Occasionally in sports, it can be instructive to step away from a story and approach it again from the perspective of someone coming in cold, seeing it for the first time, not necessarily burdened by the full weight of history and context.

	Fred McGriff has homered three times in his last eight at-bats.

For some of us, of course, this is more or less a permanent state of being. But every time I review the Fred McGriff situation, I find myself asking the same basic question: Why aren't people acknowledging the ways in which this man is doing things exactly right?

This isn't to suggest that McGriff merits a standing O for vetoing his trade from Tampa Bay to the Chicago Cubs. This is one of those baseball deals tailor-made for public criticism, in fact, and McGriff has certainly come in for his share by refusing to leave the worst team in the majors (by record) for a bona-fide playoff contender -- and in Wrigley Field, no less.

Even around the Tampa-St. Pete area, news of McGriff's refusal to waive the no-trade clause in his contract has ranged from genial confusion ("Can he do that?") to out-and-out disbelief ("What is he, nuts?"). Judging from the general reaction, you might think that McGriff had decided to switch around and bat right-handed for the rest of his career, or announced his intention to tie his shoelaces together at the start of each game. The man's gone bonkers, right?

And this is the point at which the argument just breaks down for me, this thing about McGriff having lost his baseball mind. Worse, articles already have appeared in which McGriff's competitive desire has been thrown into question -- politely, of course, and usually indirectly -- as though he somehow lacked the fortitude to join the Cubs in a real divisional race and would rather toil in the no-pressure atmosphere of a last-place club. (The fact that McGriff has a World Series ring usually is omitted from the grim proceedings.)

Look, not to surrender my Professional Cynic's card prematurely, but what if -- and let's go way out on the ledge and consider every possibility, no matter how farfetched -- what if Fred McGriff is simply telling the truth? He is a Tampa Bay native who signed with the Devil Rays near the end of his playing career on the assumption that he would finish out his baseball life at home. He is a family man, and his children are young. Tampa is where he wants to play.

That's it. End of story. Maybe, just maybe, the 37-year-old McGriff is being truthful when he says the decision isn't really all about him anymore, and isn't strictly about what he wants. Maybe there are other people to consider.

Running the pure risk of taking this conversation to a different level, isn't that the kind of sentiment that so many people in sports bemoan the lack of in their heroes and their icons? If I had a buck for every fan who told me he was fed up with the constant, me-first, team-to-team movement of players and the cutthroat talent-swapping and salary-dumping by franchises, I'd ... well, I'd still be middle-class, but you catch the drift. That sentiment exists, and it exists in numbers that ought to worry the people in pro sports but doesn't, because they don't yet represent a stop-payment on a season-ticket check.

It is certainly possible that McGriff will yield to a trade before the July 31 deadline -- possible, that is, that the well-traveled veteran merely needs more time to adjust to the thought of leaving his family yet again and taking his act to another city on a rent-a-cop basis. Too, it is possible that McGriff is calculating enough to nix the Cubs in favor of a better deal, on the historically supportable basis that any long-term success involving the Cubs is immediately subject to suspicion.

And it is possible that McGriff, a solid civic booster in the Tampa Bay area, is still trying to figure out how best to serve a Devil Rays franchise that first wanted his high-profile, local-star services and now seems to be telling him that the best he can do for them is agree to let them trade away his fat salary in the name of future progress.

All possible, but I like the other hand. On that other hand, Fred McGriff is a really good baseball player who believed he had a golden chance to finish out his career at home, in the good company of his family and friends, on a decently competitive team. He's got two out of three right now. I'm having a hard time blaming him for not being in a terrible hurry to reverse those fractions.

Mark Kreidler of the Sacramento Bee is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.