Avoiding disaster/Avoiding responsibility

After a brief string of creditable performances by Scott Proctor, Joe Torre claimed to have seen in Spring Training that htis was a different guy from last year. He'd better wake up from his day game nap and check again. Proctor just gave up 2 runs against K. C. in an inning pitched, the fourth time in a row he has coughed up a run or more (three times more) in an inning or less. His ERA is up to alomost 4 again and he alomost cost the Yankees the game, which would have been a disaster, losing a series to the Royals at home. The Yankees weere in danger because they followed their typical pattern of putting their bats away after an early inning explosion. They managed to hold on, thanks to a nice return to form from Farnsworth, but frankly OPctavio Dotel can't arrive too soon at this point. Of course Torre will have to pitch him instead of Proctor, something he has refused to dom with Villone, despite his obvious superiority to Ptoctor. I fear Proctor may have become the new sentimentalized failure, taking over for Sturtze and if so nothing but an injury will displace him. Loyal Yankee fans will have to have him kneecapped.

In another news, Bonds' 715th provided the occasion for Harold Reynolds and John Kruk to reveal themselves as the most arrant, self-defiling whores in baseball journalism, a pedestal for which there is, as we know, much competition. Both essentially insisted that a) Bonds should not be blames for taking steriods, since he never failed a steriods test--which is a little like saying that someone never exceeded the speed limit because owning radar blockers they were never caught and b) even if he took steriods, his accomplishment is untainted, which is a little like saying Ken Lay's business model is undiminished by his conviction on 6 counts of fraud. These guys are a positive disgrace. They're a fucking disgrace and should be taken off the air. As former jocks, they should be acclimated enough to the smell of their own jocks that they needn't go sniffing other people's for a living.

In the film The Natural (obviously an ironic point of reference for Mr. Big-Headed Chemical Freak) Robert Duvall speaks, insincerely to be sure, of a baseball writer's office: protecting the game. The game doesn't always, or even often, need protecting, so a journalist is given a rare oppurtunity in a case like Bonds to perform his craft as if it mattered. When they fail to do so, they should be relieved of that office.