don't believe everything you hear
I've amassed a pictorial history of my corner of MLB slash, mainly focusing on the A's and eventually the Giants. It is kinda epic! And probably not a hundred percent done yet. Edits will continue to occur (like this one, for example).
Everything that follows is fictional, except for the facts.
*
First there was Zito.
Barry William Zito (#75, SP), born 13 May 1978, brought up in Las Vegas and San Diego, is the reason for all of this. How could I have known, that fateful day back in 2000 when I first saw him pitch, the kind of havoc he would wreak? You don't see that kind of thing coming.
It was the curveball, mostly. Zito is a left-handed pitcher (he throws left and bats left, but he writes and plays the guitar right-handed because there are many things wrong with his brain), and he throws the prettiest breaking pitch I have ever seen. It's this ridiculous looping thing that drops six feet straight down and takes your stomach with it every time.
That would have been enough, really, but then I got a look at his face, and then I learned that he was kind of completely deranged, and I was in for life.
(Yes, he dyed his hair blue. Yes, he does an uncanny impression of an axe murderer. Everybody is in agreement here.)
Unlike most ballplayers, Zito has little to no sense of shame, which is convenient because he is pretty weird, or at least, pretty weird for a ballplayer. He dates far above his station (Alyssa Milano, anyone?), guest stars on television shows (JAG, Arli$$, The Chris Isaak Show), goes to Fiji on flimsy excuses, that kind of thing. It all ends up in the newspapers.
He also once let someone film him pitching shirtless, and for that I will be forever thankful.
(mm, clavicle)
Zito has A-list written all over him . . . His parents met while touring with the great Nat King Cole--his father as a composer, his mother as a singer--so entertainment is in Zito's blood, and he's one of the most entertaining interview subjects a sportswriter is likely to find. He's been chronicled as having traveled with a satin pillow and scented candles. He has stuffed animals in his locker. He dyes his hair. He practices yoga. He meditates . . . he has a wardrobe--butterfly collars and all tight-fitting things polyester--that makes you wonder when Tom Jones is going to call and ask for his closet back. (Aces: The Last Season on the Mound with Oakland's Big Three, Mychael Urban)
My god, is he endearing. Eventually, inevitably, Zito felt a bit pigeon-holed as a flake (the accuracy of the accusation still being under debate), and tried to reform his image, but it was a little late for that. He also has a tendency of giving interviews and/or press conferences while looking really really stoned.
The second of those two pictures is what Zito looked like accepting the American League Cy Young Award in 2002. For the first three seasons he played in the bigs, he was one of the best pitchers in the game, and then he won the Cy at age twenty-four and his life suddenly took a staggeringly sharp downward turn.
Since winning that goddamn award, Zito has never been more than a pretty good pitcher. More often, and more recently the later it got, he has been considerably less than that--'godawful' is a word that comes to mind.
All of Zito's problems are mental, every last one. His major league career is a story arc better than any classic tragedy. I have largely invented everything about him but the numbers, but it is the only way the numbers make sense, you see.
So who should Zito sleep with? Lemme introduce you to Mark Mulder.
(that's him on the left.)
(ha.)
Look how charming! Mark Alan Mulder (#20, SP), born 5 August 1977 in the Chicago suburbs, a left-handed pitcher who looks exactly like a ballplayer should, mostly shoulders and hands.
Initial characterization of Mulder was based on him being too cool for school, a little more perfect than you want your teammates/potential make-out buddies to be, perhaps. I picked this up about him from how he pitched and walked and smiled (like he owned the place, any place he happened to be), and then found a whole bunch of corroborating media stories.
[B]aseball called first dibs, and Mulder is a natural in every aspect of it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much that doesn't come natural to him . . . there'd always been an effortlessness about Mulder, both on and off the field, and even he'd admit that life hasn't exactly been a grind thus far . . . In the first several years of his career, he spent the bulk of his time on baseball, golf, video games, and women . . . After injuring his left forearm early in the 2002 season, he said, "I'm not really used to bad things happening to me." (Urban)
You kinda want to slap him now, hm? But molest him at the same time, I'm sure.
This is a normal reaction to Mark Mulder. Zito has been plagued by this type of thing for a decade now.
Mulder and Zito both came up with the A's in 2000, and within a year it was plain that Oakland had one of the best pitching rotations in the game, seeing as how Tim Hudson was already there.
Right away you can see how Timothy Adam Hudson (#15, SP), born 14 July 1975 in the dirty South, is in the dangerously hot category, but I can make it even better by telling you that he is from Alabama and has the kind of drawl that makes people dizzy. He is a right-handed pitcher, and unlike Zito (6'4) and Mulder (6'6), he is normally proportioned (listed at 6'1, which makes me laugh really hard--try 5'10, Timmy) and thus appears amusingly small next to other ballplayers.
Even more amusing:
And the very most amusing!
(from the top, that's zito (being weird even for zito), huddy, terrence long, and frank menechino)
Tim Hudson does not get near the amount of love he should get in fic, because he had the bad judgment to already be married by the time he got to Oakland, and it was a good couple of years before I was a hundred percent about writing dudes who were married (wow, did I get over that in a ridiculously complete way). And, he has no hair (distressing! Further ref: Bobby Crosby). These things together mean that despite a surplus of pictures in which he and Zito have no concept of personal space--
--and the fact that everyone, including straight male sportswriters, has a painfully obvious crush on our Huddy (He also has the quickest wit and the easiest manner, making him the most roundly liked by teammates, and his intensity on the field gives him cachet as one of Oakland's few team leaders. A family man with a seemingly endless supply of energy and one-liners, Hudson is like the next-door neighbor you so desperately want to like you. And because he has a far better handler on diplomacy than most major leaguers do, you'd never know it if he didn't. (Urban)), despite all of this, there is a serious dearth of Hudson/anyone fic. But he is an essential secondary character, being way cooler and more slick than all these other motherfuckers. Hudson can typically be found drunk and joyful in the bar, doling out his Huddy-like wisdom.
Hudson, Mulder, and Zito were collectively known as the Big Three.
Everybody really liked getting shots of them together. I mean, can you blame them?
(and somehow i only wrote two threesome stories)
For the five seasons the three of them were on the same team, the A's averaged 97 wins a year. (Baseball newbs, that is insanely good.) They made the playoffs four years running and got knocked out in heartbreaking fashion in the first round every time, because the team needed some kind of poignant and sorrowful backstory, in order for them to appeal as much as possible.
So, A's fic by Candle Beck started with Mulder/Zito. Look how they caper together.
And that was all well and good, the salad days as it were, the past that would look so goddamn romantic in retrospect. As bizarre as it sounds, for the first few months all I wrote was happy endings, Zito being goofy and weird and Mulder being exactly what he needed, like they were designed with no other purpose in mind, but well, that got old kinda quick. In the interest of shaking things up, I brought in Eric Chavez.
Eric Cesar Chavez (#3, 3B), born 7 December 1977 in Los Angeles, raised across town from Zito in San Diego, once was and should have always been the third baseman for the Oakland Athletics. He is an exceptional infielder, having won the Gold Glove six years in a row, and always looks super-stylish as he goes about his business.
Even when talking to teammates with thumbs up their butts in an unsettlingly literal way, Chavvy maintains his cool:
"Mentally, I've prepared myself to be more of a badass," [Chavez] says. " . . . Miguel's not here anymore, so I need to do more." Anyone who has known Chavez for awhile knows that he means what he's saying, because his next lie will probably be his first. And his willingness to take on more responsibility in the wake of Tejada's departure is admirable. But his general message seems to get lost. Nobody can get past the "badass" line. Why? Because Chavez, known as "Chavvy" to just about everyone, has established himself as the most approachable and ego-free player on a roster loaded with genuinely good guys. Eric Chavez is to badass what Barry Bonds is to cuddly. "He said, 'badass'?" Mulder says with a laugh. "That's pretty funny. Chavvy's about as badass as a kitten." (Urban)
(seriously, boys, be more adorable how bout.)
Chavez was married for the first time at twenty-one years old (it did not last, to exactly nobody's surprise). Upon getting divorced, he promptly moved in with his best pal in the whole wide world who's not named Eric Munson. That is, Mark Mulder. Here they are (Mulder in chair, Chavvy in white cap) passing a typical evening discussing philosophical treatises and the nature of art.
(That's Mark Ellis sitting on the floor, our long-time second baseman and another essential secondary character who never gets any action despite my enormous affection for him. He's the all-time home run leader from South Dakota, you know.)
Chavez got together believably with either Mulder or Zito, or if I was feeling especially adventurous, both. And then there's Eric Munson (C, too many uniform numbers to recount while with the Tigers, Astros, Brewers, A's, and Padres, born 3 October 1977), another professional ballplayer who grew up right alongside Chavez in San Diego and eventually co-starred in this crazy epic I wrote about the two of them, in addition to tri-starring in the best AU thingy I ever wrote.
And here they are at Chavvy's first wedding, Munce being the dude in the middle (as he ever seems to find himself):
The house Mulder and Chavez shared became the World Headquarters of Oakland Athletics Slash, aka the House of Hot. As will happen when a bunch of good-looking guys live like frat boys all rented furniture and beer pong, the prurient imagination simply runs wild. Chavez eventually met his second wife and ditched Mulder flat, and you can see how thrilled Mark was with that development.
(mulder vetoes girls!)
So that's where we started, the Oakland A's as they were from 2000-2003. A truly encouraging opening gambit, I'd say.
Important events during this stretch included the aforementioned four playoff appearances and four early exits, Zito's Cy Young Award, and the 20-game win streak they ripped off in the late summer of '02, setting an American League record and proving the existence of God kinda irrefutably in the last three games. Also, Mulder and Hudson both showed the first signs of injury-proneness, a fact which was downplayed as much as humanly possible by the Oakland front office. When everyone was right, there was no other team in the game that could beat them. There was a treacherous pattern of falling just short, though, and it infected every last one of them.
It'd probably be helpful at this juncture to go into physical locations, eh? We've come thousands of miles and run into the ocean, and here at the end of the world we have found Oakland, California.
Known affectionately as the Town (as opposed to the City across the water), Oakland is our much-loved black sheep metrop. by the bay. Poor and violent and beautiful, with hills and lakes and millions of trees--Oakland, California, goddamn right.
(home is the coliseum)
Lots of stuff takes place in San Francisco, too, as Zito has lived there for years.
(goddamn i live in a pretty place)
And in the spring we go to Phoenix. Pitchers and catchers report on Valentine's Day, the rest of the team just before March, and they play a month of exhibition games before starting the season.
(at home in the desert)
2004 is kinda the bridge year because it was the first full year for the second generation, that being Bobby Crosby and Rich Harden, both of whom lived with Mulder and back-up catcher (and secret ninja) Adam Melhuse in the House of Hot.
(oh bobby)
(oh richie)
Bobby and Richie came up through the minor leagues together, something much exploited once I'd gotten over my initial (and in hindsight totally ludicrous) aversion to the pairing, and they are in many ways cuter than a bushel of puppies.
(aaand we all explode from squee.)
Robert Edward Crosby (#7, SS), born 12 January 1980 near the environs of Long Beach, used to be a starting shortstop. He's got beautiful hands, excellent footwork, and tends to make that shit look easy.
He could hit for most of his rookie year, too, twenty dingers even if his average wasn't close to respectable by the end of it, and in a weak class for the American League, he won the Rookie of the Year Award. Like Zito, the larger part of his skill promptly deteriorated, but let's not concern ourselves with that just yet. You know, some people say Bobby looks like Brad Pitt. I don't really see it myself, except for on the rare occasions when he has hair.
(Ellis in the background again. I'm thinking I need to write some second baseman POV stories right quick.)
Before I got over the Harden/Crosby hurdle, Bobby was mostly prey for Mark Mulder. He would typically find himself enmeshed in some deeply convoluted mind-game going on between Mulder and Zito, who would of course Have A History, and usually be pretty much a mess by the end of it. Later on, Bobby evolved to be a perfect match for AU-Zito, and even later on he realized he was dumb because Richie was right there the whole time.
So, as for Richie.
(quarters would bounce)
My word, where to begin? James Richard Harden (#40, SP), born 30 November 1981 in Victoria, British Columbia, is the great right-handed Canadian hope. We could talk about how he started his career at twenty-one years old with three months of absurd dominance, or his eyes being neon blue, or his fastball topping out at around 102 mph, or that clean little smirk that so seldom leaves his face, or the lightning bolt he wears when he pitches.
We could go on about his forearms for like a day. Wait a minute, we already have.
The advent of Rich Harden was really a remarkable thing, and not just because he, like Mulder and Zito before him, was pretty much immediately in any discussion of the best young pitchers in the game. More to the point, Richie hooks up believably with everyone. This is also reminiscent of Zito, who is the backbone of the whole operation, kindhearted manwhore that he is. There are a number of theories behind this, the most libelous of which is that, of all the ballplayers I've written about or heard about, none would surprise me less by coming out of the closet than Rich Harden. (There are a lot of photographs of Zito talking to girls' chests, is the only reason I have any doubts about his flaming ass.)
(zebulon keeps watch on richie's noodles)
(he knows we're talking about him)
Harden's characterization is probably the most sympathetic of the whole bunch (aside from Huddy's, but Huddy is in a tenth of the stories Harden's in). Zito is generally assumed to be badly unstable, Mulder's a bastard, Chavvy's kinda pathetic, Bobby's a bit of a dick, none of them are all that smart, and then there's Richie, always ready with a snappy comeback, the voice of reason in a sandstorm. He gets screwed over a lot, being the romantic sort and tending to fall in love in a full-body sort of way, but you're never really worried about him the way you might be after seeing Zito or Chavvy get similarly wrecked. Sometimes Richie's a slut, but that's just because it's not fair to bogart the Canadian.
So now we were cooking with gas. The cast of characters was fleshing out rather nicely, the team was still playing well, the sky was the limit.
Then in the winter after the 2004 season, Billy Beane happened.
We need a little bit of background here. The Oakland A's are what's known as a small-market team, meaning they are hella broke, working off a payroll about a fifth the size of the Yankees'. They can't sign the big name players, and they can't keep the stars they develop in their own system because they can't afford the kinds of contracts those guys get as free agents. Once a decade, an A's player gets a long-term deal, and this time around it was Chavez, who signed for six years, $66 million in 2004. And everybody leaves, sooner or later. (spoiler)
In charge of the whole show is Billy Beane, the A's general manager. Twenty-five years ago he was a wonderboy.
It didn't last. William Lamar Beane (#11 or 27, GM), born 29 March 1962 and alumnus of Eric Chavez's San Diego high school, is a cautionary tale, because he had all the skill in the world and people talked about the Hall of Fame when he was seventeen years old, but his mind wasn't built for the pressures of major league baseball. In an empty stadium he could hit home runs for hours. In front of forty thousand all he could do was strike out. He burned out, walked out of the Oakland clubhouse and up to the front office to ask for a job as a scout.
Then as now, he is a heartbreaker.
There was a book written about Billy Beane called Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. It changed the game, not to put too fine a point on it. It laid out the methods by which Billy Beane had been able to keep the A's competitive every year in a sport where money is supposed to buy championships. Billy Beane had stopped listening to the old scouts' ways of doing things and turned things over to a bunch of statheads, who found him two Rookies of the Year, two MVPs, and a Cy Young Award winner alongside a wild card berth and three division titles; not bad for six years. The A's exploited the market inefficiencies that existed because traditional baseball thinking undervalued certain statistics (such as on-base percentage, the single best metric of a batter's primary goal--not making an out) while overvaluing others (such as RBIs, which are almost entirely dependent on the batter coming up with runners on--i.e., something the batter has no control over). So the A's were able to draft awesome dudes on the cheap and watch them blossom into stars.
There was only one problem with this incredibly engaging bestselling book about how badass and supergenius the Oakland A's are: now everybody knows how we do it, and now everybody who's anybody does it the same way. There was the standard controversy/upheaval that comes from a paradigm shift in how the game is played (or at least, how it's understood), but it's settling down now. Some of the old-timers are pissed off about this supposed 'mathifying' and 'de-souling' of the game, but the rest of us mostly just roll our eyes and carry on keeping score, because the live-ball didn't kill it, lights in stadiums didn't kill it, desegregation didn't kill it, the 162 game schedule didn't kill it, the division era didn't kill it, free agency didn't kill it, the strike didn't kill it, steroids didn't kill it, so we're not so worried about having to learn a bunch of new, vastly superior statistical categories.
It's like James Earl Jones said, "America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again." The truth, he speaks it.
They've been trying to make a movie about Moneyball for like ten years now. Brad Pitt (again with the Brad Pitt) wants to play Billy--superstars recognize each other, you see.
*And now it is September of 2011 and this has come to pass! Moneyball the movie opens this Friday, and it's already been absurdly well-reviewed, and the trailer indicates that Scotty's HR in the 20th game is going to play a climactic part, and I am just. so. excited. Those are my boys! They made a movie about my boys! Grins forever.
(based on OUR true story)
Billy Beane is the actual reason for everything, because he's the one who brought all these guys together either through the draft or through trades (and yes, we've had discussions about his seriously weird compulsion to acquire really good-looking young guys). He's smart and foul-mouthed and fucks people over in a constant yet somehow forgivable manner. Billy Beane is Spartacus and somewhere up ahead is the promised land; you have to have faith in this kind of thing.
Billy Beane and Barry Zito are honestly the OTP of this whole mess.
Anyway, it was the winter after the 2004 season, very near Christmas, when Billy Beane traded Tim Hudson to the Atlanta Braves, and then two days later traded Mark Mulder to the St. Louis Cardinals.
That was a bit of a shock. To put it in the mildest way possible, I mean. We knew at least one of the Big Three would go over the off-season, and we were bracing ourselves for Zito, because of course it would be Zito.
(too criminally adorable to remain)
But no! Instead it was Hudson and it was Mulder and forever afterwards it was known as The Trades.
(brave young timmy)
(mulder lost in the midwest)
There was much wringing of the hands, many imprecations shouted at the sky, many sneakers thrown at the television. Zito was suddenly the number-one starter, a frankly terrifying prospect for all involved (especially the man himself, as it turned out). Beane said the word "rebuilding" to make sure that no one would expect anything of the A's in 2005. The team was only half-recognizable, and the aftershocks took us into spring training.
And then?
(ladies and gentlemen, THE dan haren)
Daniel John Haren (#24 or 15, SP), born 17 September 1980 in Monterey Park (SoCal), is a half-Irish and half-Mexican right-handed pitcher who came to the A's from the Cards in the Mulder deal. Initially perturbing, this stoner kid in place of Johnny Baseball Mark Mulder, but within about a month we realized it was a fair trade. Within a year we realized that Billy Beane had actually robbed the Cardinals blind.
You see, Danny's a much better pitcher than Mulder ever was.
(even when baked out of his head)
(even when distracted by puppies)
(even when girls are feeling him up)
Mulder had one pretty good year in St. Louis and then his body betrayed him, broke down along the fault lines that Oakland had left him with, and by the time Danny was starting the All-Star Game in 2007, Mulder was basically a non-entity, teamless and unknown. It was sad. It was strange. A lot of people blamed Billy Beane for fucking up Mulder's arm and then getting rid of him. There was maybe some truth to that, but we weren't interested--we had Danny now.
Fic-wise, Danny and Zito were a pretty obvious match. Danny is usually depicted as an eminently solid and level-headed sort of guy, the kind of wall that Zito needs to run himself into over and over again. Also, all that squinting Danny does (hiding lovely blue eyes, by the way) makes him look like the Chong to Zito's Cheech, if you see what I mean.
(also, legs)
But Zito sleeps with everybody, as we've mentioned, so that's not so special. Everyone really seemed to like the Harden/Haren pairing (all sorts of cleverness and subtle badassery), but I found the reading of a traditional third-person POV to be near impossible when the two dudes' names are one letter apart. So, Harden and Haren got some second-person POV stories and I also sometimes just bit the bullet and called them Danny and Richie.
And then! We found out that Danny's best friend and fellow Pepperdine University alum was one Noah Ryan Lowry (#51, SP), born 10 October 1980 in Ventura, CA, a left-handed pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, which is the other team carved into my heart (and for the purposes of this primer currently counts as foreshadowing).
Lowry is great. He has a birthmark under his right eye that looks like he's got a shiner all the time. He has a fantastic smile.
He throws a change-up that seems to stop time. Once he played right field and it was awesome.
Lowry and Haren were roommates at Pepperdine and in 2005 they lived in the same apartment building in San Francisco, Danny taking the unit directly above Noah's for the ease of late-night assignations via the fire escape (we're very big fans of fire escapes). When two teams occupy the same geographical area, the schedule-meisters do their utmost to ensure that when Team A is out of town, Team B is at home, so it's not like Lowry and Haren would get to see each other all that often during the season. Apparently they both just feel more secure knowing that all of the other's stuff is only a flight of stairs away.
Lowry's characterization developed as a kind of counterpoint to Haren's. Haren was cool and self-confident and became everybody's favorite dude like three hours after showing up, so Lowry must be his shy best friend, sticking close at overcrowded bars and always more comfortable when it was just him and Danny driving home at the end of the night. Lowry must have a sneaky dry sense of humor and a lot of common sense and a baffling, overwhelming crush on Danny (because have you seen Danny Haren?). They were an excellent fit.
Later developments brought Noah Lowry the dubious honor of Barry Zito's obsessive love. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though.
Let's talk about Huston Street instead.
(oh my freakin' lord, huston)
Huston Lowell Street (#20, RP), born 2 August 1983, is a Texas boy to the bone.
His dad was a big-time UT quarterback, so naturally Street's team had to win the College World Series before he got drafted by the A's. He's a right-handed relief pitcher, most often a closer. He's got a good fastball and a better slider, and he would like you to know that he's not just another pretty face.
(and, um, theoretically some brains, too)
Let's just get this one out of the way:
(yes, I know)
Street joined the bullpen at twenty-one years old, and took over the closer's job in May, when Octavio Dotel went down with an injury. He was really very good for the rest of that season, although never as good as it seemed like he should be, and it was enough to win him the Rookie of the Year Award, making it back-to-back for Oakland.
That first year, 2005, Street lived with Crosby, Harden, and Melhuse in the House of Hot. Right from the start, he was Richie's boy.
(they really did give us an awful lot to work with)
Street's characterization evolved in a truly surprising way. He started out the perfect boy, you know, doll-faced and brilliant and sweeter than hell, and Harden was always pining after him and trying not to besmirch the lad's spotless soul or some shit like that. And then, and we're not sure when exactly the switch happened, all this inner jerkiness started to bleed out of him, and then everyone kinda decided that he was a drunk and possibly a turbo-slut--
--and Harden was still pretty gone on him but it wasn't very good for either of them anymore. Or something? We haven't actually finished the fic odyssey of Huston Street yet, but our hopes remain high.
You know, as much affection as we have for the classic-era Big Three fics, the fifty Mulder/Zito stories I wrote, I think 2005-2006 was really the golden age as far as possible combinations and sheer numbers of slashable guys. Zito, Chavez, Crosby, Harden, Haren, Street (and Beane) all on the same team, with Lowry across the water and Mulder and Huddy somewhere in the background providing nostalgic reminders of How It Used To Be.
Here is some more visual evidence ('05-'07)
(bobby mildly intimidated by chavvy's wood)
(carlos and gregorio, who sadly were not around long enough to slash)
(pre-game)
(lots of goings-on happen in the video room)
(richie's root beer float brings all the girls to the yard)
(emil brown asleep in his locker)
(beane alongside my one, my own jack cust)
(scattegories!)
(a pitchers' meeting to be ignored in favor of flirting with your rotation pals)
(brains enough to play chess, at least)
('nother W)
(rookie hazing! i am almost positive this is my team)
(what are you feeding him, emil?)
(hey, at least they're drunk together)
(and then we will ATTACK)
It's of the moment to let you know about some other secondary characters who joined the team in 2005, namely Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton, who are often in the wings of stories, causing trouble.
(girl, joe b, girl, swish)
Joe's a right-handed starting pitcher and Nick's an outfielder/first baseman. They are also best buds. For their rookie hazing they were dressed as a plug and a socket. No, seriously. There are pictures.
(the actual gayest thing this team has ever done)
It would almost be too easy to write Swisher/Blanton, and so no one really does.
(joe says, "i dunno, nicky, you wanna make out?)
(nick replies, "two more beers and who knows what'll happen?")
Other reoccurring faces:
(mark ellis, #14, 2B, much-loved fixture on the right side)
(adam melhuse, #17, C, now-retired back-up catcher, secret ninja, denizen of house of hot, etc etc)
(eric byrnes, #22, OF, former a's outfielder and one of zito's good friends, currently has a radio show on the giants broadcast station, as he is a local boy)
(marco scutaro, #49 or 19, IF, or super marco as his miraculous feats would see him named, former back-up infielder with a knack for winning baseball games on one swing)
(scott hatteberg, #10, 1B, former catcher-turned-first-baseman who won the 20th game of the streak on a walk-off home run)
There are others, to be sure. But that should cover for the moment.
So in 2005, the A's weren't supposed to be very good at all, but then they were, in contention with the Angels all through the end of the summer before finally losing the division in the last week. In 2006, they were everybody's favorite.
And they made it back to the playoffs that year, freakin' waltzed through the first round, at long last, and then promptly got swept by the Tigers for the American League pennant. The Tigers went on to face Mark Mulder's St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, and against every expectation and all odds, the St. Louis Cardinals won in five games. Mulder didn't pitch; he was hurt. He got a ring, though, and off-season surgery, and the killing memory of having to watch the World Series from the bench. (oh, foreshadowing)
2006 was also Zito's walk year, his last year with the A's before he was eligible for free agency. Despite the fact that Zito had been sinking closer and closer to rock bottom since winning the Cy Young, he was heavily courted. People talked a lot about the Mets, and we began making plans to attend spring training in Florida instead of Arizona, and then, miracle of miracles:
Zito signed with the San Francisco Giants for seven years and $126 million. This worked out particularly well for me, as I was raised in the Bay Area with a perfectly divided loyalty, and the only team I love as well as the A's is los Gigantes. Worse luck for Zito, of course. It was at the time the biggest contract ever given to a starting pitcher; now it is generally regarded as the worst contract ever given to anyone.
What was said earlier, about all of Zito's problems being mental? The two worst things that have ever happened to him were winning the Cy Young, and signing that goddamn contract.
Zito has been pretty much just terrible as a Giants pitcher. Once a month or so he'll go out there all signals firing, all lights blazing, rip off eight innings of shut-out ball and drop the curve in on either side of the plate, batters swinging and missing and almost dislocating their shoulders. And we'll think, he's back, he's back, thank god he's finally back, and then next time he starts it's seven runs over three innings and his head down as he walks off the field.
However, his new team did immediately dress him in drag.
(and he kinda liked it)
(to the future, my love)
Once Zito was gone, Oakland A's slash lost a bit of its luster, understandably. The boys were growing up; they kept getting married. There was a new face on the field in 2007, however, that being Travis Buck.
(that t buck, he's so hot right now)
Travis George Buck (#6, OF), born 18 November 1983 in the great state of Washington, a wild-haired outfielder who took Oakland by storm for the first couple of months, all brash grins and triples and such. He got some fic-love from Bobby and Rich (who, in the wake of Zito, became the best at breaking dudes in), but he couldn't quite stick. Travis has been back and forth between the minors and the bigs ever since he debuted, which makes him inconstant and difficult to get laid.
The A's played okay for the first half of 2007, Haren starting the All-Star Game and everything, but then they broke every record they'd had for number of injuries, everyone going fragile and snakebit all at once, and it became a lost year. They finished in third place.
Then in December:
Billy traded Danny to the Diamondbacks. It wasn't clear why. It's still not clear why, actually. The rotation could have matched up to any other in the league. The A's needed bats; we've always needed bats, ever since Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada and Jermaine Dye went on their golden ways. But we were raised to believe specific things and chief among those is that when you have good pitching, you hang on to it.
But Billy moves in mysterious ways his miracles to perform.
Then like a month later he traded Nick Swisher to the White Sox. This made even less sense than the Haren trade. It was The Trades, part II, and we were reeling, unaccustomed and badly off our game.
(swish was eventually reeled in by the evil empire)
2008 started poorly for the Oakland Athletics, and stayed that way. Injuries and bad luck and the gaping absence of Dan Haren at the top of the rotation, the lack of Swisher caterwauling in the locker room, everything quiet and faintly bitter. The Angels had a ten-game lead in the division by the All-Star break, and we'd lost most of our faith in implausible comebacks.
Then, just before the trade deadline, Billy Beane struck again:
(richie to the cubs)
(joey to the phils)
That awful sound you might have heard was a city full of hearts breaking all at once, a mammoth pile of dishes shattering on the tile.
And finally, in November after the season was over:
(street to the rocks)
So that's where we've been left. Of the fic regulars, only Bobby Crosby and Eric Chavez are still on the team, Bobby as a light-hitting utility infielder and Chavvy as a fixture on the DL until his back goes out one more time and his career finally ends. Everyone else is in the National League, thousands of miles away.
In 2009, the A's are a very young team once again, all untried pitching and slowly-waking bats. Zito is over in San Francisco depressing the hell out of everyone. Huddy's been on and off the DL in Atlanta, but at least he still has a major league job, more than can be said for Mulder. Richie has been injury-prone in Chicago, too, but they seem to be more forgiving. Danny is still one of the best pitchers in the game, but you can't tell because he pitches for one of the worst teams in the game. Street never gets talked about anymore.
So what can we learn from all this? Baseball is very tough on young men with steadfast hearts. I've tried to give them each other as life rafts, but I fear this may have been counterproductive, because here they are now scattered to the four winds.
Hopefully they were not too deeply in love.
*
On-going updates:
10 December 2009 Rich Harden signs with the Texas Rangers. Back in the division, at least.
10 December 2009 Bobby Crosby signs with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Apparently his self-esteem is now at an all-time low.
12 May 2010 Six weeks into the season, and Zito is off to the best start of his career, including Oakland, including the year he won the Cy Young Award. The Giants have the best rotation in baseball, and a few days ago the broadcasters used the phrase 'Big Three' to describe Lincecum, Zito, and Cain, and my heart might have stopped, if only for a moment.
*
Hello, it's May of 2010 and I have more additions to make!
Primarily, Tim Lincecum. If I may:
Timothy Leroy Lincecum (#55, SP), born 15 June 1984, is the boy king. Originally he was the boy prince, but that was before he became the first major league pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both of his first two full seasons. It is unreal how good he is. The kid's nicknames are the Franchise and the Freak, because no one who looks like a sophomore in high school should be able to throw the ball 95 miles an hour and then drop a change-up that ends up in your shoes.
(it's weird when tim has short hair. also, he's at least twenty-two in that pic--you may ogle with a clear conscience.)
Lincecum came up with the Giants in May of 2007, which was Zito's first season on the team, and I immediately picked up on him as having potential to be the latest in Zito's nationwide roster of fictional boyfriends. The two of them have not disappointed! Zito has been photographed wearing Lincecum's clothes (well, a beanie. But still). They are always hanging on the rail together, goofing off in the outfield--adorable.
Also, a couple of weeks before he won his second Cy Young, Lincecum got pulled over for speeding in Washington state and cited for marijuana possession, which you know gives him like two hundred cool points in Zito's book. Now you can buy these shirts around the ballpark:
(and it is awesome)
(no idea what's goin' on right now)
(aaaand naptime)
Sometimes fans of other teams (cough Philly cough cough) are mean to our dear boy.
Tim's response to such abuse? Striking out forty-three batters in five playoff starts, while casually out-dueling Derek Lowe, Roy Halladay, and Cliff Lee (twice). Because his teeth may be crooked, but he is still much, much better than your very best.
The thing about Lincecum is that the first three years of his major league career have looked terrifyingly similar to Zito's early spate of brilliance. If the only thing that ever went wrong with Zito was in his head, then please, for me, say a prayer for Tim Lincecum's peace of mind. The team needs him like you wouldn't believe.
(the face of the future)
It took me three years to actually write Zito/Lincecum, and now it's going pretty freakin' well. The trend has actually shifted towards overt Giants slash at this point--at some point in the future I have a feeling Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey and Brian Wilson are going to end up on this primer. Where Zito goes, hilarious and good-looking young talent follows! It's downright inspiring.
*
Right back to it! It's November of 2010 and boy do I have some news for you.
Zito's hot start was one of those six-week anomalies with which he likes to torment me. He backslid as the weather got hotter, and by the All-Star Break he was an afterthought again.
Lincecum had a great year, save for his own month-long fugue in August, when he fucked up his mechanics and started giving up hella dingers and we were afeared, greatly afeared. My history with Zito has left me extremely skittish, as you can probably tell. But God likes Lincecum better than my boy, and September was the best month of the year for that kid, right when we needed him the most.
The team as a whole finished like gangbusters. The Padres had been leading the division all year, with us jostling for second place with the Rockies and the fuckin' Dodgers (who faded gloriously in August), but in September we caught them. On the last day of the regular season, we knocked them out and made it to the playoffs.
Which was magnificent! Champagne in the locker room, rookie catchers hauled around by Viking closers, the guys on the radio hoarse and jubilant. Just amazing.
And then! Dun dun duuuuun.
A baseball roster is normally twenty-five men. On 1 September, the roster expands to forty, so that you can bring up all your hot-shot minor leaguers and either make a push for the playoffs or, if your team's already out of it, just give them a look so you'll know what to expect next year. When a team makes the playoffs in October, the roster cuts back down to twenty-five.
When the Giants made the playoffs, Barry Zito did not make the roster.
It wasn't entirely his fault (begins the predictable defense from his eternal champion). It wasn't even so much that he was pitching poorly (although he was), as it was that every other pitcher on the staff was pitching absurdly well. Historically well, in fact; they'll be talking about this team for decades. Zito probably would have had a spot either as an emergency starter or a long-man on any other postseason line-up, but not my dear Giants.
Zito watched the rest of the playoffs from the bench. I can't really fathom what that might have been like. (Mark Mulder could tell us a thing or two.)
And then, well.
We won the World Series, you guys.
And, you know. This is what you pray for. This is the reason.
It's worth it. All of this has been worth it.
*
As for the rest of the cast:
-The A's declined to pick up Eric Chavez's option for 2011, ending his tenure with the team after 13 years (second only to Rickey's non-consecutive 14). At least until he officially retires and signs on as an infield coach (c'mon, Chav, you know you want to).
-Danny Haren got traded to the Angels mid-year. Boo, Angels.
-I never finished up Noah Lowry's story, but he was subject to a number of operations that largely derailed his playing career (and were possibly not all necessary, sports medicine being the incredibly fallible pursuit that it is), and has since been a free agent pitcher in whom no one seems particularly interested. He would like to blame the Giants' trainers, and he's probably got a pretty good case too.
-Travis Buck is still in the A's system.
-Bobby Crosby was traded from the Pirates to the Diamondbacks, and then released. He is a man without country.
-Mark Mulder announced his retirement in July of 2010 with all the wit and aplomb we have come to expect from him: "I guess I have retired." Now he has taken up professional golf tournaments, because god forbid he ever get a real job.
-After spates of injuries restricted him in 2008 and '09, Tim Hudson had a fantastic year, earning himself Comeback Player of the Year honors. His Atlanta Braves were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round by my Giants. He and Zito had a heartwarming reunion on the field, and then we kicked his ass. It was awesome.
-Rich Harden spent the season hurt or pitching inconsistently for the Texas Rangers, which was, coincidentally enough, the team the Giants beat to win the World Series. Richie didn't pitch, though. Like Zito, he had been left off the postseason roster due to not-very-good-performance.
For those of you keeping track? Of the main characters, two have played for a team that lost the World Series (Dan Haren with the Cards in 2004, Harden with the Rangers in 2010), and three have watched their team win the World Series while they sat on the bench (Mulder with the Cards in 2006, Zito with the Giants in 2010, and Billy Beane, who suffered it twice, with the Twins in '87 and the A's in '89). It's a cruel game, son.
(Tim Lincecum wins it.)
*
Holla back y'all. It's April of 2011, the first year of the rest of our lives.
-After 13 consecutive years with the A's, Eric Chavez was invited to spring training with the New York Yankees, and made the major league team as a utility infielder. Painful, really.
-Travis Buck signed a minor league contract with the Cleveland Indians in December 2010.
-Mark Mulder (and that handsome face of his) has a job this season as an analyst for ESPN's Baseball Tonight.
-Poor Danny Haren might win a freakin' Cy Young Award in Anaheim this year (currently 4-1, 1.46, WHIP .76), but the refrain remains the same: fuck the fucking Angels.
-After sitting out the World Series, Rich Harden was released by the Texas Rangers, and promptly resigned with the Oakland Athletics, because Billy Beane has his soft spots in the exact same places I do. Richie is currently on the disabled list (of course), but also back home.
-MOST IMPORTANTLY:
ZITO HAS GROWN A MOTHERFUCKIN PORN 'STACHE. Also he has landed on the DL for the first time in 12 years, having awkwardly sprained his foot while fielding a bunt pop-up, but the crucial takeaways are a) he caught the ball, and b) HE HAS A PORN 'STACHE. My love for that guy continues to know no borders.
*
Now it is May of 2011, and you probably know my motto by now: on we go.
On to unabashed Giants slash!
Everybody say hi to Buster. That's Gerald Dempsey Posey III (#28, C), if you're nasty.
Buster freakin' Posey, the future itself, was born 27 March 1987, brought up in Leesburg, Georgia, and drafted fifth overall by the San Francisco Giants. He's got a right-handed power stroke and a wicked arm for mowing down runners (you do not steal on Buster freakin' Posey, the league is slowly learning). He gets days off from catching, and ends up playing first base instead, because when the choice is baseball or not baseball, it is no choice at all.
(big damn hero)
(pretty damn easy on the eyes, too)
For the first time in my MLB-fic life, I have a catcher to pair up with all these goofy pitchers! Okay, Kurt Suzuki catches for the A's and he's definitely cute (he's the Asian guy with the big grin behind Mark Ellis in one of those A's walk-off celebration pics up there), but Zuk came to the team a little late to get the benefit (sexually) of Zito, Mulder, Harden, et al. But Buster, man oh man is this guy in trouble.
Posey came up to stay with the Giants at the end of May in 2010, and was an absolutely critical piece of the championship team. A rookie catcher taking on the best pitching staff in the bigs, Posey immediately impressed the entire world with his preternatural calm and mad skillz. Also, eighteen home runs in four months. He won the Rookie of the Year Award, although he probably cares a little more about the World Series ring, and never even looked that surprised that all this should be happening to him in his first five months in the major leagues.
(already has everything he needs)
And then there's Zito's description of him (this is an actual quote, I promise you): "Buster's basically a twenty-one year old hot chick that's an old soul."
I mean. It kinda writes itself.
However! Completely bucking the trend to this point, Zito is not the one who gets to break in the young'un; instead we will foist upon Posey the other token freakshow prodigy (tm) who helped the Giants win the World Series.
Madison K Bumgarner (#40, SP) is so cool he doesn't even need a middle name, just an initial! That's how they do it in North Carolina, you know.
Bumgarner (yes, the name is unfortunate), born 1 August 1989 (yes, him being basically jailbait is also unfortunate) is a tall rangy lefty in Zito's mold, big paws for hands and long legs and a very pretty curveball, but the thing we should focus on here is the ears.
Kinda absurdly dorky and cute with those ears, I have to say.
(tim totes agrees)
The kid got called up to the big club for the last three weeks of 2009 (starting major league baseball games at twenty years old, really just making the rest of us look bad), began the next year back in Triple-A and then got called up for good in midseason 2010. Bumgarner is as much the reason as anyone else that the Giants ended up keeping Zito off the playoff roster. In his five September starts before the team won the division, Bumgarner had an ERA of 1.13, which made the decision between the two of them kind of a no-brainer.
All Bumgarner did to reward that faith was pitch eight shut-out innings to get the win in Game 4 of the World Series. And that was in Texas, in front of fifty thousand people screaming for his blood. Steely, this kid, like a rock. Motherfuckers can't shake him no matter what they try
(a good day)
Madison and Buster were in the minors together, in San Jose and Fresno, so they were already buds when they got to the majors.
(we've been together now for forty years)
They work hard, they play hard.
(he needs his eyes, buster!)
The Posey and Bumgarner thing is so shiny and new! I have no idea how it will evolve. I can see Zito wreaking some real damage on dear young Madison (the double-digit age gap will function as bonus angst), while simultaneously I can see Buster accidentally destroying Tim Lincecum despite having primarily good intentions, but to start I think I like 'em best together. Southern boys gotta stick.
*
Man. This primer is getting insanely long, and will now require two pages. Time marches on, I suppose.
Primer Part Two
*
Everything that follows is fictional, except for the facts.
*
First there was Zito.
Barry William Zito (#75, SP), born 13 May 1978, brought up in Las Vegas and San Diego, is the reason for all of this. How could I have known, that fateful day back in 2000 when I first saw him pitch, the kind of havoc he would wreak? You don't see that kind of thing coming.
It was the curveball, mostly. Zito is a left-handed pitcher (he throws left and bats left, but he writes and plays the guitar right-handed because there are many things wrong with his brain), and he throws the prettiest breaking pitch I have ever seen. It's this ridiculous looping thing that drops six feet straight down and takes your stomach with it every time.
That would have been enough, really, but then I got a look at his face, and then I learned that he was kind of completely deranged, and I was in for life.
(Yes, he dyed his hair blue. Yes, he does an uncanny impression of an axe murderer. Everybody is in agreement here.)
Unlike most ballplayers, Zito has little to no sense of shame, which is convenient because he is pretty weird, or at least, pretty weird for a ballplayer. He dates far above his station (Alyssa Milano, anyone?), guest stars on television shows (JAG, Arli$$, The Chris Isaak Show), goes to Fiji on flimsy excuses, that kind of thing. It all ends up in the newspapers.
He also once let someone film him pitching shirtless, and for that I will be forever thankful.
(mm, clavicle)
Zito has A-list written all over him . . . His parents met while touring with the great Nat King Cole--his father as a composer, his mother as a singer--so entertainment is in Zito's blood, and he's one of the most entertaining interview subjects a sportswriter is likely to find. He's been chronicled as having traveled with a satin pillow and scented candles. He has stuffed animals in his locker. He dyes his hair. He practices yoga. He meditates . . . he has a wardrobe--butterfly collars and all tight-fitting things polyester--that makes you wonder when Tom Jones is going to call and ask for his closet back. (Aces: The Last Season on the Mound with Oakland's Big Three, Mychael Urban)
My god, is he endearing. Eventually, inevitably, Zito felt a bit pigeon-holed as a flake (the accuracy of the accusation still being under debate), and tried to reform his image, but it was a little late for that. He also has a tendency of giving interviews and/or press conferences while looking really really stoned.
The second of those two pictures is what Zito looked like accepting the American League Cy Young Award in 2002. For the first three seasons he played in the bigs, he was one of the best pitchers in the game, and then he won the Cy at age twenty-four and his life suddenly took a staggeringly sharp downward turn.
Since winning that goddamn award, Zito has never been more than a pretty good pitcher. More often, and more recently the later it got, he has been considerably less than that--'godawful' is a word that comes to mind.
All of Zito's problems are mental, every last one. His major league career is a story arc better than any classic tragedy. I have largely invented everything about him but the numbers, but it is the only way the numbers make sense, you see.
So who should Zito sleep with? Lemme introduce you to Mark Mulder.
(that's him on the left.)
(ha.)
Look how charming! Mark Alan Mulder (#20, SP), born 5 August 1977 in the Chicago suburbs, a left-handed pitcher who looks exactly like a ballplayer should, mostly shoulders and hands.
Initial characterization of Mulder was based on him being too cool for school, a little more perfect than you want your teammates/potential make-out buddies to be, perhaps. I picked this up about him from how he pitched and walked and smiled (like he owned the place, any place he happened to be), and then found a whole bunch of corroborating media stories.
[B]aseball called first dibs, and Mulder is a natural in every aspect of it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much that doesn't come natural to him . . . there'd always been an effortlessness about Mulder, both on and off the field, and even he'd admit that life hasn't exactly been a grind thus far . . . In the first several years of his career, he spent the bulk of his time on baseball, golf, video games, and women . . . After injuring his left forearm early in the 2002 season, he said, "I'm not really used to bad things happening to me." (Urban)
You kinda want to slap him now, hm? But molest him at the same time, I'm sure.
This is a normal reaction to Mark Mulder. Zito has been plagued by this type of thing for a decade now.
Mulder and Zito both came up with the A's in 2000, and within a year it was plain that Oakland had one of the best pitching rotations in the game, seeing as how Tim Hudson was already there.
Right away you can see how Timothy Adam Hudson (#15, SP), born 14 July 1975 in the dirty South, is in the dangerously hot category, but I can make it even better by telling you that he is from Alabama and has the kind of drawl that makes people dizzy. He is a right-handed pitcher, and unlike Zito (6'4) and Mulder (6'6), he is normally proportioned (listed at 6'1, which makes me laugh really hard--try 5'10, Timmy) and thus appears amusingly small next to other ballplayers.
Even more amusing:
And the very most amusing!
(from the top, that's zito (being weird even for zito), huddy, terrence long, and frank menechino)
Tim Hudson does not get near the amount of love he should get in fic, because he had the bad judgment to already be married by the time he got to Oakland, and it was a good couple of years before I was a hundred percent about writing dudes who were married (wow, did I get over that in a ridiculously complete way). And, he has no hair (distressing! Further ref: Bobby Crosby). These things together mean that despite a surplus of pictures in which he and Zito have no concept of personal space--
--and the fact that everyone, including straight male sportswriters, has a painfully obvious crush on our Huddy (He also has the quickest wit and the easiest manner, making him the most roundly liked by teammates, and his intensity on the field gives him cachet as one of Oakland's few team leaders. A family man with a seemingly endless supply of energy and one-liners, Hudson is like the next-door neighbor you so desperately want to like you. And because he has a far better handler on diplomacy than most major leaguers do, you'd never know it if he didn't. (Urban)), despite all of this, there is a serious dearth of Hudson/anyone fic. But he is an essential secondary character, being way cooler and more slick than all these other motherfuckers. Hudson can typically be found drunk and joyful in the bar, doling out his Huddy-like wisdom.
Hudson, Mulder, and Zito were collectively known as the Big Three.
Everybody really liked getting shots of them together. I mean, can you blame them?
(and somehow i only wrote two threesome stories)
For the five seasons the three of them were on the same team, the A's averaged 97 wins a year. (Baseball newbs, that is insanely good.) They made the playoffs four years running and got knocked out in heartbreaking fashion in the first round every time, because the team needed some kind of poignant and sorrowful backstory, in order for them to appeal as much as possible.
So, A's fic by Candle Beck started with Mulder/Zito. Look how they caper together.
And that was all well and good, the salad days as it were, the past that would look so goddamn romantic in retrospect. As bizarre as it sounds, for the first few months all I wrote was happy endings, Zito being goofy and weird and Mulder being exactly what he needed, like they were designed with no other purpose in mind, but well, that got old kinda quick. In the interest of shaking things up, I brought in Eric Chavez.
Eric Cesar Chavez (#3, 3B), born 7 December 1977 in Los Angeles, raised across town from Zito in San Diego, once was and should have always been the third baseman for the Oakland Athletics. He is an exceptional infielder, having won the Gold Glove six years in a row, and always looks super-stylish as he goes about his business.
Even when talking to teammates with thumbs up their butts in an unsettlingly literal way, Chavvy maintains his cool:
"Mentally, I've prepared myself to be more of a badass," [Chavez] says. " . . . Miguel's not here anymore, so I need to do more." Anyone who has known Chavez for awhile knows that he means what he's saying, because his next lie will probably be his first. And his willingness to take on more responsibility in the wake of Tejada's departure is admirable. But his general message seems to get lost. Nobody can get past the "badass" line. Why? Because Chavez, known as "Chavvy" to just about everyone, has established himself as the most approachable and ego-free player on a roster loaded with genuinely good guys. Eric Chavez is to badass what Barry Bonds is to cuddly. "He said, 'badass'?" Mulder says with a laugh. "That's pretty funny. Chavvy's about as badass as a kitten." (Urban)
(seriously, boys, be more adorable how bout.)
Chavez was married for the first time at twenty-one years old (it did not last, to exactly nobody's surprise). Upon getting divorced, he promptly moved in with his best pal in the whole wide world who's not named Eric Munson. That is, Mark Mulder. Here they are (Mulder in chair, Chavvy in white cap) passing a typical evening discussing philosophical treatises and the nature of art.
(That's Mark Ellis sitting on the floor, our long-time second baseman and another essential secondary character who never gets any action despite my enormous affection for him. He's the all-time home run leader from South Dakota, you know.)
Chavez got together believably with either Mulder or Zito, or if I was feeling especially adventurous, both. And then there's Eric Munson (C, too many uniform numbers to recount while with the Tigers, Astros, Brewers, A's, and Padres, born 3 October 1977), another professional ballplayer who grew up right alongside Chavez in San Diego and eventually co-starred in this crazy epic I wrote about the two of them, in addition to tri-starring in the best AU thingy I ever wrote.
And here they are at Chavvy's first wedding, Munce being the dude in the middle (as he ever seems to find himself):
The house Mulder and Chavez shared became the World Headquarters of Oakland Athletics Slash, aka the House of Hot. As will happen when a bunch of good-looking guys live like frat boys all rented furniture and beer pong, the prurient imagination simply runs wild. Chavez eventually met his second wife and ditched Mulder flat, and you can see how thrilled Mark was with that development.
(mulder vetoes girls!)
So that's where we started, the Oakland A's as they were from 2000-2003. A truly encouraging opening gambit, I'd say.
Important events during this stretch included the aforementioned four playoff appearances and four early exits, Zito's Cy Young Award, and the 20-game win streak they ripped off in the late summer of '02, setting an American League record and proving the existence of God kinda irrefutably in the last three games. Also, Mulder and Hudson both showed the first signs of injury-proneness, a fact which was downplayed as much as humanly possible by the Oakland front office. When everyone was right, there was no other team in the game that could beat them. There was a treacherous pattern of falling just short, though, and it infected every last one of them.
It'd probably be helpful at this juncture to go into physical locations, eh? We've come thousands of miles and run into the ocean, and here at the end of the world we have found Oakland, California.
Known affectionately as the Town (as opposed to the City across the water), Oakland is our much-loved black sheep metrop. by the bay. Poor and violent and beautiful, with hills and lakes and millions of trees--Oakland, California, goddamn right.
(home is the coliseum)
Lots of stuff takes place in San Francisco, too, as Zito has lived there for years.
(goddamn i live in a pretty place)
And in the spring we go to Phoenix. Pitchers and catchers report on Valentine's Day, the rest of the team just before March, and they play a month of exhibition games before starting the season.
(at home in the desert)
2004 is kinda the bridge year because it was the first full year for the second generation, that being Bobby Crosby and Rich Harden, both of whom lived with Mulder and back-up catcher (and secret ninja) Adam Melhuse in the House of Hot.
(oh bobby)
(oh richie)
Bobby and Richie came up through the minor leagues together, something much exploited once I'd gotten over my initial (and in hindsight totally ludicrous) aversion to the pairing, and they are in many ways cuter than a bushel of puppies.
(aaand we all explode from squee.)
Robert Edward Crosby (#7, SS), born 12 January 1980 near the environs of Long Beach, used to be a starting shortstop. He's got beautiful hands, excellent footwork, and tends to make that shit look easy.
He could hit for most of his rookie year, too, twenty dingers even if his average wasn't close to respectable by the end of it, and in a weak class for the American League, he won the Rookie of the Year Award. Like Zito, the larger part of his skill promptly deteriorated, but let's not concern ourselves with that just yet. You know, some people say Bobby looks like Brad Pitt. I don't really see it myself, except for on the rare occasions when he has hair.
(Ellis in the background again. I'm thinking I need to write some second baseman POV stories right quick.)
Before I got over the Harden/Crosby hurdle, Bobby was mostly prey for Mark Mulder. He would typically find himself enmeshed in some deeply convoluted mind-game going on between Mulder and Zito, who would of course Have A History, and usually be pretty much a mess by the end of it. Later on, Bobby evolved to be a perfect match for AU-Zito, and even later on he realized he was dumb because Richie was right there the whole time.
So, as for Richie.
(quarters would bounce)
My word, where to begin? James Richard Harden (#40, SP), born 30 November 1981 in Victoria, British Columbia, is the great right-handed Canadian hope. We could talk about how he started his career at twenty-one years old with three months of absurd dominance, or his eyes being neon blue, or his fastball topping out at around 102 mph, or that clean little smirk that so seldom leaves his face, or the lightning bolt he wears when he pitches.
We could go on about his forearms for like a day. Wait a minute, we already have.
The advent of Rich Harden was really a remarkable thing, and not just because he, like Mulder and Zito before him, was pretty much immediately in any discussion of the best young pitchers in the game. More to the point, Richie hooks up believably with everyone. This is also reminiscent of Zito, who is the backbone of the whole operation, kindhearted manwhore that he is. There are a number of theories behind this, the most libelous of which is that, of all the ballplayers I've written about or heard about, none would surprise me less by coming out of the closet than Rich Harden. (There are a lot of photographs of Zito talking to girls' chests, is the only reason I have any doubts about his flaming ass.)
(zebulon keeps watch on richie's noodles)
(he knows we're talking about him)
Harden's characterization is probably the most sympathetic of the whole bunch (aside from Huddy's, but Huddy is in a tenth of the stories Harden's in). Zito is generally assumed to be badly unstable, Mulder's a bastard, Chavvy's kinda pathetic, Bobby's a bit of a dick, none of them are all that smart, and then there's Richie, always ready with a snappy comeback, the voice of reason in a sandstorm. He gets screwed over a lot, being the romantic sort and tending to fall in love in a full-body sort of way, but you're never really worried about him the way you might be after seeing Zito or Chavvy get similarly wrecked. Sometimes Richie's a slut, but that's just because it's not fair to bogart the Canadian.
So now we were cooking with gas. The cast of characters was fleshing out rather nicely, the team was still playing well, the sky was the limit.
Then in the winter after the 2004 season, Billy Beane happened.
We need a little bit of background here. The Oakland A's are what's known as a small-market team, meaning they are hella broke, working off a payroll about a fifth the size of the Yankees'. They can't sign the big name players, and they can't keep the stars they develop in their own system because they can't afford the kinds of contracts those guys get as free agents. Once a decade, an A's player gets a long-term deal, and this time around it was Chavez, who signed for six years, $66 million in 2004. And everybody leaves, sooner or later. (spoiler)
In charge of the whole show is Billy Beane, the A's general manager. Twenty-five years ago he was a wonderboy.
It didn't last. William Lamar Beane (#11 or 27, GM), born 29 March 1962 and alumnus of Eric Chavez's San Diego high school, is a cautionary tale, because he had all the skill in the world and people talked about the Hall of Fame when he was seventeen years old, but his mind wasn't built for the pressures of major league baseball. In an empty stadium he could hit home runs for hours. In front of forty thousand all he could do was strike out. He burned out, walked out of the Oakland clubhouse and up to the front office to ask for a job as a scout.
Then as now, he is a heartbreaker.
There was a book written about Billy Beane called Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. It changed the game, not to put too fine a point on it. It laid out the methods by which Billy Beane had been able to keep the A's competitive every year in a sport where money is supposed to buy championships. Billy Beane had stopped listening to the old scouts' ways of doing things and turned things over to a bunch of statheads, who found him two Rookies of the Year, two MVPs, and a Cy Young Award winner alongside a wild card berth and three division titles; not bad for six years. The A's exploited the market inefficiencies that existed because traditional baseball thinking undervalued certain statistics (such as on-base percentage, the single best metric of a batter's primary goal--not making an out) while overvaluing others (such as RBIs, which are almost entirely dependent on the batter coming up with runners on--i.e., something the batter has no control over). So the A's were able to draft awesome dudes on the cheap and watch them blossom into stars.
There was only one problem with this incredibly engaging bestselling book about how badass and supergenius the Oakland A's are: now everybody knows how we do it, and now everybody who's anybody does it the same way. There was the standard controversy/upheaval that comes from a paradigm shift in how the game is played (or at least, how it's understood), but it's settling down now. Some of the old-timers are pissed off about this supposed 'mathifying' and 'de-souling' of the game, but the rest of us mostly just roll our eyes and carry on keeping score, because the live-ball didn't kill it, lights in stadiums didn't kill it, desegregation didn't kill it, the 162 game schedule didn't kill it, the division era didn't kill it, free agency didn't kill it, the strike didn't kill it, steroids didn't kill it, so we're not so worried about having to learn a bunch of new, vastly superior statistical categories.
It's like James Earl Jones said, "America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again." The truth, he speaks it.
They've been trying to make a movie about Moneyball for like ten years now. Brad Pitt (again with the Brad Pitt) wants to play Billy--superstars recognize each other, you see.
*And now it is September of 2011 and this has come to pass! Moneyball the movie opens this Friday, and it's already been absurdly well-reviewed, and the trailer indicates that Scotty's HR in the 20th game is going to play a climactic part, and I am just. so. excited. Those are my boys! They made a movie about my boys! Grins forever.
(based on OUR true story)
Billy Beane is the actual reason for everything, because he's the one who brought all these guys together either through the draft or through trades (and yes, we've had discussions about his seriously weird compulsion to acquire really good-looking young guys). He's smart and foul-mouthed and fucks people over in a constant yet somehow forgivable manner. Billy Beane is Spartacus and somewhere up ahead is the promised land; you have to have faith in this kind of thing.
Billy Beane and Barry Zito are honestly the OTP of this whole mess.
Anyway, it was the winter after the 2004 season, very near Christmas, when Billy Beane traded Tim Hudson to the Atlanta Braves, and then two days later traded Mark Mulder to the St. Louis Cardinals.
That was a bit of a shock. To put it in the mildest way possible, I mean. We knew at least one of the Big Three would go over the off-season, and we were bracing ourselves for Zito, because of course it would be Zito.
(too criminally adorable to remain)
But no! Instead it was Hudson and it was Mulder and forever afterwards it was known as The Trades.
(brave young timmy)
(mulder lost in the midwest)
There was much wringing of the hands, many imprecations shouted at the sky, many sneakers thrown at the television. Zito was suddenly the number-one starter, a frankly terrifying prospect for all involved (especially the man himself, as it turned out). Beane said the word "rebuilding" to make sure that no one would expect anything of the A's in 2005. The team was only half-recognizable, and the aftershocks took us into spring training.
And then?
(ladies and gentlemen, THE dan haren)
Daniel John Haren (#24 or 15, SP), born 17 September 1980 in Monterey Park (SoCal), is a half-Irish and half-Mexican right-handed pitcher who came to the A's from the Cards in the Mulder deal. Initially perturbing, this stoner kid in place of Johnny Baseball Mark Mulder, but within about a month we realized it was a fair trade. Within a year we realized that Billy Beane had actually robbed the Cardinals blind.
You see, Danny's a much better pitcher than Mulder ever was.
(even when baked out of his head)
(even when distracted by puppies)
(even when girls are feeling him up)
Mulder had one pretty good year in St. Louis and then his body betrayed him, broke down along the fault lines that Oakland had left him with, and by the time Danny was starting the All-Star Game in 2007, Mulder was basically a non-entity, teamless and unknown. It was sad. It was strange. A lot of people blamed Billy Beane for fucking up Mulder's arm and then getting rid of him. There was maybe some truth to that, but we weren't interested--we had Danny now.
Fic-wise, Danny and Zito were a pretty obvious match. Danny is usually depicted as an eminently solid and level-headed sort of guy, the kind of wall that Zito needs to run himself into over and over again. Also, all that squinting Danny does (hiding lovely blue eyes, by the way) makes him look like the Chong to Zito's Cheech, if you see what I mean.
(also, legs)
But Zito sleeps with everybody, as we've mentioned, so that's not so special. Everyone really seemed to like the Harden/Haren pairing (all sorts of cleverness and subtle badassery), but I found the reading of a traditional third-person POV to be near impossible when the two dudes' names are one letter apart. So, Harden and Haren got some second-person POV stories and I also sometimes just bit the bullet and called them Danny and Richie.
And then! We found out that Danny's best friend and fellow Pepperdine University alum was one Noah Ryan Lowry (#51, SP), born 10 October 1980 in Ventura, CA, a left-handed pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, which is the other team carved into my heart (and for the purposes of this primer currently counts as foreshadowing).
Lowry is great. He has a birthmark under his right eye that looks like he's got a shiner all the time. He has a fantastic smile.
He throws a change-up that seems to stop time. Once he played right field and it was awesome.
Lowry and Haren were roommates at Pepperdine and in 2005 they lived in the same apartment building in San Francisco, Danny taking the unit directly above Noah's for the ease of late-night assignations via the fire escape (we're very big fans of fire escapes). When two teams occupy the same geographical area, the schedule-meisters do their utmost to ensure that when Team A is out of town, Team B is at home, so it's not like Lowry and Haren would get to see each other all that often during the season. Apparently they both just feel more secure knowing that all of the other's stuff is only a flight of stairs away.
Lowry's characterization developed as a kind of counterpoint to Haren's. Haren was cool and self-confident and became everybody's favorite dude like three hours after showing up, so Lowry must be his shy best friend, sticking close at overcrowded bars and always more comfortable when it was just him and Danny driving home at the end of the night. Lowry must have a sneaky dry sense of humor and a lot of common sense and a baffling, overwhelming crush on Danny (because have you seen Danny Haren?). They were an excellent fit.
Later developments brought Noah Lowry the dubious honor of Barry Zito's obsessive love. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though.
Let's talk about Huston Street instead.
(oh my freakin' lord, huston)
Huston Lowell Street (#20, RP), born 2 August 1983, is a Texas boy to the bone.
His dad was a big-time UT quarterback, so naturally Street's team had to win the College World Series before he got drafted by the A's. He's a right-handed relief pitcher, most often a closer. He's got a good fastball and a better slider, and he would like you to know that he's not just another pretty face.
(and, um, theoretically some brains, too)
Let's just get this one out of the way:
(yes, I know)
Street joined the bullpen at twenty-one years old, and took over the closer's job in May, when Octavio Dotel went down with an injury. He was really very good for the rest of that season, although never as good as it seemed like he should be, and it was enough to win him the Rookie of the Year Award, making it back-to-back for Oakland.
That first year, 2005, Street lived with Crosby, Harden, and Melhuse in the House of Hot. Right from the start, he was Richie's boy.
(they really did give us an awful lot to work with)
Street's characterization evolved in a truly surprising way. He started out the perfect boy, you know, doll-faced and brilliant and sweeter than hell, and Harden was always pining after him and trying not to besmirch the lad's spotless soul or some shit like that. And then, and we're not sure when exactly the switch happened, all this inner jerkiness started to bleed out of him, and then everyone kinda decided that he was a drunk and possibly a turbo-slut--
--and Harden was still pretty gone on him but it wasn't very good for either of them anymore. Or something? We haven't actually finished the fic odyssey of Huston Street yet, but our hopes remain high.
You know, as much affection as we have for the classic-era Big Three fics, the fifty Mulder/Zito stories I wrote, I think 2005-2006 was really the golden age as far as possible combinations and sheer numbers of slashable guys. Zito, Chavez, Crosby, Harden, Haren, Street (and Beane) all on the same team, with Lowry across the water and Mulder and Huddy somewhere in the background providing nostalgic reminders of How It Used To Be.
Here is some more visual evidence ('05-'07)
(bobby mildly intimidated by chavvy's wood)
(carlos and gregorio, who sadly were not around long enough to slash)
(pre-game)
(lots of goings-on happen in the video room)
(richie's root beer float brings all the girls to the yard)
(emil brown asleep in his locker)
(beane alongside my one, my own jack cust)
(scattegories!)
(a pitchers' meeting to be ignored in favor of flirting with your rotation pals)
(brains enough to play chess, at least)
('nother W)
(rookie hazing! i am almost positive this is my team)
(what are you feeding him, emil?)
(hey, at least they're drunk together)
(and then we will ATTACK)
It's of the moment to let you know about some other secondary characters who joined the team in 2005, namely Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton, who are often in the wings of stories, causing trouble.
(girl, joe b, girl, swish)
Joe's a right-handed starting pitcher and Nick's an outfielder/first baseman. They are also best buds. For their rookie hazing they were dressed as a plug and a socket. No, seriously. There are pictures.
(the actual gayest thing this team has ever done)
It would almost be too easy to write Swisher/Blanton, and so no one really does.
(joe says, "i dunno, nicky, you wanna make out?)
(nick replies, "two more beers and who knows what'll happen?")
Other reoccurring faces:
(mark ellis, #14, 2B, much-loved fixture on the right side)
(adam melhuse, #17, C, now-retired back-up catcher, secret ninja, denizen of house of hot, etc etc)
(eric byrnes, #22, OF, former a's outfielder and one of zito's good friends, currently has a radio show on the giants broadcast station, as he is a local boy)
(marco scutaro, #49 or 19, IF, or super marco as his miraculous feats would see him named, former back-up infielder with a knack for winning baseball games on one swing)
(scott hatteberg, #10, 1B, former catcher-turned-first-baseman who won the 20th game of the streak on a walk-off home run)
There are others, to be sure. But that should cover for the moment.
So in 2005, the A's weren't supposed to be very good at all, but then they were, in contention with the Angels all through the end of the summer before finally losing the division in the last week. In 2006, they were everybody's favorite.
And they made it back to the playoffs that year, freakin' waltzed through the first round, at long last, and then promptly got swept by the Tigers for the American League pennant. The Tigers went on to face Mark Mulder's St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, and against every expectation and all odds, the St. Louis Cardinals won in five games. Mulder didn't pitch; he was hurt. He got a ring, though, and off-season surgery, and the killing memory of having to watch the World Series from the bench. (oh, foreshadowing)
2006 was also Zito's walk year, his last year with the A's before he was eligible for free agency. Despite the fact that Zito had been sinking closer and closer to rock bottom since winning the Cy Young, he was heavily courted. People talked a lot about the Mets, and we began making plans to attend spring training in Florida instead of Arizona, and then, miracle of miracles:
Zito signed with the San Francisco Giants for seven years and $126 million. This worked out particularly well for me, as I was raised in the Bay Area with a perfectly divided loyalty, and the only team I love as well as the A's is los Gigantes. Worse luck for Zito, of course. It was at the time the biggest contract ever given to a starting pitcher; now it is generally regarded as the worst contract ever given to anyone.
What was said earlier, about all of Zito's problems being mental? The two worst things that have ever happened to him were winning the Cy Young, and signing that goddamn contract.
Zito has been pretty much just terrible as a Giants pitcher. Once a month or so he'll go out there all signals firing, all lights blazing, rip off eight innings of shut-out ball and drop the curve in on either side of the plate, batters swinging and missing and almost dislocating their shoulders. And we'll think, he's back, he's back, thank god he's finally back, and then next time he starts it's seven runs over three innings and his head down as he walks off the field.
However, his new team did immediately dress him in drag.
(and he kinda liked it)
(to the future, my love)
Once Zito was gone, Oakland A's slash lost a bit of its luster, understandably. The boys were growing up; they kept getting married. There was a new face on the field in 2007, however, that being Travis Buck.
(that t buck, he's so hot right now)
Travis George Buck (#6, OF), born 18 November 1983 in the great state of Washington, a wild-haired outfielder who took Oakland by storm for the first couple of months, all brash grins and triples and such. He got some fic-love from Bobby and Rich (who, in the wake of Zito, became the best at breaking dudes in), but he couldn't quite stick. Travis has been back and forth between the minors and the bigs ever since he debuted, which makes him inconstant and difficult to get laid.
The A's played okay for the first half of 2007, Haren starting the All-Star Game and everything, but then they broke every record they'd had for number of injuries, everyone going fragile and snakebit all at once, and it became a lost year. They finished in third place.
Then in December:
Billy traded Danny to the Diamondbacks. It wasn't clear why. It's still not clear why, actually. The rotation could have matched up to any other in the league. The A's needed bats; we've always needed bats, ever since Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada and Jermaine Dye went on their golden ways. But we were raised to believe specific things and chief among those is that when you have good pitching, you hang on to it.
But Billy moves in mysterious ways his miracles to perform.
Then like a month later he traded Nick Swisher to the White Sox. This made even less sense than the Haren trade. It was The Trades, part II, and we were reeling, unaccustomed and badly off our game.
(swish was eventually reeled in by the evil empire)
2008 started poorly for the Oakland Athletics, and stayed that way. Injuries and bad luck and the gaping absence of Dan Haren at the top of the rotation, the lack of Swisher caterwauling in the locker room, everything quiet and faintly bitter. The Angels had a ten-game lead in the division by the All-Star break, and we'd lost most of our faith in implausible comebacks.
Then, just before the trade deadline, Billy Beane struck again:
(richie to the cubs)
(joey to the phils)
That awful sound you might have heard was a city full of hearts breaking all at once, a mammoth pile of dishes shattering on the tile.
And finally, in November after the season was over:
(street to the rocks)
So that's where we've been left. Of the fic regulars, only Bobby Crosby and Eric Chavez are still on the team, Bobby as a light-hitting utility infielder and Chavvy as a fixture on the DL until his back goes out one more time and his career finally ends. Everyone else is in the National League, thousands of miles away.
In 2009, the A's are a very young team once again, all untried pitching and slowly-waking bats. Zito is over in San Francisco depressing the hell out of everyone. Huddy's been on and off the DL in Atlanta, but at least he still has a major league job, more than can be said for Mulder. Richie has been injury-prone in Chicago, too, but they seem to be more forgiving. Danny is still one of the best pitchers in the game, but you can't tell because he pitches for one of the worst teams in the game. Street never gets talked about anymore.
So what can we learn from all this? Baseball is very tough on young men with steadfast hearts. I've tried to give them each other as life rafts, but I fear this may have been counterproductive, because here they are now scattered to the four winds.
Hopefully they were not too deeply in love.
*
On-going updates:
10 December 2009 Rich Harden signs with the Texas Rangers. Back in the division, at least.
10 December 2009 Bobby Crosby signs with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Apparently his self-esteem is now at an all-time low.
12 May 2010 Six weeks into the season, and Zito is off to the best start of his career, including Oakland, including the year he won the Cy Young Award. The Giants have the best rotation in baseball, and a few days ago the broadcasters used the phrase 'Big Three' to describe Lincecum, Zito, and Cain, and my heart might have stopped, if only for a moment.
*
Hello, it's May of 2010 and I have more additions to make!
Primarily, Tim Lincecum. If I may:
Timothy Leroy Lincecum (#55, SP), born 15 June 1984, is the boy king. Originally he was the boy prince, but that was before he became the first major league pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both of his first two full seasons. It is unreal how good he is. The kid's nicknames are the Franchise and the Freak, because no one who looks like a sophomore in high school should be able to throw the ball 95 miles an hour and then drop a change-up that ends up in your shoes.
(it's weird when tim has short hair. also, he's at least twenty-two in that pic--you may ogle with a clear conscience.)
Lincecum came up with the Giants in May of 2007, which was Zito's first season on the team, and I immediately picked up on him as having potential to be the latest in Zito's nationwide roster of fictional boyfriends. The two of them have not disappointed! Zito has been photographed wearing Lincecum's clothes (well, a beanie. But still). They are always hanging on the rail together, goofing off in the outfield--adorable.
Also, a couple of weeks before he won his second Cy Young, Lincecum got pulled over for speeding in Washington state and cited for marijuana possession, which you know gives him like two hundred cool points in Zito's book. Now you can buy these shirts around the ballpark:
(and it is awesome)
(no idea what's goin' on right now)
(aaaand naptime)
Sometimes fans of other teams (cough Philly cough cough) are mean to our dear boy.
Tim's response to such abuse? Striking out forty-three batters in five playoff starts, while casually out-dueling Derek Lowe, Roy Halladay, and Cliff Lee (twice). Because his teeth may be crooked, but he is still much, much better than your very best.
The thing about Lincecum is that the first three years of his major league career have looked terrifyingly similar to Zito's early spate of brilliance. If the only thing that ever went wrong with Zito was in his head, then please, for me, say a prayer for Tim Lincecum's peace of mind. The team needs him like you wouldn't believe.
(the face of the future)
It took me three years to actually write Zito/Lincecum, and now it's going pretty freakin' well. The trend has actually shifted towards overt Giants slash at this point--at some point in the future I have a feeling Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey and Brian Wilson are going to end up on this primer. Where Zito goes, hilarious and good-looking young talent follows! It's downright inspiring.
*
Right back to it! It's November of 2010 and boy do I have some news for you.
Zito's hot start was one of those six-week anomalies with which he likes to torment me. He backslid as the weather got hotter, and by the All-Star Break he was an afterthought again.
Lincecum had a great year, save for his own month-long fugue in August, when he fucked up his mechanics and started giving up hella dingers and we were afeared, greatly afeared. My history with Zito has left me extremely skittish, as you can probably tell. But God likes Lincecum better than my boy, and September was the best month of the year for that kid, right when we needed him the most.
The team as a whole finished like gangbusters. The Padres had been leading the division all year, with us jostling for second place with the Rockies and the fuckin' Dodgers (who faded gloriously in August), but in September we caught them. On the last day of the regular season, we knocked them out and made it to the playoffs.
Which was magnificent! Champagne in the locker room, rookie catchers hauled around by Viking closers, the guys on the radio hoarse and jubilant. Just amazing.
And then! Dun dun duuuuun.
A baseball roster is normally twenty-five men. On 1 September, the roster expands to forty, so that you can bring up all your hot-shot minor leaguers and either make a push for the playoffs or, if your team's already out of it, just give them a look so you'll know what to expect next year. When a team makes the playoffs in October, the roster cuts back down to twenty-five.
When the Giants made the playoffs, Barry Zito did not make the roster.
It wasn't entirely his fault (begins the predictable defense from his eternal champion). It wasn't even so much that he was pitching poorly (although he was), as it was that every other pitcher on the staff was pitching absurdly well. Historically well, in fact; they'll be talking about this team for decades. Zito probably would have had a spot either as an emergency starter or a long-man on any other postseason line-up, but not my dear Giants.
Zito watched the rest of the playoffs from the bench. I can't really fathom what that might have been like. (Mark Mulder could tell us a thing or two.)
And then, well.
We won the World Series, you guys.
And, you know. This is what you pray for. This is the reason.
It's worth it. All of this has been worth it.
*
As for the rest of the cast:
-The A's declined to pick up Eric Chavez's option for 2011, ending his tenure with the team after 13 years (second only to Rickey's non-consecutive 14). At least until he officially retires and signs on as an infield coach (c'mon, Chav, you know you want to).
-Danny Haren got traded to the Angels mid-year. Boo, Angels.
-I never finished up Noah Lowry's story, but he was subject to a number of operations that largely derailed his playing career (and were possibly not all necessary, sports medicine being the incredibly fallible pursuit that it is), and has since been a free agent pitcher in whom no one seems particularly interested. He would like to blame the Giants' trainers, and he's probably got a pretty good case too.
-Travis Buck is still in the A's system.
-Bobby Crosby was traded from the Pirates to the Diamondbacks, and then released. He is a man without country.
-Mark Mulder announced his retirement in July of 2010 with all the wit and aplomb we have come to expect from him: "I guess I have retired." Now he has taken up professional golf tournaments, because god forbid he ever get a real job.
-After spates of injuries restricted him in 2008 and '09, Tim Hudson had a fantastic year, earning himself Comeback Player of the Year honors. His Atlanta Braves were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round by my Giants. He and Zito had a heartwarming reunion on the field, and then we kicked his ass. It was awesome.
-Rich Harden spent the season hurt or pitching inconsistently for the Texas Rangers, which was, coincidentally enough, the team the Giants beat to win the World Series. Richie didn't pitch, though. Like Zito, he had been left off the postseason roster due to not-very-good-performance.
For those of you keeping track? Of the main characters, two have played for a team that lost the World Series (Dan Haren with the Cards in 2004, Harden with the Rangers in 2010), and three have watched their team win the World Series while they sat on the bench (Mulder with the Cards in 2006, Zito with the Giants in 2010, and Billy Beane, who suffered it twice, with the Twins in '87 and the A's in '89). It's a cruel game, son.
(Tim Lincecum wins it.)
*
Holla back y'all. It's April of 2011, the first year of the rest of our lives.
-After 13 consecutive years with the A's, Eric Chavez was invited to spring training with the New York Yankees, and made the major league team as a utility infielder. Painful, really.
-Travis Buck signed a minor league contract with the Cleveland Indians in December 2010.
-Mark Mulder (and that handsome face of his) has a job this season as an analyst for ESPN's Baseball Tonight.
-Poor Danny Haren might win a freakin' Cy Young Award in Anaheim this year (currently 4-1, 1.46, WHIP .76), but the refrain remains the same: fuck the fucking Angels.
-After sitting out the World Series, Rich Harden was released by the Texas Rangers, and promptly resigned with the Oakland Athletics, because Billy Beane has his soft spots in the exact same places I do. Richie is currently on the disabled list (of course), but also back home.
-MOST IMPORTANTLY:
ZITO HAS GROWN A MOTHERFUCKIN PORN 'STACHE. Also he has landed on the DL for the first time in 12 years, having awkwardly sprained his foot while fielding a bunt pop-up, but the crucial takeaways are a) he caught the ball, and b) HE HAS A PORN 'STACHE. My love for that guy continues to know no borders.
*
Now it is May of 2011, and you probably know my motto by now: on we go.
On to unabashed Giants slash!
Everybody say hi to Buster. That's Gerald Dempsey Posey III (#28, C), if you're nasty.
Buster freakin' Posey, the future itself, was born 27 March 1987, brought up in Leesburg, Georgia, and drafted fifth overall by the San Francisco Giants. He's got a right-handed power stroke and a wicked arm for mowing down runners (you do not steal on Buster freakin' Posey, the league is slowly learning). He gets days off from catching, and ends up playing first base instead, because when the choice is baseball or not baseball, it is no choice at all.
(big damn hero)
(pretty damn easy on the eyes, too)
For the first time in my MLB-fic life, I have a catcher to pair up with all these goofy pitchers! Okay, Kurt Suzuki catches for the A's and he's definitely cute (he's the Asian guy with the big grin behind Mark Ellis in one of those A's walk-off celebration pics up there), but Zuk came to the team a little late to get the benefit (sexually) of Zito, Mulder, Harden, et al. But Buster, man oh man is this guy in trouble.
Posey came up to stay with the Giants at the end of May in 2010, and was an absolutely critical piece of the championship team. A rookie catcher taking on the best pitching staff in the bigs, Posey immediately impressed the entire world with his preternatural calm and mad skillz. Also, eighteen home runs in four months. He won the Rookie of the Year Award, although he probably cares a little more about the World Series ring, and never even looked that surprised that all this should be happening to him in his first five months in the major leagues.
(already has everything he needs)
And then there's Zito's description of him (this is an actual quote, I promise you): "Buster's basically a twenty-one year old hot chick that's an old soul."
I mean. It kinda writes itself.
However! Completely bucking the trend to this point, Zito is not the one who gets to break in the young'un; instead we will foist upon Posey the other token freakshow prodigy (tm) who helped the Giants win the World Series.
Madison K Bumgarner (#40, SP) is so cool he doesn't even need a middle name, just an initial! That's how they do it in North Carolina, you know.
Bumgarner (yes, the name is unfortunate), born 1 August 1989 (yes, him being basically jailbait is also unfortunate) is a tall rangy lefty in Zito's mold, big paws for hands and long legs and a very pretty curveball, but the thing we should focus on here is the ears.
Kinda absurdly dorky and cute with those ears, I have to say.
(tim totes agrees)
The kid got called up to the big club for the last three weeks of 2009 (starting major league baseball games at twenty years old, really just making the rest of us look bad), began the next year back in Triple-A and then got called up for good in midseason 2010. Bumgarner is as much the reason as anyone else that the Giants ended up keeping Zito off the playoff roster. In his five September starts before the team won the division, Bumgarner had an ERA of 1.13, which made the decision between the two of them kind of a no-brainer.
All Bumgarner did to reward that faith was pitch eight shut-out innings to get the win in Game 4 of the World Series. And that was in Texas, in front of fifty thousand people screaming for his blood. Steely, this kid, like a rock. Motherfuckers can't shake him no matter what they try
(a good day)
Madison and Buster were in the minors together, in San Jose and Fresno, so they were already buds when they got to the majors.
(we've been together now for forty years)
They work hard, they play hard.
(he needs his eyes, buster!)
The Posey and Bumgarner thing is so shiny and new! I have no idea how it will evolve. I can see Zito wreaking some real damage on dear young Madison (the double-digit age gap will function as bonus angst), while simultaneously I can see Buster accidentally destroying Tim Lincecum despite having primarily good intentions, but to start I think I like 'em best together. Southern boys gotta stick.
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Man. This primer is getting insanely long, and will now require two pages. Time marches on, I suppose.
Primer Part Two
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