Quite a Stretch

It's an ironic day to wake up (yes, wake up... I'm on the West Coast now and I'm getting a late start) to reports of Barry Bonds publicly voicing his bitterness over being "fired" by the Giants, and in the process intoning the name of the great Willie McCovey (in typically self-adulatory fashion) by saying, "they call it McCovey Cove but I've rewritten it a little bit."

It's ironic because on this day 33 years ago, Bonds' great and much more beloved predecessor, Stretch McCovey (Daddy Lambchop we call him here at No Mas), was himself unthinkably "fired" by the Giants, traded to the San Diego Padres with Bernie Williams (which is odd, because by my calculations Bernie was five years old in '74) for pitcher Mike Caldwell. Nowhere near his prime but still a serviceable slugger, Willie would spend only three seasons in San Francsico exile - two and two-thirds with the Pads and then an eleven-game stint with the A's - before signing again with the Giants as a free agent for a rejuvenated 1977 campaign.

One wonders if Bonds envisions pulling a similar prodigal son routine with San Francisco, although given his recent crticism of the Giants' ownership, it seems doubtful. My feeling is that whatever Bonds thinks of the team's brain trust, it's wise for him when speaking about himself to stop referencing the names of all these legends that came before him as if he somehow belonged naturally in their historic company. It all too egregiously emphasizes the obvious, that despite his obscene (obscene in the truest sense of the word) statistics, Barry Bonds will never occupy the cliff of baseball's Olympus where dwell the McCovey's and Mays's and Aaron's and Mantle's and Clemente's, et al... because, well, none of those guys were on roids.