ALL HAIL THE MARQUIS OF GRISSOM!

In this age where the dominoes set in motion by revelations of steroid use in baseball have probably only just begun to topple, it would be nice if someone somewhere could find some column inches to devote to a player who wasn’t a showboating me-first blowhard or a chemically enhanced cheater (or both). It turns out Ray Ratto has done just that. Ratto is a pretty good sportswriter who, despite the fact that he can run two sentences together in one paragraph to great effect, is to the San Francisco Chronicle what Bill Plaschke is to The Los Angeles Times, and he's routinely been a voice of reason during the BALCO scandal and other Giant problems among the Chronicle sports pages. The only problem: Ratto's most recent piece is devoted to a player who is, after 16 seasons in Major League Baseball, taking his leave. Marquis Grissom was designated for assignment by the San Francisco Giants yesterday, leaving his future as a ballplayer in doubt.

But as Ratto’s fine piece points out, tears shed for Grissom would be tears wasted. Grissom is perhaps one of the most down-to-earth, levelheaded, decent, hard-working fellows to have ever picked up a piece of big-league lumber. I regretted his departure from the Dodger clubhouse two seasons ago far more than I ever did that of Dodger “heart and soul” Paul Lo Duca (who was a favorite player of mine on that team, no doubt) or Shawn “Never Met a Double Play I Couldn’t Hit Into” Green (a favorite of my wife’s, but not, grumble-grumble, especially for his efficiency with a bat and glove). The absence of Grissom’s solid ability and genuine good humor—he could actually make it sound like he enjoyed being interviewed on the radio by serial digressor Stu Nahan—was made even more painful by his traveling 300 miles to the north and settling in amongst the Hated Ones. And sure enough, whenever the Giants would play the Dodgers—and those games were always intense enough to begin with—Grissom would inevitably, through that solid ability as a clutch hitter and center fielder par excellence, make life tough on Dodger players and Dodger fans, especially those of us who appreciated what the Dodgers would be missing in his absence.

Ratto’s column, sent to me courtesy of best friend and frequent SLIFR contributor Blaaagh, is concise, eloquent testimony to the fact that not every Giants fan (especially not my very reasonable, good-natured friend) is a blind rubber chicken dangler or otherwise ignorant of the qualities, beyond the ability to knock balls into the bay with robotic regularity, that make a truly good player on the field and a truly good man off of it. Marquis Grissom may never play on a Major League Baseball field again; at 38, he is facing up to the realities of aging in a sport that doesn’t exactly lend itself to player longevity with characteristic quiet and unfathomable dignity. And if he doesn’t, we’ll still have the memory of seeing him play, as a Dodger, and a Giant, and a Brewer, Brave, Indian and, of course, an Expo. Check out Ray Ratto’s good-bye to Grissom and doff your cap to an excellent player and one of the really good guys of baseball. If he only could have gone out as a Dodger…