A Bleak Future

Let me say it right off the top: it's not Billy Beane's fault. It's not Lew Wolff's, either. But I don't blame Oakland A's fans for wanting to blame somebody for the latest dismantling of the ballclub.

And make no mistake about it, the A's are being broken up. It's not like they were a juggernaut; the A's finished 14 games under .500 in 2011 and have about as good a chance of catching up to the Angels and Rangers as I do of cracking a big-league roster myself. Now? Minus Gio Gonzales, Trevor Cahill, Andrew Bailey, Josh Willingham, Ryan Sweeney, David DeJesus, Coco Crisp et al? Fat chance.

Of course all this is being played out against the backdrop of the team's stalled efforts to move to San Jose. It's no longer just idle talk; Beane is out-and-out saying that the cheapening of the A's is a way of hunkering down until the team can move to a brighter financial future in a new stadium.

Some think Wolff and Beane are blowing up the ballclub in hopes that it'll pressure The Lords of Baseball into approving the San Jose plan. Maybe so, but that gambit has a low probability of success. Remember, the roadblock here wears orange-and-black. Until and unless the Giants are compensated to their satisfaction for an A's intrusion into Giants territory, this deal is dead. And do you think MLB would step in and anger one of its marquee franchises (the Giants) in favor of one of its weak sisters (the A's)? Not likely.

So back to my opening line. If not Beane and Wolff, who do A's fans blame? Well, actually, they should be angry at the entirety of Major League Baseball. The sport continues to operate under an absolutely unfair set of financial rules which allow the wealthiest clubs to run payrolls more than 5 times the size of the poorest clubs. The "luxury tax"? A complete joke. Only two teams are paying it in 2012--the Yankees and Red Sox--and the total of around $18 million doesn't even begin to address the disparity between baseball's haves and have-nots.

Look, money is no guarantee. The Tampa Bay Rays are proof that you can win with a low budget, and the Cubs (and others) have certainly managed to spend plenty with little to show for it. But wouldn't you rather see baseball teams compete on a level financial playing field? OK, Yankees and Red Sox fans, you're excused from the conversation.

While baseball's rich get richer, A's fans get screwed. What the A's really should do is express solidarity with the Occupy movement. In fact, maybe that's the answer. Re-name the team "Occupy Oakland". Refuse to leave the Coliseum until the 1 percenters share the wealth.

Oh, and don't forget to buy a program on Opening Day. It's the only way you'll be able to identify the guys wearing green and gold.

Baseball's New Dress Code

This is how bad things have gotten: Major League Baseball has just issued a dress code.

Not for players, or managers, or even front-office folks.

For reporters.

MLB thus becomes the first of the major North American sports leagues to tell the people who cover the games that they, in some cases, need to cover up. The policy forbids flip-flops, short-shorts, tank tops, and visible underwear.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Susan Slusser is a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America committee that worked with MLB to develop the dress code. She is probably well-understating the issue when she says, "Personally, I believe the baseball media in general could dress slightly more professionally."

Slightly?

You know what they say about stone-throwers in glass houses, so I'll be careful here. But let's just say very few of the people who cover pro sports are going to show up on any Best-Dressed lists. For every on-camera sideline dandy (yes, Craig Sager, I'm talking about you), there's a horde of guys (and gals) in torn jeans, ratty shorts, and T-shirts.

Some of them might get a free pass because they're pulling cables and schlepping cameras. But most are hauling nothing any heavier than a notepad or MP3 recorder.

The "how to dress for the ballpark" story blew into the headlines a year or so ago when a reporter for a Mexican TV channel showed up in the New York Jets training camp dressed for...well, I'm not sure what. Maybe a dance club? There have also been numerous sightings of Miami TV reporters who looked like maybe they mistook Sun Life Stadium for a trendy South Beach nightspot.

Clearly, some of this has been "look at me"-driven. But it's also true that the art of personal presentation has been in decline for many a year. Have you looked around you at a nice restaurant lately?

Social norms have evaporated, but there's also something else at work here. MLB's Pat Courtney points out that many of the people who cover baseball no longer work for "a bigger organization that may have a dress code." In other words, they're freelancers, bloggers and the like. They're their own bosses and they don't have anyone telling them what's OK to wear to the office.

Now MLB is telling them. The rules may improve the look of the media corps, but it's doubtful the ballplayers will be any more impressed with the people with the notepads. After all, they know how to dress.

Two Little Words

Baseball's new collective bargaining agreement guarantees five more years of labor peace. There's been plenty of talk about the new wild-card playoff plan, the league re-alignment (moving Houston to the American League), and the new drug-testing policy which includes blood tests for human growth hormone (HGH).

But largely below the radar screen, two little words have been inserted that speak volumes about how far the world of sports has come on the issue of sexual orientation. Baseball's long protected the rights of players based on their "race, color, religion, or national origin." The new CBA adds "sexual orientation" to the list of protected categories.

Of course, merely saying the sport protects the rights of gay ballplayers (and don't kid yourself, there certainly are gay ballplayers) doesn't mean the anti-gay slurs will dry up and blow away. Just last season, Atlanta Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell dropped a crude anti-gay comment (amplified with a gesture involving a bat) on some fans at San Francisco's AT&T Park.

No, the homophobic sports culture won't change overnight. But the times, they are a-changin'. Most other pro sports leagues already have similar language in their basic agreements (notably, the NBA does not, though one hopes that will be addressed in current labor talks). Many baseball teams hold "LGBT Nights" in recognition of the fact that you don't have to be straight to be a fan. And a number of teams, including the Giants, have produced videos as part of the "It Gets Better" anti-homophobia program.

Eventually, the term "out" will have multiple meanings in big-league baseball. That might still take some time. But for now, it's a step forward to see the sport--owners and players--agree that gay ballplayers deserve full protection. I know plenty of gay and lesbian fans; they root just as hard and wear their teams' colors just as proudly as anyone else. Now they can feel that the sport speaks for them, too.

Nobody wins when somebody is left out or marginalized.

Lord Acton Is Right (Again)

In 1887, Britain's Lord Acton wrote a letter containing the following passage:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

The first part of that passage has been used myriad times since it was written to caution against the excesses of power. The second half is seldom quoted, but I include it here to inform the discussion about Joe Paterno and the horrifying revelations at Penn State.

It's possible Lord Acton thought "greatness" guaranteed "badness". It's also possible he meant that unchecked power, unbridled ego, would inevitably lead to trouble.

And so we have Joe Paterno. For many a year, Paterno ran what he liked to call a "Grand Experiment", believing that it was possible to succeed in college athletics while also upholding academic integrity. And it seemed to be working. Penn State won often, and its football players achieved their degrees and avoided controversy.

But now we know what we know (and surely, there is much more that will be known before this is over). And we are left feeling angry, duped, outraged, saddened. How could Joe Paterno be both good and bad?

The answer, as Lord Acton wrote so long ago, may lie in the intoxicating and corrosive influence of power. Read this piece by Southern California psychologist Ronald Riggio. It was written two years ago but you can almost see the Penn State story in it if you look closely enough. One phrase stands out: "Leaders can delude themselves that they are working for the greater good (using socialized power), but engage in behavior that is morally wrong."

In other words, Paterno could well have believed he was preserving something "greater" (his "Grand Experiment") by ignoring the rape of children. Sounds strange, even horrifying, but human nature isn't always logical or even explainable.

So where does that leave us? How do we not go here again?

Perhaps Lord Acton had it right. If so, the answer would be to avoid granting absolute power anywhere, and college athletic departments might be a good place to start.

La Russa's Legacy

The whole notion of "going out on top" sounds good, but it doesn't happen often enough. Too many athletes, coaches, and managers stick around hoping for one more trip to the top of the hill--one that seldom comes.

That's why it's nice to see Tony La Russa say goodbye to the dugout, just days after claiming his third World Series title. La Russa has been there, done that. And could any season ever top the one La Russa and his Cardinals just finished? I doubt it.

Just about anyone who follows sports knows about the last three games of the World Series: the Game 5 "phone-gate" story, the epic Game 6, and the make-no-mistake-about-it Game 7 that gave La Russa his final ring. But there was a lot more to Tony La Russa's last lap.

Don't forget La Russa's struggle with a case of shingles so severe it kept him away from the ballpark for a few days and in pain for many weeks. Don't forget the key Cardinal injuries: starting pitcher Adam Wainwright missed the whole season, outfielder Matt Holliday missed a big chunk and The Great Pujols missed a couple of weeks. There was the whole "is this Albert's last year in St. Louis?" free-agency deathwatch. And then there was that month of September.

While the baseball world focused (and maybe over-focused) on the Red Sox meltdown, the Cardinals faced an even bigger deficit, clawing past Atlanta the last night of the season to make the playoffs as a wild-card team.

And then the Cards knocked off the heavily-favored Phillies. And then the Cards knocked off the same Brewers team that had outpaced St. Louis in the NL Central during the regular season. And only then did La Russa get his final shot at the brass ring.

You can read all the stats about La Russa's career and still not fully appreciate this man. I'll cop to my own mistaken read on La Russa. Back in the 1980's, I'd occasionally be sent to cover an A's game and find myself having to do the postgame interview thing. Mind you, I wasn't a regular in the clubhouse, just one of those microphone-wielding itinerants who are eyed warily by athletes.

I often found La Russa, well...challenging. Especially, but not exclusively, after a loss, he could be a tough nut. Not just grouchy, because that I could understand. No, it seemed that La Russa felt that every question was a challenge to his intelligence or maybe even his manhood. It seemed to me then like insecurity, and I can remember thinking that this poor guy needed to learn to relax.

What I didn't know, because I never got close enough to La Russa to know, was that this man is a grinder, a guy who will outwork you or die trying. As his friend John Madden told us this morning, "'A' students don't make the best managers and coaches." The implication: La Russa was never a star on the field, so he set out to dominate the game as a manager.

I finally got a sense of the real Tony La Russa many years later in, of all places, a room beneath the stage at Oakland's Paramount Theater. I'd wormed my way into a role in the annual Nutcracker ballet performance in which La Russa recruited jocks and "celebrities" to perform in the beloved holiday classic. For Tony, the annual fundraiser was a matter of passion: his daughter, Devon, was a dancer. Tony and his wife Elaine were serious supporters.

La Russa's passion for ballet seemed to me an expression of love for his wife and daughters (his other girl, Bianca, would later become an Oakland Raiderette), his way of supporting them in the same way a baseball family supports the man of the house through those long seasons.

So I began to see La Russa in a new light. And the conversion was complete as we BS'd backstage during the break between rehearsal and performance. La Russa was relaxed, funny, and very excited about a project he was embarking upon with author Buzz Bissinger (Friday Night Lights): Bissinger would observe a 3-game Cardinals series and use it as a leaping-off point for an exploration of the inside world of the sport, with La Russa as the tour guide.

That's when I gained a full appreciation of Tony La Russa. He was, by then, a man in full. His career path was set, he was engaged in altruistic activities like the ballet and his Animal Rescue Foundation, and now, this book would help establish La Russa's legacy as a Baseball Mind. The book Three Nights in August ended up being a cut above the average ghost-written sports bio.

Madden says La Russa could have been successful coaching any sport because he cared about the arts of coaching and leadership. I think he's right. When you mixed La Russa's passion for baseball, his will to win, his willingness to buck the norm (who else was willing to bat his pitcher in the 8-hole?), and his relentless curiosity with what turns out to be a very wide stripe of good old humanity, you wind up with Tony La Russa.

I'm glad I was wrong about him all those years ago.

Coach Harbaugh, What's Your Deal?

It would be nice if Jim Harbaugh was getting nationwide attention this morning for turning the sad-sack 49ers into perhaps the NFL's most interesting comeback story of the season.

Instead, most of the talk is about Harbaugh's breach of postgame etiquette (relax, I'll address opposing coach Jim Schwartz in a moment) after the Niners' thrilling 25-19 win over the Lions in Detroit.

In case you haven't seen it, here's the video clip. Here's my take: only the grouchiest of grouches could begrudge Harbaugh his immediate joyous romp onto the field (and even his shirt-untucking chest bump with lineman Alex Boone, though the mind boggles trying to imagine Tom Landry or even Hank Stram doing that).

No, where Harbaugh crossed the line was his failure to rein things in as he approached Lions coach Jim Schwartz. It's a simple bit of civility to master: look the opposing coach in the eye, offer a firm handshake, say "Nice game, Coach," and move on. Like any other bit of good manners, you can question the sincerity of the act, but without good manners, where are we?

I've heard the argument that Harbaugh's behavior is important to the persona he's trying to build for his team (and we saw the same act at Stanford). Not good enough for me; there's no sin in treating your opponent with respect, even as you try to mop the field with him. We often ask our athletes to serve as role models for our youth; it's fair to ask coaches to do the same.

Now: Jim Schwartz. No halo for this guy, who should have just seized the high ground and ignored Harbaugh's faux pas. Chasing Harbaugh down the field and turning an act of rudeness into a near-brawl? Classless and inexcusable. Another fine lesson to young people, who we often advise to "just walk away" from trouble.

I am increasingly troubled by athletes (and coaches) who confuse joyful celebration with disrespect for an opponent (see Milwaukee Brewer Nyjer Morgan for a series of examples). Sometimes the line is hard to discern; baseball is full of countless disputes over just how slow a home run trot can be before it becomes disrespectful.

But knowing the right way to behave after a football game is no more difficult than knowing which fork to use at the banquet table. Watch the best-behaved person in the room and follow the lead.

Great Expectations

There's a big difference between hoping your team will win and expecting them to win.

I'm not plowing new ground when I point out a slight, shall we say, arrogance that comes with rooting for the New York Yankees. After all, the pinstripers have won 27 World Series and no other team has even played in more than 18. Plus, as we all know, New York is the center of the Western World (see familiar illustration).

Still, you couldn't help but notice the strange silence at Yankee Stadium as Game 5 of the American League Division Series went to the bottom of the 9th. The Tigers held a 3-2 lead, and the Yankees would be sending the heart of the order up against Tigers close Jose Valverde, who hasn't blown a save in 2011.

Time for the Stadium to turn into a howling cauldron of noise, right? Not so much. Despite TV's best efforts to find clapping, shouting fans in the stands, what we saw (and heard) was a pretty sedate scene. Compare that with what happened time and again at San Francisco's AT&T Park late this year--even when the Giants had been eliminated from playoff contention, even when the team was down by several runs. Noise, and lots of it.

The AT&T Park situation was so striking that broadcasters often commented on it and new Giants CEO Larry Baer made note of it in a postseason letter to season ticket holders. In San Francisco: hope. In New York: well, not hope. More like a sense of entitlement.

And once Valverde had 1-2-3'd the Yanks (frosting the cake by striking out Alex Rodriguez for the final out), did the assembled multitude stand and offer thanks for the Yankees' AL-leading 97-win regular season?

Fuhgeddaboutit. What have you done for me lately?