Most of the guys over 45 got their jobs by being Carl Bernstein (or thinking they were being Carl Bernstein): dewivvewing the daily wag out their widdle wed wagon when they were very young, hawkin' the local tabloid on the corner wif a Cockney accent, running for the copy desk as a teen, working as a stringer in high school, etc. etc. Their positions are predicated neither on writing ability, knowledge, analytic skill, nor even any sort of privileged access to the sanctum sanctorum (I know: ew. That phrase is spoilt forever) of the locker room.

Sports columnists under 45 (and above 30) are generally j-school strivers who surf from ed board to ed board or backwater daily to backwater daily until they fail upward. Or they're ex-jocks.

In either case, they are the loyal soldiers of patronage machines -- patronage machines that are in the process of falling apart.

And this goes for non-sports columnists as well, but that's a discussion for a different forum.

I saw more notsellingjeans diaries here. :-)

The best posters on AN don't contribute nearly enough diaries. This must be rectified. Come on, people. I don't care about family commitments, job pressures, academic endeavors, social pursuits ... lock yourself in a room, put on whatever music stimulates your synapses, sip some tea, and pound out a flipping diary. While I admit to being amused at PaulThomas and grover yelling at each other over whether Mark Ellis is the 5th or 8th best 2nd baseman in the league, an injection of variety is always welcome.

And while I'm on the subject, I wish the blogosphere would come up with a better term than "diary". Essay? Journal? Column? Forum? Something, anyway, that doesn't evoke visions of pink notebooks with shiny heart stickers on the cover.

Bruce Jenkins. Yeah. You've got to love that sublime cocktail of schmaltz, ignorance, and vehement sanctimony. Lazy, stupid, and not at all averse to throwing out mind-bendingly illogical assertions in service of preemptively accusing an organization of moral dissolution. Yes, Bruce, if the A's sign Bonds we will, all of us, have paid with our very souls - ownership, players, and fans alike. It is just that serious. He is just that evil. And if it does happen, we'll know for sure that Beane has been in counsel with the devil himself, for no person of right mind, on the side of decency and virtue, could possibly convince himself that Barry Bonds might help his team win baseball games.

i'm just trying to keep up with ya'll.

Never need to look further than atop the recommended list for your diaries.

In fact I think Bonds can move a lot better than Thomas could.  Big Frank could barely squeak out some of those doubles.  We all held our breath anytime he had to move other than station to station.  

Bonds can't move in the OF, but I think its mental.  He doesnt want to risk injury, and frankly doesn't give a shit.  

Bonds is a perfectly capable DH, he even stole 5 bases last year.  

As much as I dislike him, he would be a significant upgrade to the team offensively.

very good point. "+1"

We're a 71-win team with Barry.

It will be with the A's. Book it.

unless the angels trade for cabrera or santana.  i'll paste my comment from the last dld:

i wonder the hold up is barry's legal problems / health of the rest of the roster, or to see if the angels trade for either santana or cabrera.  if they get either one having already added hunter and garland (yeah, not exactly the same level), we might as well start trading our starting pitchers, in which case signing bonds would no longer make sense.

to think that we can be so afraid of injuries, yet also afraid of too much depth.

i'd like to have Bonds for the same reason i don't mind having Murphy the named backup to Crosby– being the 4th OF or 5th IF on the A's means half a season of starting playing time. i'm not counting on Buck for a full season at this point, and certainly not Kotsay/Denorfia. and that doesn't factor in the random slumps we're bound to see that we don't expect right now.

worse case, like you (i think) said somewhere else in the thread, is that we'd have to make late inning defensive substitutions if everyone's healthy.

i would like to see Bonds play 1-3 days in the OF every week. he is better than Cust, and it's an easy way to juggle the lineups and responsibility. although i also expect Cust to come back better in the field, as he's been doing nothing but fielding drills in the off season (right Jack?!).

Bonds isn't going to go anywhere he can't be a starter. Someone is going to have to sit on Opening Day. Having Bonds means playing him at DH or are you willing to expose him to the OF?

Or stick Swisher (or Buck) in CF, place Cust in LF and bash to your heart's content.

as he was in 2008, you'll wind up giving a lot of playing time to a lousy OFer who isn't hitting as well as you hoped. I guess my problem isn't so much "7 guys for 5 slots) as it is that two of them (Bonds, Cust) are bad fielders - one of whom is not proven as a consistent hitter, two of them (Swisher, Buck) are not good CFers, two of them (Kotsay, Denorfia) are CFers - but are of unknown value as 2008 CFers...

...In other words, whatever combination is out there you are giving up a lot to get what you want to get. You either have putrid OF defense and Kotsay whining on the bench or you have Barton or Buck using service time to play part-time, and so on.

Unless you put Barton in AAA, in which case you have taken my latest man-crush and demoted him, which makes me cry (and hurts the offense, IMO).

I hope you're not insinuating that Barry Bonds is a good baseball player, or that he ever actually helped any of the teams he was on.

Because that would be ludicrous.

Look, on one side of the argument you have all those numbers, all those stupid, useless statistics. Only four-eyed, freckle-faced, friendless nerds who play with computers all day, never kissed a girl, cite Spock as their favorite philosopher, and don't understand anything about grit and determination and the spirit of competition ... only those mommy-clinging misfits think home runs and walks help teams win baseball games.

On the other side, you have Bruce Jenkins, who knows a thing or two about a thing or two. He knows dew dampened outfield grass and hoarse-voiced hot dog vendors. He knows Willie Mays. He knows Hammerin' Hank Aaron. He knows just how gosh darn real clutch is, and how you never had to sell your soul to savor the game in the olden days. And he knows, beyond a shadow of a sliver of a kernel of a doubt, that no amount of "stats" can overcome the soul-sapping force that is Barry Bonds. If Bonds hits a 2 run homer, and you win 2-1, sorry pal, think again: search deep inside your being, and you'll discover a lonely, bereft, soul-sick 1-0 failure. Meanwhile, Eckstein and Erstad and Torii Hunter are winning ballgames for their teams, and they're doing it with dirt on their pants, eye black on their cheeks, and a goddamned twinkle in their eyes.

He is getting the AN faithful's hopes up that he is going for it...and then he's going to drop the hammer and dash our hopes for payback for all of the times we said nasty stuff about him and his puppet reporter!

feeling for Barry Bonds. I'm thinking it wasn't the right GIRL you were looking for...

Oh, crap -- I guess that makes me racist.

Even skimming these articles has pretty much shoved me to the precipice of an aneurysm. Maybe someone should post a Mike Lupica column about A-Rod not being a winner, or a teary-eyed Mitch Albom ode to courage in the face of adversity - I mean, I always wondered what would happen if my blood pressure reached seven times its normal level.

http://www.athleticsnation.com/story...