bring in millions of dollars (and thousands of jobs) to localeconomies, as well as giving local populations some 70 nights ofentertainment every summer that they otherwise would have spentwatching TV.

As for the economics reasoning that Ottawa’s owners are trotting out as the logic behind their move, it’s funny that as they leave, the Independent Can-Am League is looking to not just move in to the city, but take over the stadium lease.

[Can-Am League ‘Quebec Capitales’ owner Miles] Wolff is also betting that Canadians still have plenty of appetite for baseball. Right now, he’s bidding to take over the final two years of the Lynx lease and operate a Can-Am League team in Ottawa next spring, with a schedule that runs from late May to September.

"There is and has always been great baseball interest in Canada," Wolff said. "People say what can you do better than the Lynx? Well, we don’t have to play in April and May when the weather is terrible and the Senators are doing well."

The Ottawa Lynx are dead, just as the Edmonton Cubs,Dodgers, Drakes, Eskimos, Grays, Legislatures, Navy Cardinals andTrappers died off. They’re dead like the Calgary Cannons, or theMedicine Hat Blue Jays, or the Pulaski Blue Jays, or the St CatherinesBlue Jays, or the Montreal Royales, Royals and Royals Accomplishments.Extinct like the Victoria Rosebuds. Gone the way of the VancouverAsahi. Fallen off the twig like the Winnipeg Maroons and Whips. Or like the entire ill-conceived, ill-fated, corruptly-run Canadian Baseball League.

May the baseball gods have mercy on their souls.

And ours for letting it happen.

I just listened to the Vancouver Canucks unveiling their new hockey jersey, and with 8,000 people paying money to go see it (seriously!) and live TV and radio coverage (seriously!), I began to feel a little sad.

8,000 people to see five guys skate around in a new jersey? Seriously?

I tried to go to the Province and Vancouver Sun websites (part of the Canada.com network - which is the nation’s largest internet portal) to actually see what it looks like for myself, but they’ve both crashed under the weight of looky-loos like myself.  

So what chance do our Vancouver Canadians ever have of making the big time when hockey gets that sort of turnout - paid turnout at that - for a ten-minute event?

Then I looked again at last night’s C’s crowd - 5,035 people. 

On a Tuesday night.

A chilly Tuesday night.

For short-season Low-A ball.

At a time in the season when we have no chance of making the playoffs.

I was flicking through yesterday’s Province and I found a full page in the sports section devoted to the appearance at Nat Bailey Stadium of the Famous Chicken, and more coverage a page later of the previous night’s game.

Then I remembered going to the grocery store yesterday, and nearly walking into a giant sign advertising C’s tickets for sale at $5.95 each. Then I recalled hearing an ad for the C’s over their PA system a few minutes later.

Then I opened The Richmond Review and saw a Canadians ad. This morning I saw a TV commercial for the C’s on one of the network stations in town, and a few days ago, in the shocker of our time, Mike ‘baseball who?’ Pratt actually talked up the C’s on his Sportsnet-simulcast radio show.

And now I’m listening to the nooner.

Vancouver is a hockey town, it’s true. But it’s also a baseball town. It’s also a football town. It’s also a lacrosse town, and a basketball town, and a soccer town.

In short, this is as rabid a sports town as you’ll find, and Grizzlies notwithstanding, if you supply a solid on-field product and don’t take the fan base for granted, Vancouver’s sports mad population will feed the machine and give you their hard earned.

This is a sports town, Jake Kerr. If you keep on building it, we will come.

In all my time watching the Vancouver Canadians, I can’t remember a lineup as beaten down as this one. Top to bottom, one through nine, starters and relievers, coaches and fans - this year’s C’s have completed the journey from media darlings to utter irrelevance with a 2-10 run that has seen them pass Everett on the way to the division cellar.

At this moment in time, there’s no worse team in the NWL than the Vancouver Canadians, and that’s just the plain old fashioned truth. Statistics back it up, and the results tell no lies. 

We don’t just have the worst batting average in the league (.234), we also lead the league ins trikeouts, have only one pitcher in the league top ten for ERA (Jose Guzman, who sits in the tenth spot), and our winningest pitcher sports a sad-looking 3-1, 6.10 record (that’d be Scott Hodsdon, though at 3-3, 6.23, Leonardo Martinez is right on his tail).

So what’s caused all this? Are this year’s Oakland draftees just not as good? Are they lacking talent? Heart? Determination?

No. No. No.

Here’s what they’re lacking: depth.

You wanna know who to blame for Vancouver’s drop in form? Blame Oakland. Blame the A’s, who have sucked the best out of this team all year long and not given them back a single player in months to cover for those who have gone elsewhere.

"Ooh, Sean Doolittle looks good. We’ll have him in Kane County. And Josh Horton could break out, let’s take him. Trevor Banwart hasn’t been in Vancouver more than an inning, but let’s take him too, and Ramiro Mendez is hitting, so he’s out. And, hmm, who can we take from the bullpen? Oh, why not just take the guy that has thrown 30% of all relief innings - he can go to Stockton."

Who do we get back? Nada.

So I sit down Saturday night to type out a post-gamer after a fantastic outing from the C’s at The Nat (including a Matt Sulentic bullet-time dinger that is currently orbiting the Earth and could be a potential problem for the NASA Space Station if it doesn’t change course soon), and after two hours of polished prose and incredibly witty repartee, just as I hit ’submit’, what should happen?

Computer freezes up.

So I break a few things over my monitor, smack the desk loudly a few times, wake up the baby and curse a blue storm that would peel the skin off an ox, hit the reset button and wait, only to find that my computer is taking foreeeever to restart. The drive light is pounding away like I’m defragging the thing, the computer is making ‘kerchunk kerchunk’ noises, and the modem is blazing like it does when I download eighteen indie albums at once. What the hell is going on, I wonder.

I can thank Microsoft for the answer, since what was going on was something they started several years ago when they set up Microsofts operating system to allow files to install other files without asking first. 

Spyware, adware, greyware, malware; whatever you want to call it (I choose ‘assware’, personally), it’s basically software that finds its way onto your computer by visiting a tainted website or downloading a file that isn’t what it says it is, and sets about not formatting your drive like the old virii used to do (there’s no money in destruction of property, see?), but rather, it downloads and installs several other pieces of software onto your computer that will do things like pop-up ads when you’re browsing, or tell you that you have porn on your computer but can get rid of it if you just buy another piece of software they sell, or add searchbars to programs that need no such searchbat, or ask you eighteen times if you want to install something called DiskCleaner, a piece of software that helps you get rid of, presumably, the same file that keeps suggesting you install DiskCleaner.

Every now and then the number of things that irk me (or make mesmile) stack up to the point where they’re worth talking about in apost, and this is one of those collections. 

BARRY WHO?
I could care less about Barry Bonds and his pursuit of a record thatwouldn’t be his if not for superior chemistry, weak MLB drugregulations, a trainer who is willing to spend time in prison ratherthan tell what he’s injected in Barry’s butt, an asleep at the wheelmedia, and an utter lack of moral fiber.

But the mediaonslaught of attention given to Bonds is killing me right now.Sportsnet, who can’t find the energy to show more than one ball gameevery few nights if it doesn’t involve the Blue Jays (a team theirparent company happens to own), somehow have the ability now to notonly show a bunch of Giants games, but actually cut into otherprogramming any time Bonds comes up to bat.

Well heck, if theycan do that, why not show ALL ballgames? Why can’t I see the Piratesplaying today, or the Cardinals playing tomorrow? And if there’s ascheduling conflict, why not show the game on tape delay?

Whydoes it take the biggest cheat in professional sports, who can’t hitthe ball for average to save his life right now, and hates not onlythose covering the game but also seemingly the game itself and, let’sbe honest, those who pay to watch it, to get Sportsnet to ditch theOmaha Poker Showdown or the Peoria Pro-Am Sailing Series?

Ifthere’s a God, Bonds rips his knee to pieces today during his first atbat and can never hit again. Then again, the way Bonds refuses tosprint for anything - ever - there’s probably more chance that C’swebcaller Rob Fai will blow a knee climbing the stairs carrying abratwurst to the press box.

SPORTSNET CRIBS OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK - SHOCKER
The Vancouver Canucks are changing their jersey/colours/logo, and there’s rampant fan speculation about what that will entail, so much so that fans on Canucks.com’s messageboard and HockeyBuzz.com have been going crazy creating photoshop images of what they think things will look like.

So what does Sportsnet do on last night’s ‘Connected’? They take the images the fans created, and post them as their own in a nightly poll.

Weak stuff. Don Taylor should apologize (in Taylorian fashion).

Road teams always have a slow start when they trek out to Boise Idaho to play a series against the Hawks, so much so that it’s quite shocking that the Chicago Cubs affiliate doesn’t dominate the NWL East more often. A 13-hour road trip will take it out of you, especially when you’re squeezed into a bus with half your equipment crammed under your feet, while consuming a steady diet of Jack in the Box and 7-11 microwave cheeseburgers, and haven’t been home for the best part of a week.

But that’s life in the bus leagues, and if you can’t find the energy to be out there at the top of your game while dealing with a sore back, a rough gut, a 93mph fastball coming at you, and Idaho-bred base bunnies yelling your name through chicklet-filled mouths, then you’ve got no future in the game. 

The Vancouver Canadians, right now, are on a three game losing skid - one that has dropped them back to .500 ball with far too few weeks left to mount a serious challenge on the NWL West-leading Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, who currently sit 11.5 games ahead of us in 1st place.

In fact, if the Volcanoes drove their team bus off a cliff (and that’s what it would take for them to miss the playoffs), you’d have to think the C’s would struggle to even catch the second place Eugene Emeralds right now, what with a 5.5 game deficit to make up, and a bullpen that is struggling to stay dominant for longer than a few innings at a time.

And the games played over the last two nights are a perfect example of that issue and what it does to a team, as the C’s have had no trouble scoring runs, but much trouble keeping the other team from scoring more.

If the Oakland Athletics are teaching their kids anything by example these days, it seems to be that offense is overrated. 

As the A’s struggle to win games even when their starters go long into ballgames, the rest of the minor league system is hurting. The AA Midland Rockhounds can’t win a game to save their lives, the Low-A Kane County Cougars resemble the Roxy variety of Cougar (sloppy with poor highlights) more than the wild animal, the Stockton Ports are propping up the rest of the High-A California League, and the Arizona Athletics are better only than the Brewers when it comes to the AZL.

All of which makes the Vancouver Canadians, being only two spots out of 1st place, look almost successful. But the truth is, the C’s are struggling right now, and part of that struggle comes from the fact that the team is peppered with guys who would normally be a playing in a level below short-season Low-A ball, if only the Athletics would stop cutting guys/getting injured/sucking ass, causing the entire system to be leached of talent.

Would the Rockhounds be killing all comers if they had guys like Putnam, Buck and Braden playing for them, as was supposed to be the case at the start of the season? What if they had been able to keep guys like Madsen and Ziegler and Tadano and Gray and Suzuki and Powell, and what if Stockton had been able to keep Blasi and Kilby and Recker and Herrera? What if Kane County had enough guys that they hadn’t been forced to send DH Haas Pratt out to pitch (twice)?

More importantly, what if Vancouver had been able to hold onto Sean Doolittle, Nick Walters and Travis Banwart?

Yes, the Vancouver offense is in a hole right now, but it’s been in that hole most of the year. Subsidised as it was in the early weeks by outstanding pitching and defense, now we’re in the dog days of summer, when bodies start to get tired and everyday ball starts merging memories and dulling the competitive spirit.

In last night’s game, the C’s just didn’t have it (yet again), with only one more base hit (4) than they had errors (3).

Josh Horton had the best night of the C’s, going 1-2 with a pair of walks, and Shane Keough continued his resurgence with a 1-3 night with a walk and a run scored, with Michael Richard getting the RBI.

But let’s face it - when you’re relying on guys getting hit by pitchers (the C’s had four of those last night - two each to Walt Correa and JD Pruitt) as much as you are getting base hits, things are rotten in V-Town.

Not to put too dark a face on things, but the Oakland farm execs need to pull their heads out of their hineys and start paying the sort of attention to all their players that they paid to Matt Sulentic this Season, and make some roster changes. There’s no benefit in Walt Correa (who hasn’t had a base hit since July 11th and is 2-29 in his last ten games) being sent out each day to whiff at pitches and boot grounders while the AZL team has two shortstops in Francisco Tirado and Marcos Luis who are hitting .520 and .306 respectively. It doesn’t help Walt, and it doesn’t do much for the kids below him mashing rookie pitching.

Similarly, having Dante Love (3-29 in his last ten games) and Dusty Napoleon (5-27) sharing a spot with Julio Rivera (4-26), who has never met a slider he didn’t want to chase outside the zone (4 walks to 22 K’s this season) is silly when Ben Barrone is hitting decently in the AZL and newly drafted Matt Smith is fighting with 2006 draftee Jake Smith for time behind the plate in Low-A Kane County.

Let’s be clear - not one of the guys named above is without talent, but every player who has made the bigs had a point where their form dipped on the way up the ladder, and if those players are left to rot on the vine, rather than be shifted to a place where they can regain form and confidence and get decent playing time (like Matt Sulentic has since his demotion from Kane County to Vancouver this season), they’re being done no favours by the powers that be.

Last night’s game was, to be clear, an embarassment, but no player should be wearing the blame.

Let them play where they should be playing. Let them be competitive.

The players and the fans - and the new owners of the C’s - deserve nothing less.

July 19, 2007
	Final    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9      R   H   E   Spokane   0   0   2   1    0   2   0   0   1      6   11   1   Vancouver   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   2      2    4   3  box | log W: D. Holland (1-3, 4.05); L: J. Friend (0-2, 5.56) HR: SPO: S. Marquardt (1).

So I disappear to Seattle for a couple of days, and come back to find the season, well, over.

July 14, 2007
	Final    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9      R   H   E   Vancouver   1   0   1   3   0   0   0   2   0      7   9   0   Eugene   0   0   5   0   2   1   0   1   X      9    13   3  box | log W: R. Garramone (3-1, 2.74); L: J. Quine (0-1, 5.28); SV: J. Quezada (4) HR: VAN: J. Horton (1). EUG: M. Canham (1).

July 15, 2007
	Final    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9      R   H   E   Vancouver   0   1   0   0   2   0   0   1   3      7   13   2   Eugene   8   5   1   0   0   3   0   1   X      18    17   2  wrap | box | log W: C. Perez (2-0, 3.12); L: J. Guzman (1-3, 8.37) HR: EUG: K. Conlon (1).

These are not pretty pictures, folks. Normally I try to ensure that every game is recapped on this site, but frankly, I can’t even bring myself to go inning by inning on a road trip in which we’ve been not just beaten soundly, but beaten like the redheaded stepchildren of a team of rented mules.

Hell, right now, Vancouver is an NWL East team. We’re the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Hartford Whalers, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the ‘62 Mets and the Vancouver Voodoo. We’re the LA CLippers. We’re the Canadian Under-20 World Cup soccer team. We’re Joe Pesci in Gone Fishin’.

We’re Kirstie Alley before she started appearing in weight loss commercials, dressed only in black, only being viewed from the front and chest-up, claiming she’s lost 50lbs; fat and desperate.

We’re any episode of Two and a Half Men; unfunny and embarassing.

We’re George W. Bush in a library; utterly clueless and completely lost.