On Monday, Dave Del Grande of the Oakland Trib/ANG wrote a column explaining why the A's designated Milton Bradley for assignment. Del Grande is an annoying writer who seems to take great delight in yelling fire in crowded theaters to provoke readers, but I thought this piece was over the line even for him. The paper has pulled the article from their website, but I don't recycle my newspapers until Thursday so I can pull quotes from the paper itself.Let me get this this straight: The A's basically cut a supremely talented black outfielder because they have a dime-a-dozen white guy who complains less about being a backup. What in the world was Billy Beane thinking? Bradley has the potential to be a difference-maker when he's hot. Name me one of the Oakland white guys about whom you could say that.Swisher, Cust, Buck, Chavez, Ellis, Crosby, Kotsay, Scutaro, Kendall. Every player on the Oakland roster, every player (black, white, or brown) on every major league roster has the potential to be a difference-maker when he's hot. I'm a big Milton Bradley fan, wish he was still playing for the A's, and hope he hooks up with another team, but he wasn't their only player with the potential to be a difference maker. And he hasn't been healthy all year. Bradley was on the disabled list three different times, and only played in 19 of the A's 70 games. The A's embarked on a roadtrip from hell after Bradley was let go (losing five in a row before winning tonight), but his presence wouldn't have made much difference. Because he's hurt.
This wasn't even a financial decision. This was a matter of Bradley being ... well, black. Tell me it's not as simple as that.It's not as simple as that. I'm kind of upset that the A's got rid of Bradley, because he's a great player (when he's healthy) and seems to be a good guy too. But letting him go wasn't a simple black and white issue, either figuratively or literally. It's idiotic and irresponsible for a writer to break out the race card without a shred of proof or evidence.
Del Grande's article generated a firestorm of controversy, just as he and the paper probably hoped it would, but I'm guessing they didn't expect this angry response from A's general manager Billy Beane. My favorite paragraph.
Let me state first of all that I have never met Dave Del Grande, and as our public relations people inform me, he hasn't been out to cover a game in years. He formed his opinions expressed in Monday's column without talking to me, our players or manager, as is common practice by responsible and well-respected columnists in the Bay Area.
1 comment:
What the hell? Is there any sort of context in which this guy would even think that race had anything to do with it? Baseball's by no means a perfect world - but it seems to me, though I'm not a particularly close observer, that sports generally is less ridden by racism than, oh, your typical office, or city government, or nearly any other organization you could name, simply because it's one of the few situations in the US today in which people of a whole bunch of races work together in in very close, interdependent ways and, therefore, get to know one another as human beings first. The odds are pretty good there's more racial tension at Del Grande's paper than in the Oakland A's clubhouse.
Post a Comment