Can you smell it? Hey, get your mind out of the gutter
– I’m talking about spring. When I woke up this morning, it
wasn’t precisely in the air … but the faint whiff of something
sugary and different definitely was.
Can you smell it? Hey, get your mind out of the gutter – I’m talking about spring. When I woke up this morning, it wasn’t precisely in the air … but the faint whiff of something sugary and different definitely was.
Maybe it was just the fresh coat of paint in the bathroom, where a disturbing crop of black mold had sprung up in the damp winter months. Yessir, I love the smell of chemically based fire retardant in the morning.
Whatever. I’m convinced it’s spring and I don’t care what the calendar says. There are just too many signs that we’ve turned everybody’s favorite seasonal corner.
For starters, baseball and softball are in full swing. Locally, the Gilroy and Gavilan hardballers already have a couple of games under their belts. The Lady Rams are off to a flying start to their softball season.
And Barry’s back. The inscrutable slugger made his annually notorious appearance in Scottsdale Tuesday, where he met the media and launched the verbal bombs that are second in entertainment value only to the horsehide-based ones that crack off his bat. A sample …
Bonds on Jose Canseco, noted author and connoisseur of the finest wines and steroids: “I don’t know Jose. I was better than Jose then, and I’ve been better than him his whole career. If he wants to go make money, go ahead. … For somebody who brags about what he did, I don’t see any of (his) records.”
Bonds on passing Babe Ruth on the home run list: “… Babe Ruth is one of the greatest baseball players ever, and Babe Ruth ain’t black, either. I’m black. Blacks, we go through a little more. … I’m not a racist though, but I live in the real world. I’m fine with that.”
Ahh, Barry. Your rare monologues mean one of two things – that warmer days are on their way, or that humanity, in its clumsy, mortal fashion, has conspired to offend you once again (or usually both). You’re just like the Princess and the Pea … only the Princess has 25-inch biceps and the Pea is the faint “click” of the record button on a reporter’s tape recorder.
These rants from Bonds have become a reliable rite of spring. In fact, I think it’s about time we retire Punxsutawney Phil the Groundhog from prognostication duty. We could just let Bonds loose in late February, and if he doesn’t see his own conspiracy, it’s going to be six more weeks of winter.
Meanwhile, a more infrequent metaphorical weather phenomenon has shown up in the form of the aforementioned Canseco. Jose is the El Niño to Bonds’ Old Faithful when it comes to predicting the seasons … every couple of years he shows up to rain on a few parades, turn the heat up unexpectedly and take the blame for the collapse of houses built on sand.
We all know by now about the various allegations in Canseco’s book “Juiced.” But there’s more to the memoir than just frightening mental images involving toilet stalls and Mark McGwire. For instance, there’s the story of his depression after his second wife abandoned him, when – Canseco writes – he seriously contemplated shooting himself as he sat alone in his house.
With his Street Sweeper machine gun.
That he kept around to blow apart sharks on deep-sea fishing trips.
This incredible passage begs the question, is there anybody else in the world who could so artlessly turn a confession of such deep pathos into such pure comedy in such a short amount of time? Mike Tyson? Michael Jackson? Elmer Fudd?
But back to spring. It’s here. Ahead of us, the warm days of summer. Behind us, the cold nights of bummer.
Like Bonds, spring promises Nature’s steady march towards summer’s glory with only the occasional hint that it does so out of any particular obligation to us mere mortals.
But like Canseco, spring also promises lots of unexpected laughter amidst the tragedy of our relentless journey towards that final realm of deepest cold, where nobody really knows if they play winter ball, not even the Puerto Ricans.
And like allegory in the hands of a sports writer, spring’s most encouraging message may well be that, hey, nothing ever really gets left for dead, even the stuff that probably should be.
All in all, that’s a pretty nice thing.
Damon Poeter is the Sports Editor of the Gilroy Dispatch. E-mail him at dp*****@sv**********.com.
