Full disclosure: The Giants are No. 1 in the Complicated Calculus of Teams I Root For, and I think they're going to be lousy this year.
A lot depends on Bonds of course. If he's not able to come back from his knee surgeries and play like Barry Bonds, the Giants will be hideous. If he's able to put together another incredible season despite the injuries and his 42nd birthday at midseason, they have a shot at mediocrity.
So if they win 100 games I'll have little choice but to consider the role of team chemistry. After all, it couldn't be that I'm just lousy at predicting what's going to happen in a long baseball season, could it?
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Induct Buck? A petition [PERMALINK]
At least one supporter of Buck O'Neil's failed Hall of Fame candidacy has taken matters into his own hands by launching an online petition to lobby Cooperstown.
Charles Margulis, 45, of Oakland, Calif., reports that he'll forward a list of signatures to the Hall every week in hopes that O'Neil, a star player and manager in the Negro Leagues who became a scout and coach in the integrated major leagues, will be reconsidered before the July induction ceremony of 17 deceased Negro League players and executives.
I don't think it'll work, and it probably shouldn't. The Hall of Fame is a lot of things to a lot of people, but a popularity contest it shouldn't be.
"I don't necessarily think the petition will 'work' either, in the sense that it will get Buck in the Hall," Margulis writes by e-mail. "But after all Buck has done to keep the history of the Negro Leagues alive, and make that history come alive for folks like me, it seems the least we can do is have a space to show our support for him."
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Math correction [PERMALINK]
I made a mathematical error in Monday's Olympics wrap-up column.
I wrote that seven athletes had tested positive for drugs in 700 tests in Salt Lake City, and one had turned up positive in 1,200 tests in Turin. "So, thanks to the crackdown by world anti-doping forces, we've gone from 1 percent of the tests coming up positive to 0.0083 percent," I wrote.
Extra zero, as many readers pointed out. It should have said 0.083 percent. The original story has been fixed.
This is the kind of thing that led me to only get six out of 50 questions right on my Wonderlic test. No wonder I didn't get drafted by the NFL. I only got half the answers correct!
Previous column: Negro Leagues Hall of Famers
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com.
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