In Oakland’s first trade to acquire
A player whose name was Dan Meyer,
Rich Bordi, the bait,
Wasn’t so great.
This time the price was much higher.

Boy, after reading all those stories about going to the Winter Meetings, it sure sounded like an exciting thing to do.

But I, Ken Arneson, have come out of my blogging hibernation to give you this very important message: All those stories about the Winter Meetings ARE LIES!

The Winter Meetings are not exciting at all! Hanging around a hotel lobby for hours and hours waiting for some trade or other to happen is just about the most torturously boring thing you can possibly imagine. In fact, it’s so bad, it’s actually hazardous to your health!

I secretly recorded my whole experience on videotape. To prove my point, I put together a small excerpt. Be warned, it’s pretty gruesome. But if you must, watch the film and see for yourself. (Flash required, 1 MB). But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you were considering going to Dallas for next year’s Winter Meetings, think again! Stay home! Trust me on this.

Today, let us compare quotes between George Will’s essay on steroids in baseball, and The Klingon Way: A Warrior’s Guide”.

Will: “[Baseball] is the greatest topic of conversation America has produced.”
Klingon: “Great deeds, great songs.”

Will: “A large majority of players are honorable or prudent or both.”
Klingon: “Klingons are a proud race, and we intend to go on being proud.”

Will: “Professional athletes stand at an apex of achievement because they have paid a price in disciplined exertion — a manifestation of good character.”
Klingon: “Admire the person with dirt under his fingernails.”

Will: “They do not use steroids, which are dangerous as well as dishonorable.”
Klingon: “One does not achieve honor while acting dishonorably.”

Will: ” Athletes chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued.”
Klingon: “We fight to enrich the spirit.”

Will: “And surely all non-cheating players dislike playing under the cloud of suspicion that their achievements are tainted.”
Klingon: “The Klingon who kills without showing his face has no honor.”

Will: “So he faces a choice of jeopardizing either his career or his health.”
Klingon: “To really succeed, you must enjoy eating poison.”

Will: “Now baseball’s third era is ending — the era of disgracefully lively players.”
Klingon: “Destroying an empire to win a war is no victory.”

On the one hand, we have Jason Giambi. I have never in my life seen an athlete and a city so perfectly matched as Jason Giambi and Oakland. The long, scraggly hair and unkempt goatee, the tattoos and T-shirts, the motorcycles and fast food–his blue-collar attitude fit the blue-collar East Bay to a T. He was as much Oakland Raider as Oakland Athletic. Had he remained, I think he may have been the most revered athlete in East Bay history. Perhaps even with the steroids.

Instead, he left the A’s to join the Yankees, where he promptly cut his hair, shaved his beard, covered his tattoos, put on a suit and tie, and started doing deodorant commercials. Who was this guy? To Oakland fans, it seemed like such a betrayal–to Oakland and to Jason Giambi.

When Giambi returned to the East Bay, Oakland fans booed him more than they had ever booed anyone before or since. I think Oakland fans recognized something in him they did not like: the willingness to sell his soul, to give up his true nature for some dubious higher aim.

Now, he has confessed to using steroids. And now, Giambi will be booed and taunted everywhere he goes, not just Oakland. It’s sad, because I think Giambi has a genuine desire to be liked. He wants people to “be excited” for him. Instead, he is now a character in a morality play, personifying the consequences of temptation.

Jason Giambi is a classic tragic figure, a person whose one character flaw leads to his downfall. I am reminded of Icarus, whose father built him wings to escape the Labyrinth. Icarus ignored his father’s warnings, and tried to fly too high, to reach the level of the gods. He flew too close to the sun, the heat melted his wax wings and Icarus crashed into the sea.

Barry Bonds, too, is a classic figure, but he is not a tragic one. Bonds hasn’t sold his soul to the Devil; he is the Devil. He fell a long time ago. He knows there are great forces that oppose him, constantly. He accepts this. He knows who he is. He doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

The media will try to bring down Bonds, to make him pay for his sins. It won’t work. You can’t make the Devil pay for his sins. He’s already in Hell. Hell doesn’t bother him.

The Devil doesn’t answer to mere mortals. There will be no apologies.

Here is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, called “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”:

Icarus is barely visible, splashing down in the lower right corner. W.H. Auden wrote of it:

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In the long run, it is Bonds, who holds so many records, who will symbolize this sin. And this is the saddest part of all for Jason Giambi. Baseball will sail calmly on. The flight of Jason Giambi will be forgotten. And his fall will be nothing but a little-noticed splash in a large, busy landscape.