After the Fall: Jason Giambi's Summer of Redemption

A Story Again

2005-05-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Giambi situation, which until last weekend seemed like tragedy again, now has gotten at least a little more complex. My extended absence from this blog was related to the fizzling of the story: until a week ago, the Yankees were a last place team and Giambi was a mediocre former MVP. Nothing tragic or even interesting about that. Now, with the team winning and Tino eeking one line drive after another over right field fences, Giambi’s deterioration has once again become a public spectacle. A week ago, after winning a few games, the Yankees had time to notice that Giambi had quietly buried himself in a severe slump. He hadn’t had a hit in days, a home run in weeks. His average had sunk to just above .200. His face and body looked worse than his numbers.

Last week, the New York fans and media got vicious again. They could no longer ignore the batting average, the lack of any contact with the ball, the worried face, the defeated gait. Columnists began asking if could still be a major leaguer hitter; last week, Brian Cashman wondered the same thing, and apparently asked Giambi to go down to the minors. This seemed reasonable—the team’s recent success was too precarious to allow Giambi to work through his problems while playing for them; it would improve his skills and confidence to beat up double-A pitchers every night; he would be seen as a team player. I, for one, was annoyed when he did not agree to the move. Wasn’t his goal to get better again? Wasn’t practice the way to do it?

He told the media that he felt close to breaking out, which sounded ridiculous at the time. But then, facing maximum adversity—and flying beer—in Oakland last weekend, he came up huge. Once. When he hit that go-ahead double, it was tempting to frame that moment as a turning point. The setting and timing were certainly dramatic. But it was just one hit. So far on this road trip, which Torre promised would bring him more at-bats, he is hitting .250, with no home runs. Though hardly worth thirteen million dollars, the numbers do signify an improvement. Maybe he knew something when he said that he was getting his groove back.

I know how ridiculous that sounds. The statistics suggest—no, scream—that he owes most of his success to steroids: a .306 career batting average before the All-Star break in 2003, when, according to leaked reports of his grand jury testimony, he stopped using; a .213 average, with only 30 home runs, since. But I saw him in March. His power was not overwhelming, but his poise and swagger were back, along with his keen judgment of pitches. It seems clear that he can never again be a serious power hitter, but maybe he can achieve a high on-base percentage, smack some RBI doubles, and contribute as a role-player, if his ego permits.

Ego, or at least self-image, seems like the major issue now. Can he adjust to being the Yanks’ next Darryl Strawberry, taking whatever redemption he can get, instead of their next Mickey Mantle? When he refused demotion, he may have indicated that he cannot. Or he may have noticed something in his swing, some improvement that led to that big hit.

Frankly, I concluded last week that Giambi was finished as a major league hitter. Now, just a few days later, I think that this may not be the case. His .250 average in the past four games granted him an extension. His problems are certainly physical—he is thirty-four and playing without steroids for the first time in years—but they are also psychological: something has changed in his head since spring training. I can see it on his easy-to-read, expressive face. The sweating, the grimacing, the eyes that won’t look up from the ground: these are keeping him from performing. They may still get confident again. That is why the story is not over, not yet.

Swept Out Of Baltimore

2005-04-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

The Yankees: not so good. They have won four and lost eight, and are providing Tampa Bay with rare company in last place. Over the weekend, they were swept by the Orioles, who played like the Yankees have for the past decade, combining strong starting pitching with gutsy offensive comebacks.

Jason Giambi is faring only slightly better. Last Wednesday, a day after the Yankees suffered a limp loss on Boston’s home opener, Giambi was the hero. His two-run homer broke a tie, was a dramatic response to his Beantown taunters, and led to a Yankee win. The team has not won since.

The day before that homer, New York papers devoted much ink to the Yankee problems that threaten to undermine their title-chasing: age in the lineup, bad luck in the bullpen, questions all through the rotation. Giambi, they all seemed to agree, was a virtual lost cause, a man who would not deliver more than mediocre numbers.

Then, Thursday morning—after the heroic homer—the back page of the Daily News read, “Jason Lives.” Word was that the Yankees had clicked, and so had Giambi. Now the season, and Yankee dominance, could begin in earnest.

This, of course, did not occur. After a loss in Boston and three losses in Baltimore, the Yankees are limping, dazed, back to the Bronx.

Giambi, in thirty-five at-bats, has eight hits, two homers, and three runs batted in. His on-base percentage is a respectable .357; he has walked four times and struck out nine. He has found himself on the brink of disaster on a number of occasions, and has always achieved last-minute reprieves. Problem is, long stretches of inconsistency often follow the reprieves. Sometimes Jason looks fierce and focused, sometimes he swats at the strangest pitches and pops up with men in base.

Failure and inconsistancy, of course, are givens in hitting. A .300 hitter fails seventy percent of the time. So far, though, Giambi has not found an adequate rhythm. Both Giambi and the Yankees would benefit from solidly bashing the Devil Rays this week. After that it is Toronto and Texas, and after that it is the month of May. At what point does this story reach its middle point, far enough from the beginning so that unqualified success becomes unattainable?

Teetering on the Brink

2005-04-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

1.

Saturday, top of the third, score tied at zero. Orioles left fielder B.J. Surhoff hits a weak chopper to Giambi at first. The O’s Javy Lopez, who has just hit a one-out single off of Randy Johnson, starts toward second. We in the right-field bleachers cheer for the presumed inning-ending double play. As soon as we start clapping, though, the ball skips under Giambi’s glove and into right field; we throw our heads back, and scream, “No!” All runners are safe.

One guy behind me starts to chant, and soon it spreads through the bleachers and into the box seats: “Tino! Tino!,” as in, they want Martinez in the game and Giambi on the bench. The first boos of the year aimed at Jason are mixed with the chant. Lopez eventually scores, and the chant begins again.

Bottom of the same inning. Two out, bases empty. Bruce Chen, pitching for the Orioles, has been finessing his breaking ball to avoid Yankee bats. Giambi, up for the first time, watches one pitch go by, then another. Then several more. He strikes out looking, and the inning is over. A guy behind me yells, “get back on the juice, you fat fuck.” The boos accumulate as he trudges back to the dugout, head down. Jeers haven’t washed over the entire stadium yet; still, Giambi must know that the goodwill he worked so hard to cultivate is just about used up. I turn to my friend Josiah and say, “He’s got about two more bad at-bats before he really starts to get it.”

Remember: no one in baseball needs a decent April more than Giambi. If he starts with a slump, he gets booed; if he gets booed, his confidence suffers; if his confidence suffers, his slump is prolonged; if his slump is prolonged, everyone says he’s no good without the steroids, and his entire career is discredited. At the beginning of this game, Jason had two hits in his first week. He teetered on the precipice of an ugly situation.

Bottom of the fourth. Giambi steps in to a few boos, and promptly pokes one just over the right field fence for his first home run of the year. He seems in a hurry to run the bases, head down, biting his lower lip. All of a sudden the earlier strikeout seems smart--he was getting a feel for the pitcher, and now has him timed. The crowd cheers. I turn to Josiah and say, “That was the best timed-home run of his career.”

2.

The Baltimore series was hardly a showcase for Yankee talent. They dropped two of three games, and their three new starting pitchers were awful. Jaret Wright was shellacked Friday (the back cover of the Daily News said, simply, “Jaret Wrong”), Johnson’s slider abandoned him on Saturday—at one point, he walked in a run—and Carl Pavano not only lost on Sunday, but was smacked in the skull by a line drive. He went to the hospital, which was probably more fun than being in the clubhouse after the game.

But Giambi got out of it okay. His status still dangles, undetermined. He picked up another hit on Sunday, keeping his average at a not-quite-terrible .235 (better than Sheffield’s first-week .160). He did, however, make a big error in that game, dropping a Melvin Mora foul. It was Pavano’s next pitch to Mora, who should have been out, that sent the pitcher to the E.R., so Giambi’s mistake was remembered.

Today, in Boston, Giambi came up with two on, two out and runners on first and third. It was the top of the fourth, and the Yankees were trailing by a still-manageable 4-1. With the Fenway crowd chanting “ass-hole,” Giambi popped up on the first pitch. He had already struck out to end the second inning. He finished the 8-1 Sox victory with zero hits in four tries. Maybe he was pressing. Maybe Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball was dancing. Maybe the crowd bothered him. Maybe he’s in a slump.

He must be feeling the pressure intensify. As this happens, success will seem more elusive. Every game now assumes an increased significance: these are the days before we know the results of his comeback.

A Sudden Reversal

2005-04-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, Mariano Rivera’s mojo and cutter abandoned him, as he gave up five runs in the ninth, losing the sweep and granting Boston its first post-curse win. Yankee bats were held to four hits, and Derek Jeter, who won Tuesday’s game with a walk-off homer, got his helmet knocked off by an errant Mike Timlin fastball. Jeter went to the hospital, Rivera left the mound to boos, and Boston felt good again. Momentum shifts quickly in this game.

In addition to these Yankee problems, another concern is developing: Giambi has only one hit in seven at-bats this season. That early single on opening night was his last of the series. On Tuesday, with two on, two out, and a tie score in the eighth, he swung through a high fastball, ending a rally. Not only did he strike out, but he did it meekly. That scared look was back on his face: big eyes, worried mouth, strike three. Jason took a .289 batting average up from friendly Florida, indicating the return of his skills. Now, with the Orioles coming in this weekend, Giambi is two bad games away from being affixed with the dreaded label: slump.

He cannot afford that label. If he plays poorly in April, the pressure will pile on him for May, and so on for June and the future. Jason needs to get mean again, fast, if he expects fans to continue forgetting that he took steroids. This weekend will tell the story.

Opening Day

2005-04-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

1.

Two things that I love, baseball and New York City, share a burden: people always say they were better in the old days. Sure, history is important to both, but the past often overshadows the exciting present. Baseball and New York are magnets for nostalgia. After a winter of reading and writing about the game, though, I have arrived at a surprising opinion: baseball has never been better than it is now (perhaps we can’t say the same for New York, but baseball in the city is certainly experiencing a renaissance).

Many people mourn the days of less ridiculous salaries (though the old players surely don’t miss being exploited by owners), and no steroids (though the will to cheat was then satisfied by saliva, sandpaper, and cork). I recently heard Bob Costas getting all misty-eyed about the years before regular television coverage: Mickey Mantle, he said, was more mythical when seen a few times a year on a little black and white screen. For Bob, modern baseball could not compare.

How, though, can anything be better when it is less understood? Scrutiny has brought baseball into glorious times of late. We now appreciate the physics of a curveball, the value of a walk, the foolhardiness of a sacrifice bunt. Young writers, statisticians and general managers, refusing to allow received wisdom to remain unquestioned, have revolutionized the game in recent decades. New stats have been developed that provide more accurate measures of a player’s value. Commentators who complain about the overabundance of numbers fail to understand that math doesn’t replace poetry; rather, it allows fans to appreciate the game for what it really is, instead of a romanticized—and ultimately false—ideal. Romanticism collapses into cynicism, while awareness leads to deeper appreciation.

2.
With exuberance inspired by these ideas, I finally—finally—went up to Yankee Stadium for the opening night of the 2005 season. My stated purpose, of course, was to watch Giambi, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the general energy of the evening. Roger Angell wrote that opening day is more exciting than New Years because it promises an imminent summer; the mood in front of Yankee Stadium two hours before the game was exuberant. There were more drinkers than sports bars in the vicinity of the stadium, so revelers stumbled into the streets, chanting “Let’s go Yankees,” as if they were already in the bleachers. Boston fans strolled unharassed through Yankee nation, a new and striking development since last year. The forecast had not only predicted, but promised rain, but the rain stayed away. Presenting my ticket at the bleacher entrance, I was giddy—that’s the only word—and chatted with the security guy as he patted me down hastily, in a hurry to get rid of the overzealous weirdo.

Walking behind the bleachers to find my section, I caught fleeting glimpses of the outfield grass. The green was as intense as it had been in my winter dreams. The stifling ache of February and March were over, gone for a whole season.

The infield was covered by a precautionary tarp, so batting practice had been cancelled, but Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo was throwing in the bullpen when I entered the bleachers. Standing above him, amazed by the power of a major league pitch in close-up, I examined the spectators. Like the streets outside the stadium, the bleachers were suddenly friendly territory for Boston fans to flaunt their hats and jerseys. Though the Yankee fan in me was disgusted, the writer saw opportunity to hear varied perspectives. I began asking around about Giambi. My first subjects were a family of Red Sox fans from California, none of whom seemed to care about Jason. The mom, in Boston cap and shirt, called him a cheater, but complimented him for being upfront about it, unlike Bonds and McGwire.

Moving to Sean, a teenage Yankee fan from Connecticut, I asked if he felt betrayed by Giambi’s cheating. “He’s not the only one,” he said, shrugging. Howard, from Hillcrest, New York, who brought his young son to the game, said, “Anyone on steroids taints the game for me, but at least Giambi had the guts to admit it, unlike some of the others.”

Jason’s spring p.r. blitz seems to have worked. Most fans forget that he hasn’t admitted to anything. After a half-hour of speaking with Yankee and Red Sox fans, I concluded that the steroid scandal is not, at least in terms of Giambi, much of an issue right now. This takes my blog in a new direction, but in an exciting one: free of scandal, and back towards baseball. If Giambi is hitting .200 in three weeks, steroids will be right back in the headlines next to his name; right now, though, other plots dominate. Randy Johnson vs. David Wells, New York vs. Boston, Tino’s return—these were the stories on opening night.

Giambi’s play, in any case, indicated that he may be hitting well above .200 in three weeks. In the second inning Sunday, stepping in to an ovation louder than those given to Jeter, A-Rod, Sheffield, or Matsui, Jason turned on an inside pitch, driving it into right-center for a hot single. In his next two at-bats, he was hit by a pair of dull curveballs thrown by an unfocused David Wells. Boston fans criticized Giambi for failing to dodge the pitch in the second at-bat, but Jason’s actions seemed evidence of a keen baseball mind: facing an 0-2 count, with a slow curve coming toward him that wasn’t going to hurt, Giambi saw an opportunity to get on base.

The game was more dramatic and tense than its nine-to-two score indicated. Jeter began the season with a single, and the crowd cheered excessively, revealing the depth of our winter longing. Randy Johnson struck out Manny Ramirez looking in the first, and then again in the fourth. Hideki Matsui snagged a Kevin Millar home run back from over the left-field wall, irrevocably shifting the tone of the game. Those of us in the left field bleachers missed the play, which was obscured from our view. We saw the ball sail off of Millar’s bat, and we groaned (the score was 1-0 Boston at the time, and there was a man on base). When the rest of the stadium cheered, we in the bleachers looked at one another desperately—what happened?—and then, seeing the replay on the Jumbotron, we erupted into a relieved roar. Later, Johnny Damon bobbled an A-Rod single twice in two seconds, and cursed loudly after throwing the ball. We laughed and pointed, and the Red Sox fans were quiet.

The Yankees looked hungry but ready, professionals prepared to avenge their October embarrassment. During the first two innings, as each Yankee emerged from the dugout out of his winter absence, I felt, and could feel around the stadium, an ineffable sense of joy and relief. It was wild, like spring fever, and it was fleeting, gone by the third inning, when the season had already settled into its slow, easy rhythm. There may not be such a high for the rest of the summer, but that exuberant moment is why I will come back—baseball promises glimpses of ecstasy mixed with the fun.

About Face

2005-03-23T22:01:00.000-08:00

Ooh, it felt good to be back watching baseball this week. On Monday, I caught the televised Yanks-Indians exhibition, my first since the Congressional hearings. The pleasure of focusing on the game’s details reminded me that, oh yeah, there was more to this experience than sad scandal.

So back we go to Jason Giambi’s attempt to rebuild his career. The hearings, and the media’s turn toward Bonds and McGwire, have taken Giambi out of the headlines for now, a lucky break for him. While the world has vilified other athletes, Jason has been free to concentrate on recovering his skills.

One way to measure the progress of Giambi’s comeback is to look at his face. He has always been one of the more expressive ballplayers, and is rarely difficult to read. Anyone can guess what he is feeling at almost any time. When reporters are firing tough questions, for example, his eyes get all big, screaming for help. When he is humiliated, as he was during the February press conference, his lower lip protrudes and his pupils dart from shoe to shoe. Some players cultivate a smooth, camera-ready persona, but Jason is either uninterested or unable.

So his honest face provides an important study of the man, and I have been watching it for the past few weeks. In Giambi’s first games this year, when spring training still threatened to be a daily torment, those big eyes stayed Clockwork Orange open while staring at opposing pitchers. His lips were pulled together in a tight frown, and his practice swings were tentative. You could almost hear him thinking, oh please oh please oh please don’t let me screw up and make them boo me.

But when he dug in against the Indians’ poor kid pitcher Monday, with Sheffield on base and two out in the first, Jason surprised me with a change: he looked fierce. His face was bullfight red, his eyes narrow, his mouth curled into a sneer. Come and get me, rookie¸ he seemed to say. The rookie did get him, inducing a hopper to first to end the inning, but Jason had made his point. He had gone down looking mean, and the pitcher couldn’t have been looking forward to their next encounter. In the third, Giambi drew a gritty walk and later, in the fifth, looped a slow-falling hit to center. He then noticed a slight hesitation by the outfielder and took advantage, lumbering to third for an improbable triple. This guy is a smart ballplayer, I thought, something that had never occurred to me before this spring.

In the seventh inning, while his teammates were batting, Giambi stood on the top step of the dugout, leaning forward against the railing. Still locked in on the pitcher, his mind seemed free of distraction. He was consumed by the craft of hitting. To stay focused on the details of the game—this is the real challenge in recovering from this scandal, for players and fans. The question for Giambi, of course, remains: will that face stay fierce when he moves north next week?

Mark McGwire, My Hero

2005-03-21T13:25:00.000-08:00

My plan was to ignore the Congressional hearings and focus on baseball, but the sad drama got to me. It had been several years since I had seen him, and now under these circumstances: gaunt, older, bespectacled, nervous, and then crying—this was the Adonis who had captivated me and the country not so long ago, and who is so much smaller now: Mark McGwire.

McGwire was there during my childhood, teenage, and young adult years. Seeing him Thursday, middle-aged and defeated, was a harsh reminder that I, too, have gotten older. It was also a reminder that what seems perfect in childhood gets uglier and more complicated later in life.

In the beginning, the story seemed uncomplicated: 1989—the earthquake-delayed battle of the bay—was the year of my first World Series. The Oakland A’s were my first team. Mark McGwire was my first favorite player. In 1989, I was nine, my new team swept the series, and, apparently, Canseco and McGwire were shooting steroids into one another’s butt cheeks. Unaware of this, I hoarded McGwire’s baseball cards. I rose and fell with his slumps and successes. I took phantom home run swings in the back yard, and circled the bases pretending to Mark McGwire.

After a few fun years with the game, my enthusiasm was interrupted by the strike in 1994. This happened to many people, and I, at the dawn of adolescence, was especially distracted. Those were dark years for baseball, and I barely followed it, losing track of my hero. People often forget how low the game’s popularity had sunk by 1998, when McGwire and Sammy Sosa brought it back by chasing Roger Maris’ home run record. The story has been told enough about how fans, captivated by the drama, finally let go of their bitterness about the strike, but that summer really was as magical as it is now remembered—almost too storybook, almost too perfect.

While he was busy saving the game, McGwire unwittingly became involved with a few narratives more personal to me. For one, I was almost eighteen, and preparing to leave home for college. I had entered the sentimental stage of late youth, and was eager to reconnect with people and things that had given me meaning when I was younger. And who was that huge St. Louis Cardinal with thirty home runs by early summer? Mark McGwire—my boyhood idol was back; he had come with me all this way. He was like a friend who had moved away in the seventh grade and was now visiting for the first time. He looked different, and his voice was deeper, but it was the same old Mark and it felt good to see him.

That summer, he was part of another story that meant even more to me. My dad and I had been fighting a lot at the time, as dads and their smart-ass teenage sons will do. I may be getting a little too Field of Dreams here, but it is true that baseball had always been a common ground between us (that must be why that movie, despite its sentimental excesses, resonates). When I was young, he took me to games and coached my little league team. The decline of the sport in the mid-nineties served as a perfect metaphor for the strain in our relationship: we stopped following games, I quit little league to play in a punk band, and we argued over curfews, grades, and college.

In the late summer of 1998, as McGwire had 55, 56, 57 home runs and his games were televised every night, my dad and I watched them together. Our shared rooting instantly returned us to a time before my adolescence divided us. McGwire still unites my dad and me: we spent hours on the phone last week reminiscing and sharing our melancholy about the current situation.

The night Mark broke the record, I was stuck working at my summer job, and ran in the house right after he hit it. Both my parents’ eyes were damp, and as I watched the replay, and Mark hugging his son at home plate, and hugging Sosa, and hugging Roger Maris’ sons, I started to cry, which is exactly what I did Thursday in response to McGwire’s own tears as he came to terms to with his irrevocable downfall.

Now he has become a pariah, but I don’t see how people can be so indignant about someone else’s mistakes. Remember that parable about the stones? We want our heroes to be so great—perhaps that mentality itself is a root cause of the steroid era—and we act so offended when they reveal their humanity. But I’m not mad at him; I’m sad for him. He seems like a decent, sensitive guy who made a huge mistake. He is clearly tortured by that mistake, and will suffer for the rest of his life because of it. The mistake cannot, however, erase any of the meaningful moments of which he was a part. Unfortunately, it does shape them differently; this is unavoidable. Despite that, though, if I saw Mark today, this is what I would say: thanks for the memories.

Home Run, For Now

2005-03-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

Giambi’s happy spring kept rolling last night, in the pre-season home of the Boston Red Sox. The papers, understandably bored and hunting for headlines, made a big deal of this match-up, the most anticipated exhibition in recent memory. Tickets were being scalped for hundreds of dollars, which is funny, because half of the team was somewhere else in Florida, playing another game. Jeter, A-Rod, Sheffield, Posada and Rivera had been beaten by the Indians in Tampa when the split-squad matchup against Boston began. Joe Torre, who had already managed once that day, didn’t make it to the Sox game.

This was the first meeting of the two teams since October, but most of the hype was due to Giambi’s appearance in front of Red Sox fans. He was finally going to encounter the adversity about which we had heard, but which we had not yet seen. Spring training is still going well for Jason: a head-scratchingly happy surprise occurred when the Yanks visited the Tigers’ complex for a game, and Giambi was cheered. Huh? Has he really shifted public opinion to the point where opposing fans are rooting for him?

There are few guarantees in this game, but I was certain that the Sox fans would let him have it yesterday, and they did, sort of. He was booed, but only after signing pre-game autographs in front of the dugout, smiling and laughing, not exactly looking like a man deep in enemy territory. At one point a little girl presented him with a teddy bear, and Jason gave her his batting gloves—oh, the horror.

Okay, when he strolled to the plate for his first at-bat, he was booed. Just like Yankees are always booed in Red Sox nation. The crowd was not exceptionally loud or vehement. Anyway, Giambi seemed not to hear them, displaying patience at the plate as he worked the count to 3-1 before stroking a clean single to right. Things got more dramatic in his next at-bat, when Sox fans finally got their act together and started chanting “Ster-oids” in that drawn-out way in which Darryl Strawberry’s first name used to get abused. Giambi did get distracted this time, swatting hastily at a 1-2 pitch and popping out.

In the fifth, he crushed a ball more than four hundred feet into center field: his first home run of the post-steroid era. This was the big moment that the New York papers were praying for, a middle finger raised to the Red Sox “tormentors” (by the way, since when were the New York papers on Giambi’s side? Weren’t they using their front pages to try to run him out of town, like, three months ago?).

Aside from the home run, there were moments that predicted regular-season success. First, there was the baseball stuff—he remained mostly patient at the plate, and was able to send his homer to center field, rather than trying to pull it. Some anxiety was apparent when he popped up, but the guy has hardly played since June. It takes a while to regain patience at the plate. In light of that, his progress is impressive.

The personal stuff could not be going better. He has managed to turn the press around, no easy thing, was able to mostly ignore Sox fans, and, amazingly, was cheered by Tiger fans the day before. What were they cheering? Steroid use? Of course not; they were cheering his public contrition. Americans will always forgive someone who acts sorry—remember Hugh Grant rescuing his career on The Tonight Show after being caught with a prostitute?—and Giambi is playing the role.

How genuine is it, and how long will it last? Is he really sorry? Would he still be shooting ’roids if he hadn’t been caught? Apparently, these questions do not matter now in the happy world of Giambi’s spring.

The most crucial time in this drama, though, has not yet arrived. Giambi’s early victories will be forgotten if he does not perform strongly in the first few weeks of the regular season. Yankee fans will turn on him if he is hitting .200 on the first of May. They have done this in the past, before steroids were an issue, and they will certainly do it again. The first few weeks of the season will be disproportionately significant for Giambi, because they will set a tone for his comeback. Forget Red Sox fans; New Yorkers will measure the success of his efforts. And one guarantee of spring training is that everyone forgets it once the season starts.

Seems Like Years Since Its Been Here

2005-03-05T12:52:00.000-08:00

1.

Baseball gets intense, and who knows why? For example: last night I dreamt it was the first perfect day of spring. Wearing t-shirt and shorts, and thrilled about it, I strolled up to Yankee Stadium, and wandered in to discover the team playing an intersquad scrimmage. Oh god, I thought, ready to cry. I've missed baseball so much this winter. The stands were virtually empty, so I took a seat behind third base. While settling in, I heard the snap of a bat, and a ball came whizzing at my head. My hand shot up to cover my face, and the ball went right into it. "A foul ball, " I said to no one. "I finally caught a foul ball." Giambi, of course, had hit it.

Inning after inning I sat in perfect contentment, feeling relieved and at home, wondering how I had survived those frozen months between the World Series and this. Everything was awake and alive—the grass an intense green, the sky an intense blue. When the game was over, I noticed a man sitting behind home plate, head down, and realized: that's Giambi.

This was my chance to talk to him, to investigate his personality, to tell him about this project and solicit his help. I approached him, identifying myself as a writer. He was initially suspicious, but warmed to me, and concluded our brief chat by saying, "I'll make sure you get a press pass so we can keep talking this year."

Then I woke to that awful feeling of disappointment, when the day ahead will be dim and cold, unable to compare to the dream just lost. And what did this tell me? Well, for one, it told me that I should perhaps be spending less time on this blog. It also reiterated my wish to have greater access to the people involved in the drama (this is something on which I have been working, to no avail yet).

Most significantly, though, it reminded me why I can’t avoid writing about baseball—because I can't stop feeling about baseball. It may seem silly for a grown man to go hunting for meaning in a game. Obsessions, though, are mysterious, and often can’t be justified. Why write about baseball? Well, why does my friend Steve, currently in art school, spend all his time arranging paint on a canvas? Why does my friend Sean, an athlete, devote so many hours to exercising and honing his body? People find meaning in different places, but the emotions beneath are always similar. Happiness, relief, longing; my interests provide a language for me to deal with all of these and more.

There is another Yankee dream in my recent past, from late last October. This one stuck with me for weeks. It looked like the Edward Hopper painting of a lone gas station attendant standing by his pump at the side of a highway. In the painting, the man’s head is bowed, and he probably hasn’t seen a car in hours. It is dusk, and chilly. In my dream, I drove up to this station, and the attendant was Alex Rodriguez. We looked at one another, winced and nodded; we shared the same pain. Without a word, he filled my tank, and I drove back onto the highway, overcome by interminable loneliness.

Did the Yankees' postseason choke give me this feeling? Of course not. I was dreading the winter, upset about the state of the world, anxious that Bush would be reelected, afraid of getting older and dying and whatever else makes people crazy in the middle of the night. But baseball was my filter for these feelings. It could have been music or movies or popular culture. It could have been my job. But it was baseball. The game was a window; I looked in to see my isolation, and now, as spring approaches, I look in to see my relief and rebirth.

2.

From dreams to the diamond—the Yankees played their first exhibition game Thursday, in Tampa against the Pirates. Giambi walked twice and grounded to second. In his first at-bat, he worked a full count before taking the base-on-balls, and later scored a run. So he has not lost his discerning eye, historically one of his great skills (and one that cannot be enhanced by chemicals). The walk, generally undervalued in baseball, has been championed by the Oakland organization of which Giambi is a product. Jason knows that a walk counts the same as a single; it can actually be better if it tires the pitcher by forcing him to throw more.

Giambi’s post game comments centered on his ability to wait for pitches. When he chopped a weak grounder to second in the third inning, the reason, he said, was temporary impatience. He got eager and swung at the first pitch. The ability to self-assess is crucial to self-improvement, and Giambi is clearly focused on his hitting philosophy. This is better news for the Yankees than if he were focused on the steroid controversy. He has not, however, been challenged yet: every moment of spring training so far has taken place on home turf. The standing ovations will turn to boos when he goes on the road.

A foreboding moment was reported by the Times and Daily News Friday morning. Giambi, in the clubhouse after being removed from the game, noticed that the ESPN commentators were discussing his steroid use. He froze and listened, expressionless. None of his teammates said a word, and soon the temporary awkwardness passed.

What was Jason thinking as he stared at the television? Did he feel embarrassed, scared, secretly defiant? His performance on the field showed focus, but will his emotions soon intervene? We will continue our hunt for clues, and our search for meaning.

Who is this guy (part one)?

2005-02-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

Giambi leaned back in the dugout his first day at Spring training while scores of reporters fired questions from the steps. He was tanned, clean-shaven, with frosted tips in his hair and a look that said, Sorry about what I did, guys, but it’s time to move on. His easy manner conveyed that the year would be hard, but not too hard. He was a man in control.

Compare that to the Giambi we saw at the oft-mocked press conference of a few weeks ago, when he forgot to shave and fidgeted like a kid in the principal’s office. What happened between these two events? The rest of his first day back was a Yankee p.r. dream: he signed autographs, charmed fans, and chatted up kids, none of whom, thank God, said, “say it ain’t so, Jason.” He walked around Legends Field with the assurance of a benevolent jock—not the kind who terrorizes nerds in the lunchroom, but the type who answers questions earnestly in class and is sweet to his girlfriend.

Watching Jason, who seems to have regained his mojo for now, I thought, as I have many times in the past few weeks, who is this guy? So many words have been tossed around lately that it is hard to see through them and construct a true portrait of the man. Sensitive. Wild. Great guy. The “best teammate I ever had (that was Johnny Damon this week).” “The most obvious juicer in the game (Jose Canseco).” So what combination of traits comprises the real Jason Giambi?

The two recent press conferences provided a window into two prevalent aspects of his personality: confident man and nervous, emotional kid. Looking back on his life, this dichotomy emerges. Rather than having followed a straight path from boy to man, Giambi seems to oscillate between the two. One of the many interesting elements of the current scandal is that it has caused him to bounce more frequently and dramatically from one Jason to another.

The first Jason, the kid, can be endearing, but is probably also the one responsible for bad choices. He and his brother Jeremy used to ride their bikes off of unsuspecting neighbors’ roofs and into their swimming pools. When he came up with the Oakland A’s in the mid-nineties (as a scrawny utility infielder, if you can believe it), he was big-brothered by Mark McGwire. After a few years, McGwire was traded to St. Louis and Giambi, the once freaked-out rookie in need of guidance, became team leader.

Here we saw the public emergence of the other Jason, the one from the second press conference. Many former Oakland teammates have commented on his growth. The clubhouse, and team, became Giambi’s. This was clear to any viewer during his last game with Oakland, against the Yankees in the 2001 Division Series. Miguel Tejada made a bonehead play on the bases, and Giambi confronted him after the inning. This is the playoffs, man. Stay focused. Later, in the dugout, Jason gave Tejada a paternal talking-to, and then smiled, patting him on the shoulder as he walked away. Giambi, more than the nervous-looking manager Art Howe, was the man on that team.

Skip ahead a few months, and the kid returns. Jason, hoisting his new Yankee jersey for the cameras, looked at John Giambi, said, “Look pop, pinstripes,” and could barely contain his emotion. He seemed to have signed with the Yankees not for money (though the money couldn’t have hurt) but for sentimental reasons. John, an intense Mickey Mantle fan who played ball until a knee injury sidelined him in college, kept telling the press that Jason as a Yankee was “a dream.”

Many adults still labor to please their parents; still, some observers have seen the John influence on Jason as unhealthily strong. I will resist the temptation to engage in the obvious armchair psychoanalysis. My point here is this: after cutting his hair and shaving, because Steinbrenner made him, and surrounded by his parents, Jason didn’t seem as commanding a presence as he had a few months before. He was deferential in a way that he hadn’t been since McGwire was with the A’s. And there have been no stories about his clubhouse leadership in the Bronx. Of course, the Yankees already have a captain, but Giambi has seemed at times like an island in the dugout, lost in a world of stress and expectation.

Two press conferences, two men. The obvious question now is, which Jason will we see this season? If Jason the kid emerges more often it could actually work in his favor; the part of Giambi that brought him down may ultimately save his image. Immaturity functions in a number of ways: it can cause someone to make thoughtless choices, but can also produce an endearing vulnerability. Giambi, when his eyes dart around and he gets that uh-oh look on his face, exudes helplessness; this could well be his greatest asset in seeking public forgiveness. Sympathy typically follows the shy underdog more than the jock. But the confident optimist must be somewhere as well, or how will he chew up opposing pitchers? Giambi will have to find some balance between all facets of himself to navigate the hard year ahead.

Jason and Sheffield

2005-02-21T06:55:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 16 was a day that saw Gary Sheffield’s previously unassailable New York image put at risk. The back page of the Post screamed “Cry Baby,” as in, that’s what Sheff called Giambi; the Daily News took a similar tone. Rushing past the newsstands on my way to work Wednesday morning, I glanced at the papers and thought, oh no. What was Gary doing? Why would he go out of his way to sound so righteous and cut down his teammate? Was this the selfish player about whom we had heard last winter and promptly forgotten because of his monster year? Until lunch, I had Gary pegged as a jerk, and I felt duped—he’d tricked me into liking him, into chanting “Sheff, Sheff, Sheff,” from the bleachers until he nodded at us, even into wearing a shirt with his name on the back. Now he had broken with the Yankees’ policy of supporting their embattled teammate, shown no regard for clubhouse harmony or unity entering the season, and sounded like a moralizing hypocrite. How dare he!

Yes, I got that worked up after reading two words, cry and baby. When I actually read the papers, the picture was, of course, more complex. Nowhere, in any of the articles was Sheffield quoted using the phrase “cry baby.” His comments were pretty harsh, but bereft of the sensationalism promised by the covers.

Sensationalism aside, however, the dynamic between Sheffield and Giambi is shaping up to be interesting. On Friday, February 19, Mike Francesca, on Mike and the Mad Dog, said, “He gets in trouble, Giambi, because he told the truth to the grand jury.” Francesca, in the middle of an anti-Sheffield diatribe, touched on an important point: Jason Giambi is in the position he is in—finding himself the face of steroids in baseball—because of a leak in grand jury testimony in which he refused to perjure himself. When asked, he offered a detailed history of his steroid use. Sheffield and Barry Bonds, who also testified, must not have admitted anything (Sheffield stuck with his story about rubbing cream on his leg that, oops, turned out to be steroid-based) or else it surely would have come out in the press.

If one wants to assume that Sheffield and Bonds have been steroid users—and this is a big assumption based only on speculation, one that I do not advocate believing without evidence—than a case could be made for Giambi being the most admirable of the three. He cheated on the field, but he told the truth about it. I’m not trying to make a hero out of him for this, but it should count for something. Based on that and on his press conference a few weeks ago, he seems genuine about his desire for atonement. There is a part of me that says, hey, everyone makes huge mistakes, and it shows strong character to admit them and apologize.

Sheffield’s tactic is different. He is sticking with his story (another media myth that sprang up this week was that he denied what he had previously admitted about the oops cream. Francesca repeatedly hammered Sheff on this point during Friday’s show. What Gary actually said was, as quoted by Anthony McCarron in the Daily News, “When people sit here and say I didn’t know I took steroids—I didn’t take steroids. The bottom line is I put cream on my leg, and if somebody says that’s steroids, that’s a bunch of hogwash.” This is the same thing he said when the story broke last October. Sheffield clearly does not, and never has, equated his steroid-based oops cream with Steroids, capital S. Just another case of the media convoluting the truth, but I digress).

Early last week, the consensus among the Yankees seemed to have been to publicly support Giambi. Tuesday’s headline in the Daily News, in fact, was “Yankee mates go to bat for Jason.” Jeter, Tino, Carl Pavano and John Flaherty all said that Giambi was their teammate and it was their job to support him, no matter what he had done. This seemed reasonable, and professional. The goal is victory, and victory is achieved, in part, by maintaining team chemistry. After reading the papers on Monday and Tuesday, I wondered if I’d have anything to write about in this blog if all the Yankees continued pledging such boring allegiance.

Sheffield, in opening his mouth, ensured that this fear would be short-lived. As McCarron reported, Sheff went on to say, “I’m not like Jason Giambi. I’m not going to sit and cry about things being unfair or attacks are unfair.”

Gee, that wasn’t very nice. What will it be like when these guys meet face-to-face next week?

In Giambi’s defense, I don’t recall him crying about anything being unfair, but I’ll take another look at the press conference to be sure. That aside, Sheffield seems to be pushing hard to situate himself outside the Giambi-Bonds-Sheff ’roid trinity. If his story is true, then this is understandable. One’s legacy is important, and nobody would want to see theirs unfairly besmirched. But Gary, on CenterStage with Michael Kay a few months ago, declared that the only thing important to him is winning a championship. He has said repeatedly that statistics don’t matter to him, and that he only wants to win. His words last week seem to have been spoken in opposition to these goals: there is no way that they, or the exaggerated press coverage that he must have known they would generate, can do anything but hurt the Yankees.

So Sheffield acted in his own best interests, rather than in the best interests of his team. His reasons were obvious, even understandable, though counter-productive to what he claims are his goals. It will be interesting to see if he continues to separate himself from his team, and it will be interesting to see if Giambi ends up being a divisive or unifying presence.

Myth and the Media

2005-02-20T18:28:00.000-08:00

The New York sports media is a complicated beast. When I first moved to the city a few years ago, I fell in love with the scrutiny given to our teams. New York, among many other things, is a baseball town, and the media—the Post and Daily News, in particular—contributes to the excitement surrounding the Yankees. They made Steinbrenner, Jeter, and Boomer Wells faces of the city in a particular era. A New Yorker can care little about baseball and know whom Derek Jeter is dating. This is a good thing. It makes the game bigger and more fun and more a part of our culture.

There is a significant downside to the scrutiny, however. The unceasing need for stories breeds sensationalism, which leads to myth, which takes us away from truth and reality. Truth brings us a deeper appreciation for events, and too often, the media drags us further from truth and deeper into myth.

A perfect example of this is the overarching theme of every recent Yankee season: any year that does not result in a World Series championship is a failure. Seemingly every Yankee writer is unanimous on this point, the origins of which may have come from them or may have come from Steinbrenner (it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing). The idea has spread to the players—A-Rod has spent the winter repeating the company line—and to many of the fans: woe to Randy Johnson if the Yanks don’t win it all this year, for his likely 20-win, 200K season will be considered a wash. Now I am going to blaspheme: this notion is ridiculous. It is the one of the dumbest fake truths I have ever heard.

Take last season. There was so much rich drama: Jeter, gritty and confident every day while facing the most profound struggles of his career, clawing out of a .190 batting average in May to hit nearly .300. This was an inspiring triumph of will and self-assurance. And there was Gary Sheffield, unable to extend his arm due to a barking shoulder, wincing through an MVP-caliber year. And the darker drama of A-Rod finding himself under intense scrutiny and sometimes folding under the pressure. We watched him all summer as he tried to adjust to a more challenging existence than he had ever known.

And these were just some of the big themes. The small things in baseball, not championships, are what give the game its meaning: the day in and day out rhythm of the season, its lazy summer hum, and the mini-dramas that always emerge. Last summer was jammed with meaningful human moments. How could anyone say these things were worthless because of a couple of bad nights in October?

So the media, though it entertains us, sells us myth, and that stands in the way of deeper appreciation of the game. This happened again last Wednesday, when the back pages painted Sheffield as an insult-spewing instigator—I’ll get into the nuances of that tomorrow—and will probably continue as the Giambi narrative unfolds this season. Hopefully, I will be able to use this project to dig toward a more accurate understanding of the situation.

Introduction: Last Days Before Spring Training

2005-02-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

Jason Giambi. At his Yankee press conference in the winter of 2001, clean cut and without goatee, he came close to crying when invoking Mickey Mantle. The namedropping was probably not accidental: Giambi was positioning himself to take a seat alongside the icons of Monument Park, and it did not seem presumptuous. He was going to be great.

Tino, despite all the recent World Series heroics, had been thrown out of paradise, shoved aside to make way for the new guy. I remember my dad, a Yankee fan since he was born in the summer of ’49, asking me, “Is this Giambi worth the money? Can he play in New York? Is he really going to be better than Tino?” I laughed at him. “He’s going to be great,” I said. “No doubt.”

This was a foolish thing to say: there is always room for doubt. Jason Giambi, though he has given us a few heroic moments, has found his narrative defined by something other than success. By becoming the face of baseball’s steroid era, Giambi has brought himself, and the American public, into uncharted territory. Going into the 2005 season, the question hangs there—what to do about Jason Giambi? It is obvious enough how opposing fans will greet Giambi all season, but how will home fans—and teammates—express their ambivalence about this fallen hero who is attempting to resurrect his career, reputation, life? Heroes are easy, as are villains. But which is Giambi? My answer, and the reason I am writing this blog, is neither. Jason is something more interesting: human. Immensely talented, a good-spirited team player, deeply flawed. He cheated. He contributed to the staining of the game, and may never have his life back as a result.

But that is all in the past. What is interesting to me is not what Giambi did. The specifics of the steroid years may never be known, as Giambi’s weirdly convoluted February press conference made clear. That sort of investigation is for other, more talented reporters than me, anyway.

The future interests me. The unfolding narrative of the 2005 season, of Giambi trying to find a life for himself after his fall from grace; that is the complex stuff of human drama that makes a writer salivate. I want to chronicle Jason Giambi’s season as he struggles to emerge from a place no other player has been. Sure, Bonds and McGwire and Sheffield and half the league have seen their names stained, but Giambi is the one unlucky bastard about whom people can say, without any doubt, that he used steroids.

America loves simplified heroes, and the baseball iconography has provided plenty. Jason Giambi tried to make himself one, but his humanity got in the way. But what if we were to stop romanticizing the game? What if we probed it for complexity and reality? Wouldn’t we find it even more meaningful and interesting than it has been in the past? Maybe the steroid era, rather than making us cynical, can actually end up deepening our love for the game, by forcing us to finally see it for all its ugly, beautiful, complicated but real self?

We shall see.