We Wuz Robbed

This blog will be a chronicle of the 2005 MLB season as seen through the eyes of the Pickled Pecklers, 2004 10th place finishers in the Bay Area Baseball Illusions NL only rotisserie league. We are also SF Giant fans and season ticket holders.

Even though it's still February, and it's just pitchers and catchers in the rain down in the Arizona desert, since Bruce Jenkins brought back the 3 Dot Lounge this week, it's time to start our baseball commentary. We'll focus later on our team (the PP's) and our team (the Giants) soon enough.

Today let's hear it for Robb Nen, now officially a part of baseball history. Nen has been a hot button on the SF sports talk shows the past two years, as the Giants shelled out about $18 million for nary a pitch. That money could have been spent, so it is said, on Vlad the Impaler or some other real stick to hit behind BALCO Barry.

Too true. But don't blame Nen, and don't blame the Giants. Nen earned every penny. He pitched in 2002 until his arm literally came off. He had no business still being out there for the fatal game six catastrophe. He wasn't running on fumes, there were no fumes. He went out there with nothing but chutzpah and pain, hoping to do it one last time. Well, he got that part right. It was one last time, one ugly last time. He's retiring young because in 2002, when the Giants needed him the most, he was there, litteraly leaving it all out on the field.

It was a nice career for the guy who reached 300 saves at a younger age than anyone in MLB history. It's too bad for him and for Giants fans that it ended the way it did. There will always be a stool at the bar for him in the Pecklers' clubhouse. Like Pierre, the famous French aviator, when Robb Nen finally went down, he went down in flames. Here's to him.