Given that this is Carnaval weekend here in The Mission, there have been loudspeakers booming over on Harrison Street all day. It's a cold, windy, foggy day, so the sounds of the partying race here on the prevailing westerly wind, so much so that it seems like the bands are in our backyard.
The parade isn't until tomorrow, and at this hour, the revelers are traipsing home, little groups of nomads in colorful dress, with balloons and banners. No half-naked girls so far this year, no doubt due to the weather, but I'll let you know if, as usually is the case, any appear.
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Dylan's Medieval history project is finally underway, as one of the books arrived that the great Norman Birnbaum led us to: 1066:The Year of the Conquest. From the minute he cracked it open, Dylan was hooked, reading out facts to me about the sparsely settled England of a millennium ago, where London had only a few thousand citizens and everyone else lived in villages where (as Dylan explained to me) "a man knew every other person, every animal, and even every tree!"
It was the concept of knowing every tree that fascinated my youngest son, who, of course, has grown up in a fairly big city, by our standards. Most people do not appreciate how small San Francisco actually is, compared to the massive metropoli of our time. Only around 750,000 people, max, live here, and that total hasn't changed much, because we don't have anywhere to expand into.
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I am watching (on TV) the San Francisco Giants play baseball again tonight. The great slugger Barry Bonds has been in a long slump, and columnists have been speculating that maybe he is finally done. Old sluggers tend to fade suddenly, and Bonds is old. After a terrific start, that catapulted him to the Nation al League lead in homeruns (11), Bonds has stayed frozen at that number for oh so long now.
As you probably know, if your heart has been beating these past few years, Barry Bonds is the one baseball star people in America love to hate. There are lots of purported reasons: He's been perceived as aloof, arrogant, and unavailable by the corps of sportswriters who regard their access as an entitlement that any star must honor.
But Bonds is a complicated case. His father, Bobby Bonds, was a fantastic baseball player, also with the Giants. He came up in the early years of the color line being breached, so he endured many insults and perceived insults, in the tradition of American-style racism.
When his career ended, he became an alcoholic, bitter and angry.
His son Barry has effected his father's revenge. No one in history has ever been a better hitter than Bonds. But, just has been always the case, athletes use whatever boost might be available to gain a competitive advantage.
In Bonds' era, it is steroids -- horrible drugs that will probably doom all the athletes who used them to an early death.
The evidence is that many, many players used steroids, including Bonds. But the anger of a culture is directed only at Bonds. This particular culture is one composed of old white men, the only people who really care about the supposed statistical purity of the game.
Forget purity. Baseball players of all eras have done whatever they could to be great. The history of the game is replete with scandals.
The problem with blaming Bonds is that he has been such a fearsome hitter for so long that those who hate him overlook a factor that changes the equation: Bonds has been walked more often than any player in history, even Babe Ruth. No one has ever been so fearsome that opposing teams walk him intentionally at the rate Bonds is walked.
Thus, all those walks have neutralized whatever supposed advantage he has gained through drugs. That is how historians of the game will evaluate Bonds' performance. When he finally hits his 22nd HR this season (he is halfway there already), he'll own the most famous record in sports, the all time homerun record.
I hope I am at the park when Bonds does it.
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