The most wide open division in all of baseball is the National League West, in which no team is currently below .500 and the Padres own the best record at a pedestrian 37 wins, 33 losses. Here is the way I see the remainder of the season playing out, as the first day of summer (on the calender and in the mind of the sports fan - winter sports hockey and basketball ended last night and two nights ago) begins today:

NL WEST FINAL STANDINGS 

San Francisco Giants.......90-72 

Colorado Rockies.............85-77

Los Angeles Dodgers......81-81

Arizona Diamondbacks....76-86

San Diego Padres.............75-87

These teams really do suck. Don't let the .500-or-better records fool you...there might be no team with 90 or more victories from this division, and as I see it, the Giants are the only team with a shot to win a series in the playoffs. The other teams have spotty pitching (one or two good starters, no depth and little potential for a major turnaround at the #3, #4, and #5 rotation spots) or can't hit (see San Diego).

 What do y'all have to say about that? Who's gonna take the West, and why?


 

Let me start by saying this: I grew up idolizing Barry Bonds. He was my favorite player after Will Clark retired, and that happened a long time ago. Barry was my #1 for a while, long before he broke any records. (If you don't know me, suffice it to say that I am a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan. I am a New Yorker; my Giants roots go back years.)

Recently, I took down the cut-out photo of Bonds that I had hanging on my bedroom wall. It's not that I think Bonds is a cheater more than the rest of baseball (okay, what's the number? 50%? 60%? Was 75% of baseball juicing?), but it just didn't feel right having "Barry Bonds" banner my room. I was embarrassed to have it hanging in my room.

The cut-out photo of Bonds was from ESPN The Magazine, and the other side of the page was part of the article that featured Bonds in that issue. The issue was obviously from the summer of 2001, because I can see the article was entitled Chasing 70?.

Two things stand out for me from that ESPN article from five seasons ago:

First, Matt Williams, Bonds' teammate from '93 to '96 on the Giants, is quoted, saying, "Well, to begin with, he's huge, bigger than I ever remember him being, and that's made him a different player. He's given up some of his speed for power. This is not the wiry, quick player who played with the Pirates and then with me in San Francisco."

Second, Bonds is quoted, saying, "There are some things I can't understand right now. The balls that used to go off the wall are just flying out. I've tried to figure it out, and I can't do it. So I stopped thinking about it. I can't answer that question. I don't understand it either. Call G-d and ask Him."

This guy went so long with that phony smile on his face, the one pictured in the inset of the ESPN The Magazine article, directly above his phony quote. His "don't-ask-me" attitude may have worked in summer of 2001--when the media was so caught up in the home run chase that there was no time to question the legitimacy of it all--but it's not going to work today. His public image is already tarnished, his reputation is done with, and his accomplishments are asterisked in the court of public opinion.

And in the eyes of this Giants fan, he's a dead man walking. He's lifeless. He's without a conscious, perhaps without a true soul. I see him, and I become as lifeless as he.

Don't get me wrong--I will cheer for Barry Bonds this season, and however long he remains a Giant. But that's the point: I only want him to do well because I'm a team player, because I pull for my team paramount to any individual or any accomplishment. I want the Giants to win more than anything. No question, I can't say the same about #25.

So, when Barry Bonds goes to the AL because he has become too much of a liability in left field for GM Brian Sabean, I am going to heckle him to no end. Not for the same reasons that everybody heckles him today (because I don't support that--if you're going to boo Bonds, then why not boo Giambi, Marion Jones, Palmeiro, Boone, whoever), but because he stole from me.

Barry Bonds stole from me my childhood. I was rooting for a liar, with all of my innocence and all of my joy. It was an empty feeling taking down that cut-out from my wall, but it was necessary. Though I'll support my team, I refuse to support anything that comes out of his dirty, lying mouth.

Well, well.  In the words of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Please allow me to introduce myself.

On September 2nd, 1986, I entered this world with a San Francisco Giants logo permanently imprinted on the back of my skull.

Okay, so maybe the logo is a product of my strange, boundless imagination.  Nevertheless, I grew up rooting for Will Clark, Robby Thomson, Royce Clayton, Rod Beck, Matt Williams, and of course, for Barry Lamar Bonds.  My dad was a baseball guy, and the Giants were his team, so by the transitive property--I was always a math and numbers guy--I'm a Giants nut.

Enter the University of Wisconsin.  I arrived in Madison in the twilight of Summer 2004, and immediately, I discovered what being a real sports fan entails.  You see, Madison is a sports town.  Its inhabitants, both students and "'Sconnies"--as we like to call Wisconsin natives--are crazed over the college town's team, the Wisconsin Badgers.  (And, of course, one or two of them might like the Green Bay Packers and one guy named Favre.  I think he plays cornerback.)

Simply living on the same floor--my freshman year--as sports fans from Wisconsin, Kansas City, San Diego, Omaha, and Chicago, gave me perspective on sports' place in America.  It especially showed me the bond that sports can forge amongst strangers.  (We all became fast friends, debating over who would win the World Series that October, who could possibly beat the Patriots, who would win the Big Ten title and go to the Rose Bowl, and plenty more.  Sports encompasses an endless amount of arguable material, as I quickly found out once at school.)  Seeing, though, the passion that some of my floormates had for their hometown teams, I began to wonder:  why am I not as interested, or as knowledgable, as I could be about my teams? 

So, I changed.  I went from being a New York Jets, New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and of course, San Francisco Giants fan, to being a true fanatic for those same teams.  True to form, that fanaticism transfered over to my school's teams in a matter of weeks, soon after I became acclimated with the Big Ten athletic system.

Why am I telling you all this?  To give you some perspective.  On me, Andrew G. Rubin, the writer.  You see, I did not grow up a die-hard Jets or Knicks fan.  When the Jets went 1-15 under Rich Kotite, I didn't think twice about it.  When the Knicks lost to the Rockets in Game 7 of the NBA Finals in 1994, I walked home from my friend's house, whistling and making sure to look both ways as I crossed the street.  When the Rangers won the Stanley Cup that same year, I watched.  I could even say I was happy.  Not overjoyed, but happy.  I was a fair-weather fan, a bandwagon fan, if you will.  I'm not proud of it; that's just how I grew up.  That's my background.

Fast forward to Freshman year.  Wisconsin goes to West Lafayette, IN, to play the 5th-ranked Purdue Boilermakers, and I go with them.  (Well, I went in my friend's car, but the point remains--I made the trip.)  The 10th-ranked Badgers are losing by 10 points halfway through the fourth quarter.  Purdue has the ball.  My friends and I, sitting in the stands behind the end zone, have ceased all discourse.  Our saddened eyes stare blankly at the scoreboard as we helplessly watch the clock--and our Badgers' undefeated season--tick away, second after second after second.  Kyle Orton, the Heisman Trophy candidate, quarterback and leader of this Purdue football team seems unimpressed by the normally stingy Wisconsin defense, as he drives the Boilermakers to the 40-yard-line with relative ease. 

3rd and Four.  Orton scrambles, and dives for a first down.  The game, for all intents and purposes, is over.  But wait--something is laying on the turf.  That something is not moving, rather stationary, sitting on the 40-yard-line.  Orton has inexplicably lost the football!!  Seemingly out of a movie, my friends and I jump and scream as we see a big, red "2 "running down the field, directly toward us.  Scott Starks has picked up a gift at the 40-yard-line and runs it, untouched, into the end zone, mere yards in front of my shocked--and elated--face.

The end of the story, of course, is that the Badgers won the football game, and ruined Kyle Orton's senior (Heisman?) season.  But what did I learn from that experience, possibly the greatest sporting event I will ever witness?

I learned this:  whatever it takes to be a sports fanatic--whether it be giving up your free time, pissing away your spending money, sacrificing your schoolwork (gasp!), or even dumping your girlfriend--it's worth it.  Because when you're 96 years young, and you can't even go to the bathroom on your own terms, and your team is in the World Series for the first time since you were a teenager...

Dump your girlfriend.  Grab the remote.  Commence with bliss. 

Enjoy.