Wait a second ... this is just ridiculous. This is the dumbest thing I've seen in a good long time. The Giants are pennantless, except the one they won, but that really doesn't count. The hell?!

Where is this assmonkey published?

I'm not sure, but wouldn't the A's have all their pennants displayed in the stadium like most teams do, along with Wild Card Championships and A.L. West Championships?  It's like if you get in the playoffs you still suck.  Only the WS champions (if it happens to come from the NL) and the entire AL is good.

You didn't include the option to vote for Del Grande as both a terrible journalist and an assmonkey. He proves you really can have it all.

Since Bonds joined the Giants in 1993 there have been 13 World Series played (none in 1994).

The AL has won 8 and the NL 5. Aside from the Yankees winning 3 in a row from 1998-2000, the distribution has been fairly back and forth and even last year the lowly 83-win Cardinals won it all, so saying that the AL has been clearly the better league for "most" of Bonds' time with the Giants is innaccurate.

In any event, is it really Bonds's fault that the team hasn't won a championship? I seriously doubt that the Bulls would have won 6 Championships in 8 years if Michael Jordan could only shoot the ball after 8 of his teammates had a chance to shoot it, or that the Cowboys would have won 3 Championships in 4 years if Steve Young could only throw a pass after 8 of his teammates had their turn to throw. And even then, what if the other team could simply take the ball out of their hands when it was their turn (i.e., like an IBB)?

Baseball is the most individual sport, and its also a sport that doesn't really allow its superstars to take over a game (unless they're pitching, and even then, once every 5th day).

If Jordan had a bad day and the Bulls lost you could blame him, but you could also give him most of the credit when they won because he was allowed to take over a game. Bonds can't ever take over a game. The manager can't shuffle the lineup during a game so that Bonds is up in all of the crucial situations.

The Giants' starting pitching has been fairly mediocre for the past 14 seasons with only 2 20-game winners (both in 1993). They've never had a dominant rotation and other than Williams and Kent, they've never had anyone who could protect Bonds in the lineup every single day, and even then, teams pitched around Bonds. Bonds has put up monster years in SF and they haven't even made the playoffs. He hit 73 friggin' homers one year and they didn't make the playoffs! You can't blame him for that.

Felix Rodriguez is more responsible for the Giants' postseason failures than is Bonds. Hell, look what Bonds did in the 2002 WS: 8 for 17 (.471) with 13 walks, 4 homers, had an OBP of .700(!) and an OPS of 1.294...and they still fucking lost! You can't blame him for that.

Del Grande is an idiot, indeed. He's just jumping on the anti-Bonds bandwagon because it's easy. I'd like to see a journalist do the difficult thing and actually give the guy some credit for being the best. He's never had much of a supporting cast or an ownership group willing to get him one. You can't blame him for that.

Dave del Grande is an Ass Monkey/Horse's Ass/What's wrong with today's journalists. Many act all high and mighty about baseball players cheating with performance enhancing drugs and spit on Hall of Famers like McGwire, but when Fainaru-Wada and  Williams are headed to jail for breaking the law(or cheating at life) they bitch and moan like these guys were Batman and Robin(You decide who is who). Del Grande probably has a hall of fame vote, which in itself is disgusting. He can't even make a proper analogy. Don't you learn that stuff in school. He must suffer from AFS. A's Fan Syndrome. When no matter what you do you don't get any respect, even at home. The A's have, what, four championships since 1970 and the Giants have zero and still the San Jose Stealth get more publicity.

 

What's funny about this exchange is that camwoody merely called out a factual error, albeit in kind of a dickish way (no offense camwoody).  Del Grande tried to turn it into an argument about why his point was correct instead of merely saying, "Oops, you're right. I should have said 'World Championship'. My bad."  He could have saved himself some time.

To be honest, I'm surprised Del Grande wrote back...twice, even. I guess he was happy someone read his column.

I was just surprised by his lack of professionalism with the "your writing isn't so hot" thing. Yeah Dave I am not a journalist. You are, asshat.

That would be like a docotor fucking up your surgery and when you confront him about it he says
"Well you can't opperate on a heart"

I think Dave Del Grande was confusing the AL's dominance of the All-Star game to mean the AL is the dominant league. The All-Star Games and the World Series are easily confused.

"So, even though his team doesn't want him back, his fans aren't really his fans anymore and baseball purists are torn over whether they'd prefer he go to jail or just fall completely off the face of the earth, Bonds somehow has convinced the Giants to pay him as much as $20 million in 2007."

I think he is really just making shit up at this point.

Agreed with Andy's comment above that the column is basically a phoned-in attempt to rile people up. Yes, it combines the worst qualities of Bill Plaschke (one-sentence paragraphs that are meant to make the thing sound profound) with the worst qualities of Skip Bayless (a guy whose kneejerk contrarian qualities got so bad, it was a major upset when he lost the Road From Bristol). In fact, it's so bad, and the guy has a history of this sort of thing, that we would all do well to just ignore his ravings and stop giving him the attention he craves. In short, stop clicking him.

There are, literally, dozens of columnists across the web that are legitimately awesome, yet not employed by major news outlets just because they didn't come up through MSM, or for whatever other reason. Find them. It is what it is.

Didn't Del Grande and Rick Barry have a feud a while back? (not that a feud with Barry is unique.)

Would there be any rooting interest in such a battle? That's like Pierzynski charging the mound with Benitez pitching.

I'd probably side with Barry. Any sportswriter who relegates himself to fantasy football advice on the radio is running low on relevance.

"Hi, Dave...Steve Beurlein or Trent Dilfer. Who should I start?"

As for the A.J. v. Armando battle...I'd settle for a long knock-down, dragout. Like Rocky II but neither gets up.

As a reporter at the above-mentioned Albuquerque Journal -- Home-Owned! Home-Operated! It's our motto! -- I'd like to say that Dave ought to run a correction. In my job, which includes no sports coverage, I care a great deal about the accuracy of my work. Dave should, too. Well, his own work, I mean. (He doesn't have to care about the accuracy of my work.)

If I call a "resolution" an "ordinance," I'm dead wrong, and every source I have knows it. A correction would be in order to help maintain my credibility.

Pennant, by any standard definition, means the team that wins its league. Del Grande knows better. He's welcome to his opinion, but he needs to be more careful about the "facts" he uses to support his case. The Giants have, in fact, won their league since Bonds joined the team.

I'll just say this.

I wrote in my article introducing Bochy as the Giants manager that he'd led the Padres to their only ever World Series.

I was promptly corrected on that note.  I apologized, changed the article, and thanked the people pointing out what I'd missed.

No offense Cam: But I'm kind of with some of the others. Well not kind of. Beyond them.  If you had sent your email to me, I would have taken it as being from somebody who has nothing better to do than scour other people's efforts looking for things to criticize, and then pounce on that person's mistake with an enormous amount of self-righteous indignation.

As such here is how I would have responded. You might want to cover your eyes and chase small children from the room, first.  

(foot tapping--10 seconds elapse)

Dear Cam:

Dave Del Taco here:

What the fuck is your problem you pedantic little shitball? Of course I meant pennant to mean World Series--its not as if the 2002 season was in the last century you little cockgobbling fuckwidget. Even your wino-mother knows the Giants went to the world series in 02. Hell, who the fuck can forget your slutty sister streaking her 350 pounds of cellulite transvestite injected buttocks and flab-mammaries around triples alley before she was mercifully covered up in one of Barry Bonds' hats and escorted off the field in Game 5?

Besides, who the fuck do you think you're lecturing to about journalistic standards and practices bitchboy?  Something you learned at Retardo Continuation High School for Dorks?  Or was your sperm donor or some other related protoplasm in the newspaper business and sat you down on his knee one night after molesting you and gave you the rim job about journalistic ethics?

Its like this dildonose; I am the expert. I am the King of All Fantasy. I am the perennial centerfold for Fantasy Checkers Weekly and even have Barney Fife's image tatooed on my ass.  So the next time you feel like mounting your high horse and lecturing your betters, sheepdip boy, keep in  mind to never ever fuck with the King Taco Del Grande of Fantasy. Got it! Good! Wear It. Breathe It. Live It. Dave Del Taco Rulez All!