Today’s Bedard thread
DMZ · January 29, 2008 at 11:15 am · Filed Under Mariners
Remember when Angelos nixed the Sele deal and the M’s got a pitcher for two years for what, $1? Good times.
It sucks that Jones, in answering a reasonable question, ended up getting what must have been a severe ass-chewing and is now reduced to saying what the team wants to. This whole situation is ridiculous.
I stayed away from baseball for three years because of Barry Bonds and steroids. The Mitchell Report changed my mind and I actually had planned to go to a game or two in ’08. If this trade goes through it’s another three years where I won’t give a hoot. If Mariner management doesn’t care – why should I?
Then again I read the post on how Cleveland and the guys that left that organization have done things in other cities. Wait a second, who am I kidding…….it’s this trade dammit!!!!!
I’m not seeing how “Bill Bavasi is a bad GM” = “the Mariner management doesn’t care”. I think the management is a lot better off than, say, the Marlins under Wayne Huizenga. At least when Bavasi makes a dunderheaded move like Sori for HoRam, it’s because he has the IQ of soup, not because he is marching on an owner’s directive to cut payroll any way possible.
It’s not that long ago that the above statement *did* describe the M’s. Fans didn’t turn out to see the team throughout the 80s because George Argyros was not, in the end, trying to run a successful baseball operation. The club continually deep-sixed themselves for money reasons, whether they were trading away both Spike Owen and Dave Henderson for Rey Quinones and crap, moving Danny Tartabull for Scott Bankhead and Mike Kingery, or picking Mike Moore over IIRC Daryl Strawberry because they didn’t want to pay the latter player.
Be thankful that this GM is just stupid, not forced to engage in bean-counting (also, Bedard for Jones/Sherrill isn’t that bad of a trade at all).
You know, as a kid I had a friend who had a dog. This was an old, old dog. Older than my friend. It was mostly blind, and mostly crippled, and it mostly just lay around the house. But every once in the while some youthful canine memory or instinct would fire up in that addled brain, and it would head down to the basement. Down there was some old, ugly furniture from the 50s and 60s, including a heavily-upholstered ottoman. Somehow, in what passed for its doggy mind, this crushed-velvet piece of furniture looked like a bitch in heat; and so, with more enthusiasm than ability, the elderly hound would try to mount the footstool.
Watching this deal unfold is like watching that dog, with its arthritic spine and hip dysplasia and general lack of coordination, try to consummate its engagement with the furniture: it’s unpleasant to contemplate, tragi-comical to witness, unsatisfying for the participants, and ultimately a disaster to clean up after.
joser – And don’t forget, it’s nearly impossible to teach that old dog new ways of doing things. It’s best if he’s put down, to save the people around him the pain of watching him being useless any longer. Time to get a new, young, idea filled puppy.
Beautiful analogy, joser.