Sad News: About a minute ago Toronto blue Jays Head Coach John Schneider die in a Car Cr……
Sad News: About a minute ago Toronto blue Jays Head Coach John Schneider die in a Car Cr……
It never used to be about clicks. Usually, you’d know if you’d hit a story out of the ballpark because your competitors were forced to follow it up the next day.
Or if you pissed off the player.
Or the manager, as I discovered early on in my writing career when I turned a “Yeah, why not, St. Louis is a great baseball city,” comment from Tim Raines into an article: “Raines open to Cards.” Easy, easy column. Easy.
“You dumb ass,” Buck Rodgers, then-Montreal Expos manager, greeted me the next day. “Couldn’t you at least have (expletive) waited until we got to (expletive) New York?”
“It’s in the past,” Guerrero told Heyman through interpreter Hector Lebron. That would be, one suspects, the same answer he gives whenever he’s asked these questions again.
Now, this wasn’t a play me or trade me ultimatum or even a come-hither batting of the eyelashes. Just honest people doing honest work on all sides.
And listen, I’ve been clear: I cannot believe that this front office let this situation get away from them. I can see where they would get all knotted up trying to figure out who the real Guerrero is and maybe even a little scared knowing they would be establishing an industry standard for first basemen. And I still believe that if president and chief executive officer Mark Shapiro really wanted a deal with Guerrero it could have been done and dusted two or three years ago.
But litigating the past is a time-suck. It is what it is and we are where we are and I still don’t think it’s out of the question that the Blue Jays sign Guerrero in the off-season once the market is set by the Yankees or New York Mets or Washington Nationals or someone else. The question now is how does this get handled because Guerrero is going to get asked THE QUESTION every first day of every road series and during the All-Star Game and then it will be the manager and his teammates and — holy hell — just wait until it gets to September and he’s still here.
