No clue! The Giants' trading of Matt Williams shows just how badly baseball is out of touch with its fans

Sporting News, The, Nov 25, 1996 by Joe Hoppel

Two seasons ago, Matt Williams was hitting home runs for the Giants at such a pace he was being measured, figuratively at least, for a place of honor in Cooperstown. At the rate he was bashing baseballs out of National League yards, he looked like a good :bet to equal Roger Maris' season home run record and maybe even smash it.

Now, as the burners heat up on the 1996-97 Hot Stove League, Williams is being-measured for an Indians uniform. Funny how quickly things change--particularly rosters-in the economics-driven world of today's Major League Baseball. Funny, that is, except to those fans who over the past three years have paid good money to brave bad weather and bad baseball at 3Com (nee Candlestick) Park. As a consolation prize for sitting in howling winds and watching their scorecards blow three sections away,those fans could eagerly await each Williams or Barry Bonds at-bat. In 1997, though, San Francisco baseball won't be half the fun.

In the face of another blown opportunity by owners and players to reach an accord on a new collective bargaining agreement, it seems the Giants have the perfect out for deciding to make the Williams trade: They could blame the financial crisis that is gripping the sport and tell their few staunch supporters the club was forged to deal the well paid Williams, who has more than a few good years left (he turns 31 on November 28) and figures to prove it at cozy Jacobs Field.

Yes,money is central to the ongoing player movement--last week's Williams swap and the nine-player Blue Jays-Pirates trade are surely precursors of what's to come over the winter--but the fact that this commissioner less sport appears to lack direction on all levels might be almost as big of a factor. The owners not only can't relate to their highpriced players, they can't relate to their justmaking-ends-meet fans. Thus they save two dollars here, spend one there, trade this player and obtain that player. And all the while show very little savvy on any front.

The Giants' front office, for one, just doesn't get it. One San Jose columnist tried to paint a picture for G.M. Brian Sabean, explaining that--surprise!--baseball; fans are terminally sentimental and that if they had a say in the matter, Willie Mays still would be patrolling center for the Giants and Will Clark would be digging 'em out of the dirt at first base. And, yes, Matt Williams still would be at third.

Williams, after all, was someone you could admire--a modest, classy man who, after crunching a belt-high fastball, would circle the bases with head down, do his job in the field, sign a few autographs after the game, go home and have dinner with his family. And not act like a jerk. Not make you cringe at his on- or off-field behavior.

Fans communicated their warmth for Williams to the organization, which--surprise!--didn't listen or didn't care. Instead, the brass' attention is on building and financing one of those cutely-throwback stadiums, due to open in about 2000, instead of keeping a throwback player. So, off Williams goes to Cleveland for infielders Jeff Kent and Jose Vizcaino and pitcher Julian Tavarez. Unless Jeff Kent is Clark Kent in disguise and Tavarez is another Juan Marichal (well, like Marichal, Tavarez is righthanded and from the Dominican Republic), the Giants have been fleeced.

In view of the fans' reaction to the trade in the Bay Area--radio talk shows and fax machines have been besieged by steamed messengers--Sabean and friends seem bent on accomplishing what the 1994-95 strike nearly did in one fell swoop, and that's to alienate the fans. Every last one off them.

Of course, it didn't help matters that two days after the trade, Sabean acknowledged the almighty dollar--one million of 'em, plus a player to be named--was a key part of the transaction. The money will be earmarked to help cover next season's payroll. Mind you, knowing a $1 million check is going to be deposited at the local savings and loan is not quite as satisfying as watching Matt Williams trot around the bases,but a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.

"We're prepared to do some bold things," says Sabean, who agreed that Williams was a "class person, a professional ... but we're sick of losing, sick of finishing in last place.

"We are so far down below Los Angeles San Diego and Colorado in terms of talent throughout the roster that if you don't make a bold move and follow it up with other moves because of this flexibility ...you might as well forget a new stadium. We're not going to win, so we're not going to draw.

"If you take (Williams) up against the up per echelon of baseball, he's just another guy. He's not a guy who's carried this ballclub. There are half a dozen to maybe 18 names out there that are bigger-profile players."

For being just another guy, Williams moves on with pretty impressive credentials--a career batting average of .264, 732 runs batted in, 247 homers (43 of them in 1994, when the August strike ended the season and halted his bid to surpass Maris' 61) and three Gold Gloves. He ranks fourth on the Giants' all-time home run list.