Astroday gets letters every week. It's time to answer a few of them.

Jason Martin of East Lansing, Michigan writes,

"In "The Boys Are Back", you say that ESPN.com's article doesn't give Bagwell his props regarding HOF status. It seems to me that they have been some of Bags' biggest supporters, and he is discussed at the end of the article (the players are listed in order of their likelihood to retire, with Bagwell after 2006). They write: Jeff Bagwell (35): His rich extension with the Astros runs through 2006 with an $18 million option for '07. It is easy to see how owner Drayton McLane might say thanks for the memories and settle for a $7 million buyout, which is deferred. Bagwell is currently at 419 home runs and 1,421 RBI. He could reach 500 and 1,700 in '06, if he stays as healthy as he has generally been. He's missed only 24 games over the last eight seasons. How is that not giving props?" 

My reply:

"Then why, in the second sentence of his article, does [Phil] Rogers say, 'It is easy to see how owner Drayton McLane might say thanks for the memories and settle for a $7 million buyout, which is deferred?' Is he stating any kind of fact here? It's a fact that the buyout is for $7 mil, but the idea that McLane might exercise it is at this point (three years ahead of time) a bit of wishful thinking on the part of a man whose business it is to write about the Cubs. I'll bet Phil Rogers hopes McLane says adios to Bagwell then, but why would he do that, or even imply that it could happen, in an article about the players most likely to get to Cooperstown? Bagwell could use that buyout year to get to the Hall of Fame, and it doesn't make sense to me that writers would be rooting against anyone with a reasonable shot at it. I wouldn't be pulling against Kerry Wood making it there some day. Things aren't much better on the TV side of things. There are two and only two things that ever get said about Bagwell on ESPN: Bagwell is referred to as 'Bagpipes' in every single highlight voiced by Karl Ravich. I doubt that Ravich even knows Bagwell's real last name, or would grant him the dignity of using it. It's a stupid Chris Berman-like habit, yet Bagwell--and we--are stuck with it. Second, the only other thing any ESPN man knows about Bagwell is that he can no longer throw, yet that deficiency is mentioned constantly. Bagwell's consistent excellence as a fielder is never mentioned. In every rundown of the fine fielders at 1B in MLB or the NL, Bagwell is absent. I don't expect him to be near the top, but if you're not even mentioning him in that group, it's because you haven't seen him play enough over his career or you've ignored him. I have seen him; so have you; and the ESPN guys (both dot-com and over-the-air) don't give him enough credit. "

Jason responds:

"I would argue that the $7 mill buyout is highly possible because Bagwell has SUBTLY hinted that he might not want to play past 2006. If McLane is willing to oblige him, and given the size of the contract he might oblige, then the buyout certainly might happen. Second, Bagwell is not going to get better physically. He has said many times that the physical problems he has now will never go away. He just has to play with them. That means that his health and potentially his production is likely to only go down. After 3 more seasons take their toll, much of Astroland might be calling for the buyout. As for ESPN, I completely agree with you regarding their Astros coverage on TV. . . . Bagwell is merely an afterthought. ESPN.com is another matter."

That bias is a hard thing to deal with for those who live in the sunbelt states, especially in Texas. The bias is understandable in one way, at least, because ESPN--both the network and the web site--draws most of its subscribers from the Eastern seaboard. The company has to write much of its material to appeal to fans in those markets. The results can be irritating, though, even in small ways. For example, Billy Wagner labors in brilliant obscurity for the Astros for nine seasons, gets traded to Philadelphia, and NOW, to ESPN, he's the greatest thing since Swiss cheese. But the distrust that Texans and New Yorkers and Bostonians feel for each other goes deeper than that, affecting relations that have nothing to do with sports, and it's been around for as long as I can remember. Can it be accounted for? I don't know. I am no sociologist or demographer, but think of what began to happen in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as the country's population began to shift south and westward. After over a century of glorying in the miracle of creating so rich a life for millions of people in so tiny a space as New York City and its environs represents, here came Texas, with the same challenge, but at the opposite end of the scale: how to foster happiness for millions of people in so vast as territory as one that could theoretically be broken up into many states. Texas succeeded, but at the price of political good will. First, there was Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn; later, Lyndon Johnson, twisting arms as Majority Leader in the Senate, both of them taking away projects that could have been profitable for Eastern interests. But the resentment was not all on one side: Texans have long resented the price breaks on oil and gas from the south that eastern states often get. That resentment has simmered for over fifty years. It did not help matters at all that President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, a great and terrible event that marks every one of us who lived through it, but an event for which the state of Texas as a state was not and is not responsible. It was a blessing, I believe, that the rise of the Dallas Cowboys in the 70s did what sports could do to heal some of the sectional divisions in the country, as Tom Landry's bunch became "America's Team," capable of being loved or hated by everyone, but tensions remain beneath the surface of the sports we play, and probably always will.

Some of those tensions are good. They foster competition, which usually makes everybody better in the long run. Speaking for myself, I don't much like the Phillies or the Dodgers or--as the next letter will indicate--the Mets. Hector Llorens of Houston wrote in to talk about the 1986 NLCS between New York and Houston and my inexcusable forgetfulness:

"MAN - you don't remember [Fred] Brocklander? That guy was umpiring first base in game 5, and he called Craig Reynolds out on a grounder to end the inning with the go ahead run at 3rd base. The issue? Craig was WAY SAFE. The front cover of the now-defunct Houston Post said "We Wuz Robbed" and clearly showed the ball 4 feet from Keith Hernandez's glove!!! The Astros should have had a 3-2 series lead! I STILL have that newspaper. The NEXT game, Brocklander was behind home plate, squeezing Dave Smith like I've never seen any pitcher get squeezed before. He changed the strike zone after Knepper left the game. Brocklander could not handle the change from Knepper's big breaking balls to Smith's dosage of fastballs. What an idiot. Smith doesn't blow a 3-run lead like that. No way."

I replied:

"Hector, understand, I've probably blocked all that Brocklander crap out of conscious memory. If I saw the game again (I've only seen it once since '86 on ESPN Classic, which Cox Cable no longer carries on expanded basic), it might all come flooding back.The call on Reynolds I do remember, and it was clearly awful. Smith's appearance the next day I just can't deal with. I was alone in my apartment in Illinois that day as the afternoon grew dark, probably the only Astros fan within a thousand miles of the Dome. NOBODY would have understood our passions, or how heartbreaking the game was to watch. I was more mad at Knepper for giving up the runs and putting the 'pen in such a bad spot. (I never liked Knepper much as a pitcher--too inconsistent. The ninth inning in Game Six really made me nervous.)

"No more: I'll get angry if I write any more about such failures. I don't know what this year holds; not really. But the pieces are there; they really are. I expect the offense as a whole to be better than it was last year, especially if Kent stays healthy. The interior defense should be good all year, with Everett and Ensberg full-timers now. The bullpen might be really fine or it could be a disappointment, if Veres croaks or if Dotel doesn't come through, but I think things will be ok. The club should be the Wild Card. If it's not, Jimy Williams will deserve to get dumped."

In the end, believe it or not, comedian Steve Martin--being serious, as he often is in interviews--said it best: "Be so good they can't ignore you." That is the solution to the problem of the Eastern bias in the sports media against sunbelt-state teams. That is the way for the Astros to win the nation-wide praise and respect they desire and that their fans desire for them. For the first time since 1998 (and recall that most outlets back then, including ESPN, were ready to give praise to Houston, until Kevin Brown made the entire lineup gag), I think the Astros have a team that can take on--and beat--all comers. Bring 'em on, anytime. But when I say "I don't like the Dodgers," or "I hate the Mets, " I mean those words in the fiercely-competitive way that fans always mean them and nothing more. I expect Mets fans or Dodgers fans to feel the same way. As we express those feelings we are also, however crudely, expressing a more deeply-shared bond. Once, when talking to my friend, the grocer Joe Thompson in Champaign, Illinois, I remarked that, in my view, the NCAA basketball tournament was the single greatest sporting event in America because for one month, the entire country was brought together to root for their teams in spirited competition. I still believe that, but I need to make plain, if you had any doubts, that I regard baseball as the greatest American sport, for exactly the same reason. No other sport reflects so deeply our strengths and our tribulations as a people--our love of competition within fair-minded rules, and our struggles to include everyone in that competition and enforce those rules even-handedly--over so long a period as nine months out of the year. Football may be more popular than baseball, and I do watch it, but its celebration of aggression--a feature of human behavior that the game's occasional grace cannot mask--mark it for me as a less interesting, less satisfying game to watch. The complexity of its individual games and the depth of its history makes baseball a vastly more entertaining sport and a more socially-important subject of study if one really wants to understand what this striving, erring, wonderful country is all about.

Bill Edgar of Corpus Christi wrote in to take issue with my statement two weeks ago that Barry Bonds was the greatest player since Babe Ruth:

"First let me say that I totally enjoy your columns that are posted in AstroDaily. I always can't wait for your next one to be posted. Being from Corpus Christi, we don't get very much "inside info", so your insight is a refreshing sight to see in order to keep up with my favorite team since 1965.    However, I have to disagree with you on one issue that you posted this weekend. You are quoted as saying, "He is, (Bonds) in my opinion, the greatest player since Ruth, but maybe his numbers show him to be even better than that."  Although I respect your opinion, it is this baseball fan's opinion that he is in no way the best since Ruth. Mays, Musial, Aaron, Ted Williams, Mantle, Clemente, and others stand much closer to Ruth than Bonds ever will. They were much more of a complete player than Bonds ever was. They could run, catch, [and] hit not only for power [but] for average as well. They would never loaf out on the field, they gave their all for the years that they played. Bonds is just basking in the HR era. His numbers might show a sign of greatness, but if you look past the stats you will see that his numbers lie.  Yes he hit 73 HRs, mostly steroid induced, and anyone can hit that many HRs and have the OBP that he has chalked up if they had a strike zone of 10x10. The walks that he has received mostly come from a shrunken strike zone. Please don't give the "pitchers don't pitch to him" argument; it doesn't fly with me. I have seen too many times where he should have been rung up with a strikeout only to be given a favorable call. Once, twice and even ten times I would just blink an eye at it, but I have seen a lot more than that, so that is why I say he gets the "star" call. It is the same situation that Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz received when they were dominating the NL.   Sorry, but I just can't agree with you on this one."

I replied twice to Bill on this one, saying in part,  "Bonds recently said (or was quoted as saying) that he wants at least the record for homers by a left-handed batter so that people will 'shut up' about Ruth. Bonds is a proud man and, I think, a wounded one, because he believes his father, Bobby Bonds, never got the credit that he was due as a player. Now, I don't know for certain that Barry Bonds actually said what he was quoted as saying, but even if he gets Ruth's record or Hank Aaron's, nobody's ever going to stop talking about Ruth. My qualified statement, ". . .maybe his numbers show him to be even better than that" is nothing more than a concession to the possibility that Bonds could be better than Ruth, that's all. Some people, I'm sure, do regard Bonds as better than Ruth even without Total Baseball's new numbers factored in, but sure as shootin', had I said that ("Bonds is better than Ruth"), I'd have gotten e-mail from people arguing that side of the case, telling me I was wrong. So, in a way, I can't win. That's the primary reason I want to see his numbers since 2000, and his TPR--just to see what they are, and to see if, in any real sense, Bonds has passed the Bambino by. I doubt it.

"In point of fact, Mr. Edgar, until those numbers are published, I'll stick with my private judgment that Ruth is better than Bonds. As the editors of Total Baseball pointed out in the forward to the seventh edition, Mark McGwire's 1998 season and Roger Maris's 1961 season, taken together, barely equal Ruth's best season. And as you point out, Bonds is mostly a homer hitter now, and defensively he has no range. He is not what he used to be in the field. If his body is as steroid-driven as I think it is, he may not get to Ruth's record, much less Aaron's record, a supposition that civility would not let me mention in the column.

"But even if he were to get to both records and break them, we'd still be talking about Ruth. We have to. Without Ruth, there would be no Barry Bonds. It was Ruth who set all those records. It was Ruth who first got what we now recognize as the "reputation" calls that happen on nearly all of Bonds's walks. It was Ruth who established for both good and ill the behavior we recognize today as the behavior of superstars. It was Ruth who was the best, most quotable sports star for the American press, and it was also Ruth who, more than any other player of his day, established the professional athlete as a doer of charitable works.

"What Bonds doesn't see, but what you do, is that Ruth also was an all-around athlete. He could run and field and, of course, he could do somethin' else that Bonds couldn't do. He could pitch. Ruth was 94-46 before he turned to hitting full-time, and if he had continued as a pitcher, he might very well have gotten into the HOF that way, with around 200 wins. The all-around players you cite were all wonderful and you'll get no argument from me about any of them. I can't speak with authority about the end of Musial's career, but Mays and Mantle slipped in their last years. Aaron did, too, just a touch. Clemente certainly didn't (didn't have the chance to), and neither did Williams. When anybody talks about Bonds's greatness, you're right; it is mostly about his hitting, not his fielding or his baserunning. It's premature, then, and probably inaccurate altogether, to call Bonds the greatest player in history or even "the greatest since Ruth". The latter claim seems to be gaining some constancy these days, which is why I brought it up today. . . . Mostly, I'm with you: I don't think there's anybody yet who's been better than Ruth, and a small gallery of players who are a lot closer to Ruth in all-around stature than Bonds is."

Total Baseball's rankings dispute that concluding sentence. As I wrote to subscribers to Astroday Extra last week, "Taking into account their play both offensively and defensively, from the beginning of their careers through the peak years and beyond, Total Baseball finds that Bonds is better than Aaron and Clemente, six points behind Mays overall (95 to 89) and six points ahead of Williams. Was Mays as feared as Bonds is now, though? I saw Mays from '65 'til the end of his career--not his best years--and I didn't get that impression. The guy pitchers were scared of was Willie McCovey. Bonds gets walked time after time, yet he still manages, when he does get chances to swing, to beat you. Yeah, it's true that when the truth does come out about Bonds's steroid-dependent body, people are going to diminish his HR accomplishements, and we should. But, alas, we could say that about a lot of guys, including those we love, like Jeff Bagwell, who use steroid-like supplements such as synthetic creatine, to build muscle mass. Such criticism will drive Bonds crazy, and he'll think it's racially motivated, but it's not. To the best of my knowledge, neither Aaron nor Mays nor Williams ever used anything like the drugs that are available today. Mantle (I'm serious) was too busy messing up his body in conventional ways to have ever eroded it with weightlifting supplements. Roberto Clemente had too much integrity to mess around and mock the game he loved. What we saw from these men was all them--nothing faked or pumped up."

I write on Thursday, February 12, a day upon which the first indictments have been handed down in the BALCO drug investigation. We will have to wait and see whether those investigations change in any fundamental ways our perceptions about how deeply modern-day drugs influence athletic performance, or change how we judge the value of those performances.

Finally, this exchange with my creepy sister, writing from deepest, darkest Houston, complaining about God-knows-what in "The Boys Are Back":

"Dear brother, Roger Clemens is 41, not 40, as you wrote last week. You're such an idiot. Do you even bother to check facts any more? Doesn't look like it. PS--Your spelling's atrocious."

My reply:

"Dear sis, thanks ever so much for the correction, but haven't you heard of 'poetic license', wherein we refer to someone by an age or a number generally, as when a 47-year-old man might say, 'Boy, when ya hit 40, things fall apart fast?' You'd know about that, if anyone would. PS--My spelling is NOT atrocious."

Her reply:

"Oh, yeah? Prove it! Spell 'government'".

My answer: "<*snort*> That's easy! It's spelled just like it sounds. <*Ahem*> 'government': G-U-B-M-E-N-T. 'Government'."

Her reply:

"You're hopeless. Totally hopeless."

Yeah. And to think of it: baseball season hasn't even started yet.