* Review: Game of Shadows

Better late than never? From Fieldhouse of My Brain.

Upshot:

Fainaru-Wada and Williams really give the reader the ability to imagine how it was that Bonds became the all-time single-season home run champion around his 40th birthday, an age when ballplayers aren’t ballplayers anymore.

* With mega-apologies to Eliot Asinof

The new Eight Men Out, according to the NY Daily News (out of Hall of Fame consideratio, that is):

• Alex Rodriguez
• Barry Bonds
• Roger Clemens
• Mark McGwire
• Raphael Palmiero
• Ivan Rodriguez
• Gary Sheffield
• Sammy Sosa

* Speaking of baseball articles in men’s lifestyle magazines…

First Esquire, then Details, now GQ.

When I was on the Brooklyn College baseball team we had this guy, John Silviano, who was the epitome of style. He would award or deduct “GQ” points for various fashion combinations. Bar in mind, this was the mid 70s.

But I digress.

In the current edition, there are a couple of baseball articles. The first considers the dubious honor of working for Lenny Dykstra, whom the writer makes out to be the poster boy for Adult ADD. Not only is this a magazine worthy of a bookshelf, but it’s double duty: Dykstra is the nominative publisher of one himself, targeted at former athletes, “The Players Club—a glossy filled with Gulfstream jets, palatial estates, and financial advice for guys who make millions of dollars a year.”

The second piece considers the life in limbo that belongs to Barry Bonds these days.

* For the records

With the latest news of Rodriguez and Bonds comes a renewed cry to literally rewrite the record books. Tony Kornheiser has repeatedly called for some notation that many of these players are suspect. Let them into the Hall of Fame, he says, just make mention on the plaque that these guys might have cheated. Commissioner Bud Selig started out talking tough, threatening to punish A-Rod, then leaving it to the Yankee’s conscience, which would no doubt haunt him the rest of his days for letting down an adoring fandom,

Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt told MLB.com “A-Rod’s numbers shouldn’t count for anything. I feel like he cheated me out of the game.” If it was up to him, “any player who was proven to, or admitted to, using performance-enhancing drugs would have his numbers erased from baseball history.”

“Oswalt said he feels that way about a lot of players who have been proven steroid users,” according to the article.

But how would that work? Statistics are a form of accounting. If you simply omitted the numbers those players put up, things would be unbalanced. And what effect would that have on other, clean hitters? If a steroid-user hit a grand slam, would you subtract a run from the other three? What about the pitcher who gave up those runs? Would his record be adjusted accordingly?

I asked Alan Schwarz, author of The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics and a writer for The New York Times, for his thoughts. He sent me a link to his 2005 article, “Trying to Keep Records Pure Could Prove Futile,” in which he points out that cheating is as old as the game itself, but just got more sophisticated.

What should we do with pitchers like Gaylord Perry, who bragged about his spitball? Or Whitey Ford, who also admitted to tossing a scuffball on occasion. Or Norm Cash, who wasn’t agin using a corked bat? Or Denny McLain, who admitted to serving up the homer to Mickey Mantle that put him one up on Jimmy Foxx?

* Remember Barry Bonds?

I’m including this one because the contributor of this essay is a published author (even if his main subject isn’t baseball). The subject of ethics has always intrigued me, so here’s one from John Marshall on “The baseball ethicist: Why nobody signed Barry Bonds.” Marshall is a professional ethicist, writer, lawyer and lifetime baseball enthusiast. He is the president of ProEthics, a national ethics training firm, and the writer of the Ethics Scoreboard.

Back in the 1980s there was a whole to-do over free agents who went unsigned or were signed for relatively low salaries. “Collusion” was the watchword of the day, as owners were eventually found guilty of deliberately keeping salaries low. Sorry, but in this troubled economy, that seems like a responsible thing. But I digress…

… the usually reasonable John Brattain condemning major league general managers for not signing Bonds, because, you see, he might have made a difference, even gotten the Mets, or the Jays, or some other also-ran, into the postseason. But just as, in Sir Thomas More’s words, “it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world,” signing Bonds in order to make the playoffs would have been a dubious and foolish deal for any team, even if one buys the questionable assumption that he would have played well enough to hold up his end of it.

So we know when Marshall stands on the subject. But how long does the outrage last? Look at Roger Clemens. Heard much about him lately (outside the bit about the hospital changing the name of the Roger Clemens Institute for Sports Medicine to the Memorial Hermann Sports Medicine Institute)? The public, it would seem, has a short attention span. Outrage as long as the name is kept in the news, soon forgotten by most when the media moves on to a new hot topic.

Later on, Marshall notes the troubles faced by the NFL:

Can anyone imagine a pro football team hesitating for one second from drafting a promising prospect because of something like [stealing sports equipment]? There simply are no equivalents of Pacman Jones in baseball. Players who have serious criminal charges, who are accused of rape and spousal abuse, drunk driving and drug arrests just fade out of the game. Football and basketball want to sell merchandise to kids. Baseball wants to be an example for kids (and sell merchandise).

(I’m picking and choosing here, so you should really read his whole essay.)

* Uh-oh, BALCO

According to this piece from the New York Daily News, Victor Conte’s tell-all book ’bout BALCO has hit a snag.

Skyhorse Publishing originally hoped to release BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and What We Can Do To Save Sports in September, but Conte’s book may not hit shelves until 2009, said Skyhorse president Tony Lyons.

Conte has submitted the manuscript, but the imminent presidential election and other intervening factors have led Skyhorse to reconsider the timing of the book’s release.

Among the factors is an expensive barrage of defamation litigation launched against Conte by boxer Shane Mosley, one of the athletes whose BALCO doping regimens Conte promises to describe in detail, and Mosley’s threats to sue the book’s publisher.

* Happy birthday, Barry Bonds

The nominative all-time home run king turns 44 today. Despite the accusations, it’s still hard to believe that nobody wanted to sign him for the season. Coincidentally, this week’s Sports Illustrated features a piece on why he can’t seem to find gainful employment these days.

The Amazon report on Barry Bonds:

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports

Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero

Barry Bonds: A Biography (Baseball’s All-Time Greatest Hitters)

Barry Bonds (Amazing Athletes)

This Gracious Season: Barry Bonds & The Greatest Year in Baseball

* Whither Barry?

It’s still early in the season, but the pitchers seem way ahead of the hitters. Some sluggers are faring pretty poorly (Carlos Delgado, Prince Fielder, Frank Thomas, among others). Run production is down, as are home runs. Seeing any correlation between this and the Mitchell Report?

Speaking of steroids, Barry Bonds is still “on holiday,” as noted by this piece in The Wall Street Journal. Not that Bonds is George Bailey by any stretch, but as much as you might not want to admit it, his life touched many others. An interactive feature of the article shows what his departure has meant to various people at Pac Bell, including the guy who rents the kayaks for McCovey Cove; the Giants’ media relations and “stadium logistics” guys; the sales vendor (whose sales of rubber chickens used to taunt opposing pitchers is down 20 percent), and the home run seeker and other fans.

* Mad about baseball

The cover of the May Mad magazine features good ol’ Alfred E. Newman as Baseball’s Newest Mascot: Mr. Roids.

The current issue also has a pertinent spin-off on the Roger Clemens AT&T wireless commercial, with Andy Pettitte at the other end of the line. There’s also “Things We’ll Probably Overhear at the Upcoming Barry Bonds Trial…”, including

• From Bonds’ attorney: “The only things my client is guilty of are arrogance, rudeness, adultery and lying in court. Only one of which happens to be illegal.”
• From the prosecution: “And did you personally electrocute the Pit Bulls…oh, wait, sorry, wrong sports scandal,” and “I remind you that you are still under oath, not that you cared the last time.”
• From the judge: “Will the defendant please approach the bench and autograph this home run ball I got off eBay?” and “Overruled. Defendant will answer questions about his massive hat size.”
• From Barry Bonds: “I’m not playing on any prison softball team for less than $8 million.”
• And my favorite: “I’d watch the trial on truTV, but Tim McCarver just won’t shut up.”

There’s also a faux movie poster for The Bad News Bare-Asses, “starring” Clemens, Pettitte and Brian McNamee. Tag line: “Baseball has rules. Not that these a-holes care.”

Perhaps not so coincidentally, The New York Times ran this interactive slide presentation on cartoonist Al Jaffee, who, among other things, has drawn in famous Mad fold-in for years. Among the pieces represented, Roger Clemens “morphing” into a pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears, Pete Rose to Charlie Brown, and football overcoming baseball as America’s number one sport.

NOT the current cover.

* Sure, why not?

From ESPN.com:

Victor Conte will amp up the sports world once again — in a much different way, however.

According to the New York Daily News, the founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative is working on a tell-all book that he claims will spill the dirt on athletes and federal gents.