No Excuse Necessary

I've been waiting for an excuse to use this photo, but I can't wait any longer, so here it is. How about: because it's Friday, and The Tao already has your TGIF dose of rock all cued up. I used to use this pic as a desktop on my work PC. My friend and cubicle mate called it "Al Oliver's Hammer," for reasons I don't think I need to explain.

Al's keeping a healthy distance from the vials in Rock's back pocket.

God Bless the People of Pittsburgh

Fire Joe Morgan hits one into the Allegheny with this post in response to a truly bizarre piece comparing Pirates fans to... well, just read it. Go ahead. I'll sit pretty right here until you're done...

Right, so, the point of the original piece by one Mike Seate is that baseball fans compare unfavourably to those of, ahem, superbike racing. I won't deconstruct the argument, because FJM has already done so, and done so better than I could (I can manage concise, and I can sometimes manage funny, and on rare occasions I even nail intelligent, but all three is asking too much of me).

But my point is that, okay, I've been to Pittsburgh and gone to a Pirates game at beautiful PNC Park, and found Bucco fans to be... subdued. I live in Ottawa, and I went to Lynx games for 15 years, so I know subdued. And Pirates fans fit that bill. I found them subdued and, well, sparse.

But think about it: it was September, and the Pirates had been out of contention since (roughly) late April. Again. And as a fanbase they have been, frankly, shit upon by ownership and management for a decade and a half now.

On that afternoon in Pittsburgh, I saw the Pirates lose to the Chicago Cubs. The park was half full, but half of those in attendance were decked out in full Cubbies regalia, a traveling roadshow of folks bleeding Cubbie blue. Cubs fans, who are entering their one hundredth year without a championship, are often cited as the mose diehard, fervent, and knowledgeable baseball fans around.

But. There's an argument to be made, I think, that instead of being the best baseball fans in the world, Cubs fans are Earth's biggest schmucks, shelling out year after year to see a team that never wins when it counts, a team run by a succession of organizations that have little motivation to win because, hell, the fans keep pouring into Wrigley anyway. The flipside of that argument would be that Montreal Expos fans were among the smartest and savviest lovers of baseball anywhere, because they knew when they were being treated poorly, and they rebelled with their wallets and asses (which no longer occupied the Big O's yellow plastic seats, see?).

Viewed in that light, maybe Pirates fans are pretty smart, too. Maybe they're simply fed up; maybe they're saying, "Thanks for the ballpark, but call us when you're actually trying to field a winning team."

I liked Pittsburgh, truly. It seemed to me an interesting city emerging from its industrial past, shaking the coke dust off and stepping smartly into the twenty-first century. I liked its neighbourhoods and its architecture, and its people seemed like good people. I loved imagining Forbes Field filled to the brim, of the mighty Clemente patrolling right field. And PNC is gorgeous - if you like ballparks, you must see it - but too full of ballpark tourists like me, and not enough local, hometown crazies. What I longed to see was a park jammed with rabid fans, with shirtless idiots screaming their faces off, with families and old guys with transistor radios, all cheering on a team with a real chance of winning. Imagine that: NL CENTRAL CHAMPS. That'd make for a different kind of fan, I dare say.

Busted: The Kid

Ah, the Hall of Fame. There is no more magical place on this good Earth for a baseball fan. I myself first knew Cooperstown's charms when, for my 13th birthday, my parents surprised me with a trip there. It was a week after induction weekend - Johnny Bench and Yaz! - and the nearest motel room was at the Howard Johnson's in Utica. In the HoJo restaurant, our waitress was named Tootsie. No joke!

I have since grown up, married, and produced offspring. Last year, I took my infant daughter there (she slept through the whole thing), and I was again touched by the beauty and pixie-dust wonderfulness of the place, but a niggling thought settled onto my brain, one that had first occured to the 13 year old me (as awkward-looking a child as has ever breathed; all knees and elbows). The thought was this: aren't a lot of these busts, these permanent testaments to the greatness of these ballplayers, just a bit, I don't know... creepy? As though these poor players, having earned the wrath of the Empire, had been preserved against their will in carbonite?

As an example, I give you Gary Carter. Close to our hearts because he is the only player in Cooperstown depicted in the Expos' Aquafresh swirl cap, the Kid's bust nevertheless looks terribly, terribly freaky. He wasn't an unattractive man, but that plaque makes him look like an octogenarian with a wig. He steals hair! He smells like a diaper!

I don't doubt that the bust-maker's art is a tricky one, and I don't mean to disparage these craftsmen. Rendering a living face in compressed space is a task I wouldn't wish to attempt, and I'm sure the examples in the Hall are among the very best there are. But sometimes, you know, eek.