Don't blame Buster Posey

He's right about San Francisco, even if it makes you mad

Buster Posey is right.

You have probably already heard or read the comments of the Hall of Fame-bound former Giants catcher. In a conversation with The Athletic, and repeated elsewhere, Posey said San Francisco’s reputation as crime and drug ridden hurt the team’s chances to sign superstar Shohei Ohtani, as well as other high-value free agents.

Here’s the full quote, because it is worth reading:

"Something I think is noteworthy, something that unfortunately keeps popping up from players and even the players’ wives, is there’s a bit of an uneasiness with the city itself, as far as the state of the city, with crime, with drugs. Whether that’s all completely fair or not, perception is reality. It’s a frustrating cycle, I think, and not just with baseball. Baseball is secondary to life and the important things in life. But as far as a free-agent pursuit goes, I have seen that it does affect things.”

Predictably, true blue San Franciscans have gone apoplectic. The whole drug/crime/homeless narrative is a canard, they say. It’s nothing but fiction and hysteria. This is a world class city, always has been, always will be.

There’s really only one problem with that.

It doesn’t matter.

We know how you feel, Mr. San Francisco. This is your home. You love it and defend it. We get that’s your perception.

It’s the other people, the outsiders, the families, the young up-and-comers from out of state — it’s their perception that matters.

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Now, you’re going to say, the Giants are dealing with a bunch of rich, pampered athletes. They’re unhappy if the free coffee in the clubhouse isn’t hot enough.

But in a way, these are the perfect examples. They are, admittedly, millionaires. But that’s the point. This is a moment in their lives when they’ve hit it big. They can go almost anywhere. They’re looking to move to a great place — probably with their families — where they can live well and have a great time.

And they’re saying . . . San Francisco ain’t it.

Now, instead of considering a second baseman, how about a computer programer? Or a surgeon. He or she is in demand. They’ve got choices. And why wouldn’t they say, as ballplayers have said to Posey, “there’s an uneasiness with the city.” And why wouldn’t they go somewhere else?

Or take the Giants. Let’s make them a stand-in for SF companies. We’re trying to build a team here, they say, and we gotta tell you, the perception of this city is a real problem.

There’s no mystery about how this has happened. The Nancy Pelosi/San Francisco nexus of despair is a regular feature in conservative media.

Always angry presidential candidate Ron DeSantis made a special trip to what he called “the once-great city of San Francisco” so he could film a campaign ad, describing how drug use is rampant, crime is out of control and the city has “collapsed.”

But he’s not the only one. Deep thinkers have lined up to take a Draymond Green-like swipe at the cool gray city of love. Here’s one from The Atlantic, with the nice, even-handed headline “How San Francisco Became a Failed City.”

It does get to be exasperating. And at that point we often see someone writing, or describing, their idyllic local life. They love their neighborhood, shop at local stores and have a couple of nice restaurants in the area.

Why wouldn’t a baseball free agent, or app developer, do that? Or even find a place in the ‘burbs and just come to the city for work?

Well, because then you’d have to buy into the other part of the San Francisco live/work story.

You have to do what the natives do — actively ignore the rows of tents along downtown streets. Shrug in the likely event that you are going to see someone face-down and motionless on the sidewalk.

The really infuriating part of the DeSantis cheap shot video is that nobody doubts that he actually did see people using drugs himself. The term “open air drug market” is consistently used to describe the Tenderloin.

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Now, you’re going to say that other cities have homeless/tent/drug problems. What about Los Angeles?

But there’s no place that has an open wound of drug/violence/homelessness smack in the center of town. The worst of the disarray, crime and fentanyl overdoses happens between Union Square and City Hall.

It’s a small city, but if you want to cross town you almost have to go past the tent cities and drug dealing street corners. It’s right there in front of you.

You can be mad at Posey if you’d like, but he was in the room when this happened. He heard players, wives and representatives say San Francisco is too dirty, scary and appealing to move to.

This isn’t an insult, it’s a clarion call for action. The Giants are saying, as a business, we can’t attract top talent because they don’t trust the city.

The response has been as typical as summer fog — civic bickering.

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins was asked what could be done to move unhoused individuals off the street and into shelter. Jenkins said the tent dwellers should not be allowed to become “comfortable.”

And naturally, the blowback from homeless advocates was immediate. How could she say sleeping on the sidewalk was comfortable?

But as the Chronicle story referenced above says, comfortable may not be the right word, but many of the tent-dwellers are certainly dug in. City officials offered these numbers, quoted in the Chron.

In November, for instance, street outreach workers engaged with 350 people, offering them shelter and services. In 213 of those encounters, or 60% of them, people declined assistance, city data showed. 

It’s not a matter of lack of outreach, it’s that some tent residents stake out a place on the sidewalk and make it a homestead. It may be in front of a house or a business, but they consider it their home plot.

A majority, based on the city’s numbers, decline shelter. But some also defend their turf.

And if there’s no action from the city, that can lead to ugly vigilantism. You’ve heard of the now well-known case of a former fire commissioner, who confronted a homeless couple he said were using drugs in front of his parents’ house (indefensibly he may have used bear spray) and ended up getting badly beaten with a metal rod.

It’s a bad outcome for everyone. And the city’s reputation.

There are some signs of progress. Mayor London Breed has taken a ruling in an ongoing lawsuit to say the city will enforce sit-lie laws. Although the suit is still pending, Breed feels she has the authority to move tent-dwellers if they are offered shelter and decline. That, the city says, makes them “voluntarily” homeless.

There’s probably lots more to come on that, but meanwhile other cities are acting.

San Jose is going ahead with a copy of a pilot program from San Diego, offering supervised “safe sleeping sites.”

It’s a program San Francisco has tried, with some success. But back in 2021, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman proposed expanding the sites to make them large enough create “a sufficient number of safe sleeping sites to accommodate all unsheltered homeless,” the proposal didn’t even get out of committee.

Instead, we’re back to insisting that the unhoused be given a place with “a door and a lock.” Building, in other words, houses or apartments for everyone who is unhoused. That hasn’t worked for decades and isn’t likely to do so now.

But something has to be done. Somewhere between the hand-wringing over the dismal state of the city, and the nothing-to-see-here boosterism, there has to be a way to clear the tent cities and get crime and drugs under control.

Because you can get mad at Buster Posey if you want . . .

But he’s right.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Threads: @cwnevius