Howard Beale's Appeal
April 29, 2007






In the novie Network, Peter Finch's character, Howard Beale, loses it on the broadcast and utters the now famous line "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore."  It's interesting in that the movie has been repeated in real life thousands of times since.  People become outraged by an injustice, yet sit complacently either afraid to take action or unmoved by the need to affect change.  

Christopher Hitchens new book, God is not Great, how religion poisons everything follows a number of books that deride organized religion but oversteps in ignoring the true benefit of religion.  And that is they point to a greater good.  A higher moral standard than the law of survival.  Thank Jean Jaque Rousseau for screwing that up.



The steroids didn't make his head grow larger; that was the result of using HGH. However, according to Greg Anderson's (his personal trainer who is still in jail on Bonds' behalf) list of things Bonds was taking includes HGH, Depo-Testosterone, Clomid, Modafinil, Trenbolone, insulin and EPO. And that was in 2001. Yes, he was a no-doubt Hall of Famer before he started using in 1999. But consider that 331 of his homers (including this year) have come in the last nine seasons and that's with him missing almost all of 2005 due to "injuries". His first 411 homers took him 13 seasons to get. Had he homered at his current rate his first 13 seasons, he would have accumulated 593 by 1999. Five of his six best years for home runs have come since 1999. Since MLB doesn't test for probably a quarter of what's available on the high end steroid market, nor does it test for HGH which makes steroid use harder to detect since one can use less with better effect, and given the anecdotal and statistical evidence on Barry, there is no question he has been and probably still is a heavy steroid user. He would not be in the position he's in without steroids. So it would be in his best interest to simply tip his cap and keep his mouth shut when he passes Aaron. Knowing Barry, however, he won't.

And he was busted for amphetamines last year.  

My call is for everyone to simply stand and turn their backs whenever he comes to the plate.  Refuse to acknowledge him.  Chanting or putting up signs only serves to bring this issue to a debate.  Only, there isn't a debate.  Cheating is wrong.  This is why they have rules to the game.  A good friend of mine and fellow Tout echoed the sentiment of a lot of people regarding Bonds.  He cheats, so what.  Cheating in baseball has been around forever and even normal people cut corners and do desperate things to get ahead in the workplace.

First, cheating has been around forever.  Unlike Gaylord Perry, Bonds is cheating on every pitch.

Secondly, there are limits as to what people will do and what they can get away with to get ahead in the workplace.  How would he feel if, hypothetically speaking, it turns out that the reason I had won Tout Wars is because I had hacked into the stat service and retroactively reserved players on days in which they had a bad outing.  There is nothign in any league constitution that forbids hacking so it's not against the rules.  Somehow I think he would have a problem with that regardless.

Just because something is not explicitly in the rules doesn't mean it's ok to do it.  For example, it's not forbidden in baseball's rules to poison the opposing team.  If we want to get into the ridiculousness of this argument we only have to look at Alberto Gonzalez trying to tell Congress that habeus corpus is not guaranteed to anyone, despite the fate that the Constitution expressly notes that habeus corpus can only be suspended in cases of invasion or rebellion.  In all other situations, it is implied that it is available.  


On a lighter note, I really feel for Dodger fans.  Grady Little insists on putting Andre Ethier in the seventh spot and Wilson Betimit in the eighth spot.  Why he has such affection for Ethier is a mystery.  He's a 25-year old outfielder with limited upside - his only impressive season came as a 23-year old in Double-A - and who's future is probably as a fourth outfielder behind Matt Kemp.  Betimit, on the other hand, is a solid fielding third baseman who always been young for his competition.  He's a year younger than Ethier and has moer power.  His supposed replacement, Andy LaRoche, is hitting .243 in Triple-A currently and there are considerable doubts he will ever play defense well enough at third to stay there.  Yet Ethier, the fungible commodity, is the one he is protecting in the line-up and Betemit, the one who could be a reasonably good regular, is being supplanted by guys who aren't even mediocre (Ramon Martinez and Wilson Valdez) because Grady wants Betemit to bat eighth.  Now Dodger fans truly understand what Red Sox fans went through while Grady took three months to figure out that David Ortiz was a better hitter than Kevin Millar or Jeremy Giambi.  Yeah, I know I was on board the Giambi bandwagon that year.  But a smart man a) admits when he made a mistake and b) doesn't make the same mistake twice.  Neither of the guys Grady is favoring over Betemit is in any danger of ever being mistaken for David Ortiz.   

He's been referred to as the Dodgers regular third baseman but in typical Grady fasion, Betemit has not started more than six games in a row all season. Despite being a swtich hitter, he was benched in the seventh game of the season. Only twice has he started as many as six games. The rest of the time Grady will let him play for a game or two and then sit him. How is a guy supposed to get on track if he doesn't play?

Dodger pitchers rank 9th in the NL with a .133 batting average. Remove Brad Penny's numbers and Dodger pitchers have a composite .106 average. Bret Tomko has yet to get a hit and has only put two balls in play all year. Why would anyone give the guy ahead of him a pitch to hit?

Betemit has been put in the 8th spot for 11 of his 25 games. He was in the 6th spot for 4 games and walked five times in 15 plate appearances. Andy LaRoche's first game - he batted sixth.

Over the last three years, Betemit's best numbers have come from the lead-off spot, but that's not going to happen in LA. Albeit in limited play, his next best numbers have come from the 4 and 5 spots. After that, the eighth spot is where he's been best. If I was the GM of the Pirates or the Padres or some other team that has not had great production from the third base spot, I would make an generous offer for Betemit and put him in the fifth spot in my line-up.

Bonds has 14 career strikeouts vs Smoltz
Garret Atkins is 1-for-8 with 3 Ks
David Wright is 8-for-32 with 13 Ks
Mike Piazza is 12-for-62 with 16 Ks
Derrek Lee is 4 for 18 with 8 Ks and 1 walk

John Olerud was 5-for 25 with 7 Ks, 1 walk and no XBH
Steve Finley is 18-for-84 with 21 Ks and 1 walk