A weekend to note for various reasons

The Minnesota Twins spent so much time and effort to convince us and our politicians convincing us that the Humphreydome is an unfit place to play pseudobaseball that all the hoopla surrounding their leaving the place does not seem to be fitting.

But this weekend it appears that the metropolitan area will be hosting an unusually large amount of sporting activities and the Dome will be in the middle. Friday night, the Twins will be hyping their leaving the Dome by beginning their final [scheduled, regular season] series while high school football games go on elsewhere. Saturday, coterminous with the small college football games, the Golden[?] Gopher football team will make a futile [and likely unsuccessful] attempt to reclaim Paul Bunyon’s Ax at the still-new South Dakota Bank stadium and a bit later the Twins will again enter the aforementioned Humphreydome to continue to get people to pay to say good-bye to something which never should have been welcomed in the first place.

After several thousand people participate or observe the annual celebration of the victory of self-indulgence over piety Sunday morning, the Twins .will return to the Humphreydome to close out the season. [Although at this writing it is not a definite certainty that Sunday will indeed be the last pseudobaseball game the Twins play there.]

After all that celebration and hoopla, the place will be reverted to something it does a lot better and become a football studio.

The fact that the Packers will be coming in and that Bert Favre is now on the Wilf payroll has received way too much hype and does not seem worth mentioning except that perhaps thanks to that and the Twins hyping leaving the place they said they should never have gone to in the first place, the festival of self-indulgence [which began the same year that Calvin moved his team inside] has received perhaps its lowest level of fanfare and hoopla ever. Unfortunately, it won’t be enough to kill it.

Cf: http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/10/self-absorption-over-piety.html

Notes on No. 756 plus two years

Two years ago today Barry Bonds hit home run number 756.

Has it only been two years? It seems that both the game and society have moved so much past him so quickly.

Selig and the MLB honchos made good money on the home run derbies of the late 20^th and early 21^st century and then became so righteous as more news of steroids and perhaps juiced balls became more common.

Now the writers who used the stories to keep baseball in the news and beat writers and commentators employed will arrange to keep him away from Cooperstown forever (or at least a long time).

While some of these people want to put Pete Rose there, a man who bet on a team he was managing, they get so outraged about a man who cheated only in order to improve performance. They even seem to keep putting pressure on the Commissioner’s office to re-admit Rose even though it is Cooperstown’s rule, not MLB’s rule which keeps Rose out.

They will probably win on the Rose matter sooner or later.

And maybe the relative quiet with which Bonds and number 756 have disappeared from our consciousness is a good sign that his feat was ephemeral and had only of momentary significance derived from his perceived, non-sanctioned (at least officially) use of steroids is really in order.

Ramirez, greater than Mantle?

Manny Ramirez has passed Mickey Mantle on the MLB all-time home run list.

People who follow baseball people continually argue about the value of statistics of one era vs. those of another. If you have ever discussed the game with me you have probably heard some rambles on the theme.

It is the contrast between Ramirez and Mantle which amazes me, specifically the way they treated their bodies.

Mickey Mantle was an old timer who did not treat his body well. Ever since late in his career, people have speculated how many he could have hit had he taken care of himself and better watched what he put in his body.

Manny Ramirez is from the newer age. He is not putting things in his body which he thinks will have a detrimental effect on his career or maybe even his teammates. On the contrary, he was recently suspended for what he put into his body to improve his career.

If I had a son I don’t know that I would want him to grow up to be like either of them.