That is the Question

When I was a senior in high school, I had Grace Sullivan for AP English. Mrs. Sullivan was an old bat, (sorry Barry), the only teacher in high school that I couldn’t stand. I’m pretty sure she’s long dead now, and good riddance.

You all should be nice to me, because as you can see, I carry a grudge for a long time.

We spent about a month studying Hamlet with Mrs. Sullivan. We discussed every page and virtually every line. I remember that I wrote an essay on the AP exam about a locket kept by Hamlet’s mother with side-by-side pictures of her two husbands. I thought it was a pretty good answer about how an inanimate object was a symbol (ok, it was a Freudian symbol) in a story, but in the aftermath discussion of the test, Mrs. Sullivan thought what I wrote was stupid. So, how’s the air down there 6 feet under, Gracie?

As I said, I carry a grudge for a long time.

Anyway, Hamlet spent the better part of that month we studied him figuring out what to do. It seems to me we’re seeing a lot of that kind of stewing in blog-related matters right now.

Let’s start with our Giants. They’ve pretty much sucked since my last blog entry. They lost 3 of 4 to the lowly Pirates, and lest we forget, they should have lost that first game too, which demonstrated how lowly the Pirates really are. The G men can’t hit much, and other than Schmidt, their pitching is pretty inconsistent. And given the age of the team, they’re not really getting any better.

The Giants face the same question that the Pickled Pecklers (and about half the BABI teams) face: to be or not to be, this year. Are we going for it or are we finally starting to dismantle this decrepit old cast of characters?

I know what choice the Giants want to make. They have to sell those seats next year, year #1 when the prices are going way up. Our seat is jumping from $40 to $70 (after the rate increase limit expired). The Colonel is going to get a bill for $11,340 in a few months. Suddenly the field club is pretty nice, with a nice bar, and flat screen TVs and decent food stands. They need us to re-up for another 7 years term, and if they throw in the towel like Kevin did yesterday (first of a few digs here, Kevin) it might not sell too well.

In the middle of this essay, one of my inside baseball sources, Mr. Coffee (not that one) stopped in. He said the KNBR morning guys were talking about Sabean today. Apparently Sabes is trying to pull off a deal for hitting. Everyone on the Marlins is available, including a quick fix for every team: Miggy Cabrera. They are also talking to the Pirates about Craig Wilson. I can’t believe Sabean actually said these things out loud (seems like tampering), but Cabrera would be the beginning of a whole new era. That boy can play.

But the question remains, what can the Giants do to get a guy like that? What have they got to deal to dumping teams? They’ve got a bunch of old guys with big contracts, and bunch of young guys who aren’t very good, one very tradable guy they can’t trade if they want to win (Schmidt-Sabean says he’s the only non-tradable player) and one interesting, valuable prospect they always swore they wouldn’t move (Cain-Sabean says he’s suddenly tradable). And they’ve got garbage on the farm. Alas poor Canoodler, I knew him well.

The Pickled Ones know how the Marlins feel as we are getting dump queries. Hey, we’re stuck in 10th place, with a grand total of 7 hitting points. We’re no higher than 11th in any hitting category. Boof is wishfully thinking that Kevin’s desperation dump yesterday for $20 David Wright will make all of the dump deals completely one sided, and as the season goes on, it will get worse.

We don’t care. We hate dumping. There isn’t much we can do because we just can’t fix our hitting much, but we’re not giving up. We’re willing to play for 6th place. As the Giants well know, it’s fun to play for this year and it’s not fun to play for next year. And there will always be time to play for next year when you have serious players to dump like Carlos Lee and Scott Rolen and Raffy Furcal and Ryan Dempster. After all, despite Kenny 9’s protestations, there are teams that want to win this year, and deals will have to be made.

Like the Pecklers, the Giants are better designed to be a dumper and not a dumpee. There have got to be teams who would take Schmidt and Alou and Finley and Winn and maybe even Durham and Feliz and Matheny and Wright. Who knows, someone might take Buttmondo (Kenny 9 says when you Google Buttmondo, only his blog comes up. Cool.) Maybe some AL team would even take Barry.

Like the Giants and unlike the Marlins, the Pecklers aren’t dumping yet. That said, Tom Glavine and his 9 wins are available. All you have to do is give us a hitter who will help us more than Xavier Nady. (Has anyone in BABI not received a call from Boof about him?) And Ryan Dempster might be available, too. We’re probably not going anywhere in saves. Got steals for saves? These are not dump moves. These moves are to fix our team a little. Stop treating us like a poor relative.

I hope the Giants keep going for it, too. But like the Pecklers, the Giants need to make one of those dump deals like the Ryan Howard and Richie Weeks and Stephen Drew and geez, even Chris Burke for expensive bums deal that Kenny 9 pulled off earlier in the season to get back into theoretical contention. Does any GM have one of those deals for Sabean? And do any of you BABI guys have one of those deals for us? Remember, we’re email guys.

To be or not to be? We be.

For now.