Printer-friendly

Contact Author

February 23, 2005

Prospectus Today

Bonds

by Joe Sheehan

I'd like to say I meant to take two weeks off from this space, but I didn't. I got caught up in working on the Roundtables and finishing my contributions to a second BP book that will be coming out later this year. I also got caught up in the joys of sneezing and coughing, as well as ark planning and development.

OK, I confess: I watched a lot of college hoops, too. I love the game on so many levels. It's become a reasonable substitute for baseball in the winter months for me. I put out a Top 25 to a handful of friends, immerse myself in my Full Court package, work on my bracketology, weigh the merits of the new RPI, try and forget just how bad the 'SC program is…

Plus, hoops helped keep me distracted while waiting for Baseball Prospectus 2005. After editing the annual for seven years, I still haven't gotten used to waiting to read the book, as opposed to seeing it all in December. That I have a Strat league draft on Sunday has heightened my need for it, leading to me jumping up from my office every time a car goes down the street, as I hope against hope that it's a delivery truck carrying the tenth edition. The book began shipping Monday, so if it shows up on your doorstep, drop me a line.

The good news is that I picked the right two weeks to disappear. An offseason that stretched into February finally went a little dead after the Magglio Ordonez signing, leaving two weeks of relative silence. The biggest…"stories"…of the past couple of weeks are that the Red Sox don't like Alex Rodriguez and that Barry Bonds doesn't play nice with the media, which kind of makes you wonder what #3 could possibly have been.

Yesterday's Bonds press conference seems to have caused quite a stir. I'm not sure how yet another example of Bonds' unwillingess to play nice with the media is such big news. It would have been a story had Bonds answered a whole bunch of questions with packaged answers and not once gotten riled up. That Bonds and the assembled reporters parried for an hour, with the former getting agitated and defensive and the latter pushing buttons is just the expectation.

That Bonds is the face of the baseball'n'BALCO situation is fortunate for the media, which can get away with a lot more rolled eyes and lowered standards than it might otherwise. Bonds' relationship with the media is a huge part of this story, and it makes it hard to take the coverage without a whole quarry of salt, because there's not even a pretense of objectivity any longer. The two parties dislike each other, and that impacts the coverage. Bonds won't provide information, so the media substitutes his disdain for it and hand-waves the rest.