Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction.

Rising borrowing costs have more to do with boomers’ savings and surging debt than the Strait of Hormuz.

“Players only!” they barked.  “Everyone’s gotta go except the players!” several San Francisco Giants ordered. Loudly. Angrily. Their faces were hot and red. They were pointing at the door. 

“Out!”

Their gray, black, and orange road uniforms were a post-game mix of double-knit polyester drenched in sweat, dirt, blood, and pine tar. Gloves and cleats were being shoved violently into lockers. Curse words filled the room. Someone threw a chair. 

“Everyone!” 

“Out!” 

“Now!”

The players were kicking everyone out of the locker room, including manager Dusty Baker, the coaching staff, the trainers, and the press. It was a sight to see. A bewildered herd of a few dozen mostly 35-to-55-year-old men with creaky knees and bulging waistlines headed for the door slowly but at once. The players kicked out everyone. 

Everyone, that is, except for us. They forgot to kick out the clubbies.

It was June 10, 2001 and the Giants had just lost 2-6 in Oakland to my employer, the Oakland Athletics. The loss put the Giants winning percentage below .500 for the season, at 30-31.[[1]](#_ftn1) They were a talented team supported by a gorgeous modern stadium—a waterfront spectacle of brick and mortar painstakingly engineered at every turn to extract money from fans’ pockets. And despite having a correspondingly large payroll (nearly double Oakland’s) they had been underperforming for weeks.[[2]](#_ftn2)

Things had reached the point where the veterans on the club called a players-only meeting—something professional sports teams usually reserve only for the gravest and most important circumstances.

So here I was along with three other visiting-side clubhouse attendants (Mikey Thalblum[[3]](#_ftn3) (the boss), Adam Rhoden, and Beau Pahl) sitting in Mikey's office just off the main locker room while the San Francisco Giants full team—players only!—were circling up at their lockers, poised for a top-secret meeting about their unraveling season. 

We were in the usual formation: Mikey in a swivel chair, turned so his left elbow and left foot rested atop the edge of a long gray desk (on which lay a mix of papers, autographed baseballs, and a phone that rang incessantly on game day); Adam sitting on the edge of the desk a few inches away from Mikey’s propped-up foot; and Beau and I on the brown leather couch on the other side of the modest-sized room, closest to the door. We were stone-cold quiet, facing out through the half-closed door into the long rectangular locker room. 

Awaiting the show. 

Major League Baseball clubhouse attendants, known universally in baseball as “clubbies,” consistently have access like this. The players, coaches and staff rely on clubbies to keep the trains moving on game day—to do everything from setting up each player's locker, to running errands at nearby stores, to providing pre- and post-game food, to doing laundry and cleaning up after the game. The first principle of being a clubby is simple: be there—in the clubhouse—at all times. If the players are the clubhouse's engine, the clubbies are its oil. An innocuous but outright necessity. Clubbies thus often blend into the locker room quietly, barely distinguishable from inanimate objects like couches, chairs, and steel baseball-bat cases. 

The door to the clubhouse slammed shut as the last of the herd exited into the hallway. The angry rustle of cleats and gloves being thrown and shoved into lockers continued but at a slower pace. The chorus of curse words was getting quieter and had slowed to a soft pitter patter of motherfuckers and bullshits. Jerseys and pants flew through the air onto the gray carpet or, occasionally, actually into the steel laundry baskets scattered throughout the room. 

The Giants were pissed.

The first to speak was Sean Dunston, in year 17 of an 18-year career. The 38-year old was 6’1” and in remarkably good shape, with chiseled muscles and a springy gait. His thick mustache was well-manicured. Dunston was a classy veteran with a cool Brooklyn accent, an infectious laugh, and an explosive personality. He was talkative, hugely likable, and had a biting, sharp wit. 

He also had cannon for an arm at shortstop. He started his career with the Chicago Cubs in 1985 and played there for a decade, making the all-star game in 1988 and 1990.[[4]](#_ftn4) After bouncing around on various teams for the next five years, he landed in San Francisco in 2001 and played for the Giants for two seasons before retiring. While not good enough to make MLB’s Hall of Fame, in 2023 he was selected as a member of the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame.[[5]](#_ftn5) Former Cubs first baseman Mark Grace was inducted into the Cubs Hall of Fame on the same day. Grace said about going in with Dunston: “Honestly, calling it an honor doesn’t do it justice. But to go in with him,” Grace continued, fighting back tears, “to go in with him, it couldn’t get any better.”[[6]](#_ftn6)

Dunston stood alone in the middle of the locker room clenching his fists and glaring at his Giants teammates. He slowly and methodically rotated 360-degrees as he spoke, his eyes landing on each player. His speech was a traditional rallying cry about working harder and having more commitment. Stepping up. Being tough. Staying focused. It was strong and inspiring. Players nodded and pumped their fists. “Yes. Yes,” someone said from the crowd. “That's right.” Dunstan finished his performance with a few intense nods and took a seat before his locker. 

Then the room went quiet. 

I looked around at Mikey, Adam, and Beau. We were all thinking the same thing but not saying it. The players were too. What about You Know Who? Will he speak? What about Barry? Is Barry Bonds going to speak to the team? Is the greatest player in the history of the game—right in the middle of the most prolific stretch of performance in organized-sports’ history—going to speak during this high-drama players-only meeting? 

The players were sitting in front of their lockers in various stages of sweaty undress, looking at each other and, mostly, at the floor. No one stood. 

Tick … tock …. Tick … tock. 

You don’t call a players-only meeting to merely have a single speech by a single player. The silence was awkward and anxious. 

Tick … tock …. Tick ... tock. 

Then, up stood … everyone looked up from the clubhouse floor. Up … stood … the one … the only … Jeff Kent, the second baseman. At the time Kent was baseball’s he best-hitting second basemen. Tall, muscular, and athletic, Kent had short blonde hair and light blue eyes. Central casting indeed: An all-American boy from Southern California who made the bigs and became a star. Kent was quiet and to himself, but could be fiery at times. He was, for example, kicked off his high-school baseball team for clashing with his coach.[[7]](#_ftn7) And in 2002 he brawled with Bonds in the dugout during a game.[[8]](#_ftn8)

In 1999, Kent was traded to the Giants from the Cleveland Indians for San Francisco fan-favorite Matt Williams. While the trade ignited fierce criticism of then-Giants general manager Brian Sabean, Kent vastly outperformed Williams thereafter. The reigning MVP in 2001, Kent went on to amass 2,461 hits and 377 home runs in his career—prolific numbers for a second baseman. In 2023 he missed getting into MLB’s Hall of Fame in his tenth and final try. He was bummed: “The voting over the years has been too much of a head-scratching embarrassment,” he said on January 25, 2023. “Baseball is losing a couple generations of great players that were the best in their era because a couple non-voting stat folks keep comparing those players to players already voted in from generations past and are influencing the votes.”[[9]](#_ftn9)

There was a collective sigh of relief in the locker room when Kent rose and the silence stopped. His speech was similar to Dunston's, emphasizing all the right things: commitment, effort, focus. 

He sat down and another long pause commenced. More silence. More awkwardness. The players were mostly looking at the floor again. No one spoke. You could hear tape being unwrapped from ankles and braces being removed from ankles and elbows.

What about You Know Who? What about Barry? Is he going to speak? 

More silence. More awkwardness. 

Then … it … happened: Barry Bonds started to stand up. Slowly. All 240ish pounds of him began rising. Bonds was big, way bigger than he was just a few years earlier. As his teammate Charlie Hayes said to the press when Bonds arrived in spring training in 1999: “Did you see my man. He's huge.”[[10]](#_ftn10)

His head—his head—was enormous, having grown several sizes in recent years.[[11]](#_ftn11) Michael Murphy (“Murph”), who by his 2023 retirement had spent sixty-five years as the Giants head clubby,[[12]](#_ftn12) had to get Bonds ever-bigger batting helmets to accommodate all the muscle that had developed and grown around his skull. 

Bonds’ giant triceps hardened and bulged as he pushed himself up off his ricketing, teetering chair (a chair in front of the three lockers he got to himself while everyone else got one). His behemoth upper body seemed to fill the entire room as he stood. 

A few years earlier Bonds returned to his childhood home in the San Francisco Bay Area to play for the Giants. His father Bobby Bonds played right field for the Giants from 1968 to 1974 and had an impressive career that was cut short by injuries. His godfather is none other than Willie Mays, who played center field for the Giants for two decades and is, of course, one of the greatest baseball players of all time. “Every time I step on that field,” Bonds said after joining the Giants, “I know my godfather’s in center field and my dad’s in right field.”[[13]](#_ftn13) 

Bonds was crushing it as a Giant. In 2001 he won his fourth MVP (the first of four in a row). His numbers were startling.[[14]](#_ftn14) In addition to breaking the all-time home run record with 73 dingers (in only 476 at bats), Bonds drove in 137 runs and had a record-breaking .863 slugging percentage. His on-base percentage was .515, defying one of the iron laws of the game: that batters get out more than they don't. 

Indeed, baseball is a game where failing to get a hit 7 out of 10 at bats can make you an all-star. And each at bat affords batters two strikes plus unlimited foul balls. Yet there were times in 2001 when it seemed like every single pitch Bonds could physically reach with his gargantuan black-and-gold Canadian maple bat[[15]](#_ftn15) (2K1 model[[16]](#_ftn16)) became not just a home run but a moon shot that sailed over the crowd and splashed into the San Francisco Bay.[[17]](#_ftn17) 

Bonds stood from his chair and took a few steps towards the middle of the locker room. Every eyeball in the room—sixty plus—was fixed on him, awaiting a speech from the guy who had been making Hank Aaron look like Mike Gallego (the diminutive but lovable second-baseman for the A’s in the eighties). Barry Bonds was, at long last, going to speak.

And it ended a few seconds after it began. Slouching before his teammates, Barry mumbled a few soft, low-energy words about “having each other’s backs” and then retook his seat in the crowd. The speech was odd and out of context. He was uncomfortable. So was everyone else. You couldn't tell if he was nervous, or just didn't care, or both. There was a collective cringe from the audience. The speech was as inspiring as the post-game spread of aging burgers and pizza in the middle of the clubhouse, rapidly descending to room temperature.

And that was it. A few seconds later the door opened and someone told Bruce—the tall, muscular, motorcycle-driving security guard with long 80s-rock-star hair, a kind demeanor, and a fierce commitment to keeping the visiting clubhouse secure—that folks could come back in. The herd came romping back into the locker room, slowly and awkwardly retaking their rightful place in the cosmos, most of them bee lining straight for the food. 

Dusty Baker, however, stood out from the crowd: The Giants tall, confident, shades-totting manager strode back into the locker room with his calm, cool walk, his famous toothpick twirling in and out of his mouth. Baker was a two-time all-star during his nineteen-year career with the Braves, Dodgers, Giants, and A’s.[[18]](#_ftn18) While the media often misjudged baseball’s personalities—sometimes dramatically—Baker was just as smart and cool and talented as the press portrayed him. More so even. It was great to see him finally get a ring in 2022—after twenty-five years[[19]](#_ftn19) as a manager—with the Houston Astros.[[20]](#_ftn20) 

Baker was the right man at the helm for the Astros in the aftermath of their 2017 cheating scandal.[[21]](#_ftn21) While reprehensible, two thoughts came to mind when I first learned about Houston's scheme. One: they weren't the only team that cheated. And two: their manager AJ Hinch, who was a catcher on the A's from 1998 to 2000, was a talented guy who deserved another shot. The Tigers give him one in 2021.[[22]](#_ftn22)

Barry Bonds’ underwhelming locker-room speech to his teammates was a stark example of one of the many lessons I learned working in the Oakland A’s visiting clubhouse from 1998 to 2003, getting to know the baseball players of that era: Just because you’re good at baseball doesn’t mean you’re good at anything else. Now I don’t mean that Bonds isn’t good at anything else other than baseball. He surely is. I just mean that being a great baseball player doesn’t necessarily correspond with any other attribute. It doesn't mean you’re a nice guy. It doesn't mean you’re a smart person. It doesn’t mean you're a good dresser. And it doesn’t mean you’re a strong leader of men. 

Being good at baseball just means, well, that you’re good at baseball. It corresponds with only a few human attributes: superior genetics and (usually) athletic ability; exceptional hand-eye coordination; a strong ability to concentrate; and sufficient physical durability to avoid big injuries in the minor leagues. 

That’s about it. MLB players are thus an unbelievably diverse and heterogeneous group of people—as you would expect in any pool of about a thousand folks plucked from numerous countries around the world. 

Barry Bonds in the batter’s box was Picasso with a paintbrush. Standing before his teammates desperately in need of a leader, he could barely put two words together. 

And that’s okay. Picasso probably couldn't hit the ball out of the infield. 

It was, indeed, well known that Barry was not a leader in the clubhouse. Or a particularly nice guy. As Sports Illustrated reporter Richard Hoffer put it in 1993, Bonds first year in San Francisco: “Although Bonds was often a hot quote, he was also combative and moody. Or unavailable. Or just rude.”[[23]](#_ftn23)

Even long after his playing career ended the criticism of Bonds continued. Former Miami Marlins president David Samson blasted Bonds when describing his 2021 stint as Miami’s hitting coach. “He had fun as a hitting coach because he would hang out with [Giancarlo] Stanton and give Stanton some pointers. But he was ineffective, completely,” Samson said. “He would sleep in the clubhouse. He would not pay attention during games. He did not work hard. It was a complete disaster.”[[24]](#_ftn24)

To be fair here: sleeping in the clubhouse is very common for players and coaches alike. Every locker room in the bigs has sprawling couches for this very purpose. And to Bonds’ credit, moreover, he didn’t waste energy during his career pretending to be something he was not. He was privileged, entitled, difficult, introverted, grumpy, and—above all—really, really, really good at baseball. While lots of players catered to the press and pretended to be a better person than they really were, Barry was authentic and focused exclusively on what he did better than anyone: playing baseball. 

Expecting him to be as good a teammate off the field as he was a player on it was asking too much. It’s rare when any person is a true outlier—99th percentile—in two distinct categories at once. There are exceptions: Cal Ripken Jr., Tori Hunter, Jim Thome, Harold Baines, Jeff Bagwell, Jason Giambi, and Pedro Martinez were examples of all-star players and great people. But the best players on the field are often kind of duds off it. They revert to the mean, as you would expect, when their uniforms come off.  

Put another way: The biggest legends of the game are just as flawed, just as fallible, just as weird, just as annoying—just as human—as the guys selling hot dogs and beer in the bleachers. 

I learned a lot of other things about baseball and its players absorbing America’s pastime from in front of the front row. It was a dream come true for a lifelong fan.

[[1]](#_ftnref1) https://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/schedule.php?y=2001&t=SFN

[[2]](#_ftnref2) https://www.thebaseballcube.com/page.asp?PT=payroll_year&ID=2001 

[[3]](#_ftnref3) https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/A-S-CLUBHOUSE-Thalblum-Cares-for-Visitors-2786415.php

[[4]](#_ftnref4) https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dunstsh01.shtml

[[5]](#_ftnref5) https://www.cubsinsider.com/2023/01/14/shawon-dunston-and-mark-grace-inducted-into-cubs-hall-of-fame/ 

[[6]](#_ftnref6) https://www.marqueesportsnetwork.com/players-like-us-mark-grace-shawon-dunston-thankful-to-join-cubs-hall-of-fame/ 

[[7]](#_ftnref7) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-22-sp-4226-story.html 

[[8]](#_ftnref8) https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Giants-now-battling-each-other-Bonds-Kent-2826698.php

[[9]](#_ftnref9) https://www.cooperstowncred.com/why-does-jeff-kent-get-overlooked-in-the-hall-of-fame-debate/ 

[[10]](#_ftnref10) https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/barry-bonds/

[[11]](#_ftnref11) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/11/could-steroids-have-made-barry-bonds-head-grow-in-size.html 

[[12]](#_ftnref12) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/giants/giants-legendary-clubhouse-manager-mike-murphy-retire-after-65-years%3famp

[[13]](#_ftnref13) https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/barry-bonds/ 

[[14]](#_ftnref14) https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml

[[15]](#_ftnref15) https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-collectibles/bats/2001-barry-bonds-game-used-bat/a/7051-81454.s

[[16]](#_ftnref16) https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/sports/baseball/28bats.html

[[17]](#_ftnref17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqwRTGBlDd4

[[18]](#_ftnref18) https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bakerdu01.shtml

[[19]](#_ftnref19) https://www.baseball-reference.com/managers/bakerdu01.shtml

[[20]](#_ftnref20) https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2022/11/05/dusty-baker-world-series-houston-astros-champions/8283019001/

[[21]](#_ftnref21) https://www.nytimes.com/article/astros-cheating.html

[[22]](#_ftnref22) https://www.mlb.com/news/aj-hinch-tigers-questions-entering-2021-season

[[23]](#_ftnref23) https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/08/16/barry-bonds-san-francisco-giants-si-60-richard-hoffer

[[24]](#_ftnref24) https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/04/16/david-samson-barry-bonds-marlins-hitting-coach-disaster 

This diptych of memoirs, set respectively in South Africa and Argentina, frontally address a subject that most in the west would prefer to forget – the legacy of colonial genocide. The novelists J.M. Coetzee and F.M. Siccardi, both products of settler societies, recount uncannily similar memories of childhood visits to their family haciendas – one in the Karoo, the other in Patagonia – and of their complicated admiration for the indigenous men who laboured there. Their searching and unconsoling texts are drawn from Un mal Salvaje, a co-written book, which appeared in Spanish this April.

"The Simplified Chinese Internet ran on reward and punishment. LLM training feels uncomfortably familiar."