Page 2's "Critical Mass" is a weekly survey of what's happening at the busy intersection of sports and pop culture.

Feeling good for Barry
I've never put much stock in the choking theory.

	We're all wondering if it's time for Barry to deliver in the clutch.

I figured two things: First, whatever psychology was at work in his postseason hitting woes, it was probably too complicated and variable for me to completely understand or interpret. I'm sure there was nervousness in it, maybe fear, certainly all kinds of intense want-to, and probably some thinking and rethinking (and the occasional thinking too much) about how to approach a pitcher or a situation. But as to how those things worked in combination, or when exactly they made a difference, I couldn't say. It's not that mental stuff is irrelevant, but I'm barely able to get a handle on how it plays itself out in the way I move and do things in the world, so I hesitate to presume I know how, when and why it's at work in Bonds' body and mind, or anyone else's.

Second, I figured beyond the mental factors, there had to be other things contributing to his postseason average, too -- good pitchers making good pitches, teams being careful with him, outfield positioning, game situations dictating his approach to at-bats, and some bad baseball luck (hitting balls into guys' gloves, guessing wrong on key pitches, having his down times correspond to some big series, etc.).

Anyway, "choke" always felt to me like a cheap, easy story for what was probably a complicated phenomenon. We (writers, fans, guys talking over a beer) do that -- we slap stories on things to make them digestible. It saves us the trouble of wrestling with the details and, in this case, the pain of empathizing with the guy struggling to get a hit.

For most of Bonds' career, the story slap has dogged him. Great as he was, he was always also the guy who couldn't deliver at crunch-time. Monday night and Tuesday, though, simple storytelling worked to his advantage because now, after delivering in Game 5 to clinch the division series, his is the story of redemption. He's the guy who conquered his demons, got the monkey off his back, rescued his reputation in one majestic fourth-inning, big-time swing of the bat.

	Barry Bonds has one home run in 97 career postseason at-bats.

This is a cheap, easy story too, of course, and it may not last. (Read Rob Neyer's Tuesday column for more on why.) It was one game, a couple of at-bats. He could go 0-for-4 Wednesday night against the Cards. He could struggle throughout the NLCS. He could be a "choker" again in a heartbeat.

Watching him cross home plate Monday night, though, thinking about how he must have chafed under the choke label over the years, I imagined he knew, and was glad of, the story that was waiting for him at the end of the game. I thought he must, just this once, be glad that we look for easy handles sometimes, and I found myself hoping he'd get a chance to bask in the warm light of the redemption story, if only for a little while.

Feeling bad for Barry
In the moment just after the Giants beat the Braves to clinch the division series, he looked lost and unsure of himself, like he didn't know whether to smile, shout or look tough. A crowd had already gathered in the infield; players were jumping on each other, leaning their heads back screaming. Bonds was alone out in left, at first walking, and then tentatively jogging in to be a part of the celebration.

He's been crucial ("crucial" isn't nearly strong enough) to the team's success this year, but he was just a guy kicking around at the margins during their finest hour so far. It was weird. His talent, his reserve, his cockiness -- these things seemed to keep him on the outside looking in. He looked like the shy kid the other night, kicking dirt clods, keeping his head down, hoping no one will notice him. He looked like the kid you'd ignore, or maybe, if you took pity on him, let him join your party.

Memories of '87
Giants vs. Cardinals. I was in college in the Bay Area at the time, watching the games at Kip's in Berkeley. I remember feeling like Kevin Mitchell was a powerful little sparkplug superhero, I remember shouting at Terry Pendleton to mix in a salad, and I remember thinking Jeffrey Leonard was a baaaaaddd mother. The one-flap-down home run trot. What kind of glorious, crazy bravado was that?

Who of today's Giants could pull that off? Bonds? No. Kent? Don't think so. Only one man, only one no-business-
being-this-good-right-now-getting-this-many-big-hits man. That's right, Benito Santiago, baby, Benito. Bring it back, Benito. Take some poor, unsuspecting Cards pitcher deep and then drop the flap down, go stone-faced and dangerous around the bases. Do it for old-times sake, do it because it just might scare the bejeezus out of the other guys.

Cheap, easy story, Part 3
Bud Selig on the Twins' victory over Oakland: "I'm delighted for them. It's a great story, just because of the way they're playing. I'm enjoying watching them. The rest of it, the history of what happened before, it's in the past now."

Uh, yeah, Bud. Whatever gets you through the night.

	Bud Selig isn't one to burn bridges, but he sure was laying low at the Metrodome for Game 1.

Secret edge for the Twins against the Angels
Kirby Puckett has been wandering around the Metrodome lately, handing out grins and belly-laughs to all the kids.

Secret edge for the Angels against the Twins
They've got a guy named Chone Figgins. He's a Hobbit, I think, complete with Wizard friends and stuff.

Ask me why the Yankees lost
I'm not saying this is for sure or anything, but it couldn't have helped to have Don Zimmer's Preparation H commercials running during the broadcast of Game 4.

You don't want to set yourself up as the potential object of ridicule like that; you don't want to sit there on your bum, looking like a punchline.

The baseball gods, they've got a wicked sense of humor. They say to themselves, Oh, baby's got a sore bottom. Isn't that too bad? You know what he really needs? He needs to get up off it and walk around a little. He needs free time, days on end without any reason to sit on the bench. Let's send his boys packing, that'll make him feel better.

Ask me why the A's lost
Thirty-five dollar bleacher seats for the playoffs. That meant less than 35,000 folks in the stands (32,146, to be exact) for Game 5, and the ones who were there were feeling gouged and surly about it. That's bad math. That's bad mojo. That's an L.

On the shelf
"Yankees Century: 100 Years of New York Yankees Baseball," by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson (Houghton Mifflin, September, 2002).

It says here that 14 percent of Americans root for the Yankees and the other 86 percent root for their demise. No fence-sitting; you're in or you're out with the Yanks.

	When it comes to cheering on the Yanks -- it's all or nothing.

I'm sure the 14 percent have this book already, and that they're reading it aloud to their kids every night before bed, wiping the tears from the kids' faces, letting them know how deep and wide the Yanks' history is.

If you're in the other 86 percent, you ought to be reading it, too. First, because there's something devilishly satisfying in reading about the early days, when the team was nearly shut out of Manhattan, playing on a sloppy, cobbled-together field with a swamp in right. Second, because as you turn the pages you come to realize that from DiMaggio to Mantle, from Bucky Dent and Reggie to Paul O'Neill and El Duque, these guys and the things they've done (sometimes to you, sometimes in spite of you) are part of your history, part of how you remember and imagine your life. And third, because it's insanely thorough, full of details you've forgotten or never knew, and very good looking.

Stout started this series with "Red Sox Century" in 2000. "Dodgers Century" is in the works. These are rich, dazzling books, standard-setters, fully-realized, complicated portraits of the ways a team and a game weave in and out of politics, history and popular culture.

O'Neill's sister contributes an essay to this volume that sums up the series' appeal much better than I can: "In our family we tell stories, we don't really talk. We let baseball articulate the hopes and fears that we'd never consider confiding in each other."

This week's line I most wish I'd written
From Phil Elderkin in a Christian Science Monitor piece on the Angels' Cinderella season:

"In a season of late glory and odd fealty, it's appropriate that shortstop David Eckstein is the player every grandmother in Orange County wants to knit socks for -- even though outfielder Garret Anderson has had a near-Most Valuable Player year."

This week's there-it-is line
Latrell Sprewell does whatever it is he does -- busts his hand in a fight, slips on a wet deck, tweaks it trying to reel in a marlin, whatever -- and the brass get their Knickers in a twist and bring down the heavy, we're-not-taking-any-more-guff fine, which makes them look like scolding parents and makes Spree look, and probably feel, like a misbehaving kid (which maybe he is).

Meanwhile, teammate Alan Houston says, "I think we should know something, honestly, as a team, as his teammates. Whatever he wants to let us know, that's on him." That's on him. Simple turn of phrase and Houston's made this about responsibility and family. He's challenged his teammate, but done it in a way that communicates respect, in a way that says, you're a man, you do what you have to do, you do what's right. The Knicks could have skipped the fine, because there it is.

This week's guy who gets a little more respect out of me than he did before
The Knicks' Kurt Thomas. When asked if Latrell's fine was steep, he said, "Hell, yes. A quarter of a million? That's a house."

Nice. Wish I'd said that.

On the air
Campbell's Chunky Soup "Mama's Boys" commercial featuring Brian Urlacher. There's that line in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" when Alan Alda is talking about comedy: "If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not funny."

Urlacher bent over, scrambling around the "Duck-Duck-Goose" circle -- that's funny.

	Gretzky put off his kudos, opting to wait for all the Kings' men.

On the newsstand
"All is Forgiven," Los Angeles Times article by Helene Elliott on Wayne Gretzky's jersey number being retired by the Los Angeles Kings before Wednesday night's preseason game against the Coyotes.

The Kings have wanted to retire his number for a while now, but Gretzky insisted they wait until the team's former owner Bruce McNall could participate in the ceremonies. McNall was serving almost four years in federal prison for fraud, fraud which cost Gretzky nearly $1.5 million.

Like you needed another reason to think of The Great One as graceful and classy.

RIP Bruce Paltrow
To all the spot-on, heartfelt things Bill Simmons said last week, I'll just add this: He knew how smart we were, even when we were young. He knew we were tough, but not quite as tough as we thought we were. He knew why and how we loved to play and, most importantly, he knew the game wasn't some silly sidelight, it wasn't the scene or the situation for storylines and jokes, it was the simple, basic stuff of how we knew each other -- just like his show.

Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column, which will appear every Wednesday on Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net.