Talking with: Luis Gonzalez, part II

BK: Positive, negative?  What do you look at and say I'm happy about this, not so happy about that?

LG: I think a lot of the guys now don't appreciate what the older guys have gone through to get us where we are now.  A lot of the young guys now, it bothers me that they don't know the history of the game.  They don't know.  And then there are some great young players that have come up.  You look at Wright on (the Mets), you look at Russell (Martin), that know how to play the game.  Chad Tracy with Arizona.  I love the way he plays the game.  And then there's other guys that come up, and they feel like everything is owed to them, and they haven't even played in the minor leagues.  They went straight from college or wherever it was, a year and a half (later), the next thing you know they're in the big leagues, and they don't appreciate it.  They feel like everybody's out to get them.  It's a different breed out there.

BK: Has the atmosphere changed, too?  I know covering the game is different now than it was.

LG: It's changed a lot because of the fact that there's more attention.  There's more satellite and all the games are broadcast radio, TV, and all the papers cover everything.  There's not a time where everything is missed.  Everything is microscoped. 

BK: I was talking about this with another writer I work with, and his thought was that fans see more, but get less. 

LG: You get less because players are more reserved.  But you do (get more information).  (Fans) have more access to everything that's going on.  You can get on the Internet now and there's so many different things people find out.  They pull up stats.  Unbelievable stats, just stuff that us as players are going, How the heck did they know about that?  We would have never even thought about something like that.  Like (on June 12), Hong-Chih Kuo, the first Taiwanese player to hit a home run in the Major Leagues?  Who would have known that?  Nobody would have even thought about it unless they put it up on the board. 

BK: When you're done and you look back, and other people will look back on the era in which you played, every number, every stat, is looked at with suspicion.  Nobody knows what is right and what is wrong.  Does that bother you?

LG: It is hard.  Because I think the people that know you know who you are, know how you are.  Really, you can't worry about it because it is what it is.  You would hope that the people that saw you play and had seen you come up the ranks know how hard you've worked to get where you're at.  And like I said, I love playing this game.  I've always appreciated the game, I appreciate the guys who played in the past.  I'm an historian of the game.  I love being around it.  That's going to be the hard part when it's time for me to finish.  I don't know what I'm going to do, if I'm going to coach, if I'm going to do broadcasting, or whatever.  But for right now, I just love playing this game.

BK: You did the Fox thing during the last postseason.

LG: Yeah, that was fun, but it's different.  Here I am, I was still an active player but I'd come into the clubhouse and it was like I was alienated a little bit.  So you learn.  You learn a lot, but at the same you realize that when you're done playing, you're done playing.  There's really very few guys that retire a hundred times and come back.  You really close the book and say that's it, I'm done. 

BK: There was a time when what you did in 2001 would have been called a career year. 

LG: And I still think it is.

BK: But now...

LG:  People are all going to have their opinions, because negativity is what sells.  There's never good stories out there all the time, that everybody goes "Oh, let me read this great story."  If there's two stories out there, if there's a bad one and a good one, they want to read the bad one first.  But I've never failed anything.  I've never failed any test, I was always open to anything.  I had press conferences, anybody could ask me any questions.  I was always open.  I've always been at my locker after every game, I've never hid from anything.  So that's what bugs me, when people are out there screaming and hollering "Steriods!" and people don't know me.  You can ask my teammates, I'm the worst eater on the team.  And I love lifting weights, I love getting in there, but I've never took any things like that.  I didn't drink a beer until I was almost out of high school, getting ready to go to college. 

BK: But you understand why fans feel the way they do.  It's the uncertainty because there was no testing or anything that makes people upset.

LG: Exactly, and I understand that.  But as a human being, you get upset when people question your integrity and your character, because that's something I've always prided myself on.

BK: Sure.

LG: So there's two sides to the coin.  But I understand.  I just get mad when people are screaming it out on the field, and you just want to turn to them and say, you know what?  Sit down with me one day.  You really don't know who I am or know what I've come through or how hard I've worked to get to where I am right now.

BK: Looking back, should the union, should Major League Baseball, should the media have been more proactive about the problem five or ten years ago?  Would it have made a difference?

LG: I don't know.  That's to be seen.  Am I glad it came up?  Yeah, because it cleaned the game up.

BK: Even if it came later than it should have, something is better than nothing?

LG: In the long run, it's always going to leave that question in everybody's mind, but all in all I'm glad it's all out in the open.

BK: You're one of the only people who has actually had a chance to live the backyard fantasy of driving home the winning run in Game 7 of the World Series.  Is there anything you've done over the course of your career that's been cooler? 

LG: Man, that would be tough.  Very tough.  The thirty game hitting streak (in 1999 with Arizona) was great.  But no, I really couldn't.  Even in that situation, Game 7, I was still thinking of me as a little kid.  You never hear a guy (set the scene with) "Game 5 of the World Series!"  Everybody always goes, "Game 7 of the World Series, coming up to bat...."

BK: "Game 3 of the NLDS!"

LG: Exactly.  And I was actually in that dream situation.

BK: It's almost cliche. 

LG: Yeah.  It was perfect.  I mean, how many times has it happened?  That was the fifth time?  The fourth time?  Some minute time, and to actually be that guy to do it, I always say it was that one chance at a hole in on and I got it.  In my dream, I hit a home run or a double in the gap.  In reality, I'll take the bloop single.