Thursday, June 21, 2012

Joe Maddon Should Just Shut Up

Hey, Joe, your glasses don't hide the fact that you're an idiot.

Maddon was furious after the game, calling Johnson's actions "cowardly," "bush" and "bogus."

Let's take this one word at a time...

"Cowardly" - Davey Johnson saw a guy, or knew of a guy, breaking the rules and informed the umpires about it. The umpires found that a rule was indeed being broken, and reacted accordingly. It's not "cowardly" in the least. Is it "cowardly" to question the judgement of an umpire on a home run call, ask for video review, and have the call overturned in your favor? No... it's not. It's trying to put your team in position to win.

"Bush" - What? "Bush"? Things that are "bush" are those that are not against the rules, but frowned on by players. Like when Alex Rodriguez yelled "hey" at Howie Clark in 2007. What Davey Johnson did is not "bush" what-so-ever.

"Bogus" - Merriam-Webster defines "bogus" as "not genuine". Joe Maddon needs to be told that, because the word "bogus" does not fit into this situation at all. Other than that, I don't know what to say here.

How about some more Joe Maddon?...
"there's also reading between the lines in some situations that needs to be looked at, too."
What "reading between the lines"? What is Joe talking about? The MLB rulebook states that a pitcher may not "apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball". What is there to read into that other than "you can't put pine tar on a baseball"? On top of that it is the umpires job to interpret the rules, so if there's any issue with "reading between the lines" then Maddon should take this up with the umpires... not Davey Johnson.
"If you want to talk about -- I don't know if that's a form of cheating or what -- but that's really kind of underhanded, I believe, to use that kind of information."
Yet another example of me not knowing what Maddon is talking about. Should Davey have turned in his own pitcher back when he managed Joel Peralta? It's not up to one manager to do the job of the other manager. In this case, it wasn't up to Johnson to point out the rule violation for the other team. From what Maddon has been saying he was aware of Peralta putting pine tar on the ball, so Joe is guilty himself of not fixing this before somebody else... such as Davey Johnson... nailed Peralta on it. Davey Johnson is getting paid to help the Washington Nationals win. That's it.

Joe Maddon went on to say that pine tar shouldn't be illegal, as he doesn't believe it really helps that much anyway. He says pine tar just gives the pitcher better grip of the ball. THAT'S CHEATING! A batter can't put pine tar on the barrel of his bat, which would give the bat better grip on the ball, so why should a pitcher be able to use it? And again, Maddon shouldn't be whining at Davey Johnson about this. This is for MLB.

Andrew Friedman, general manager of the Rays, went on to say that "I highly doubt that it's something that we would ever initiate". Really? Then you're not doing your job! It's a rule, it could be hurting your team's hitters, so you should be checking it out. Just like any other possible rules violation. I'm all for protecting you players, coaches, and other employees, but that doesn't mean you have to make an ass out of yourself in the process.

The most ridiculous thing Joe Maddon has said regarding this situation, and that's saying something since he's said some pretty dumb things, was this...
"If I'm a major league player that may happen to want to play for the Nationals in the future, I might think twice about it. Because this is one of their former children here that had really performed well and all of a sudden he's going to come back to this town, and they're going to rat on him based on some insider information, insider trading, whatever."
*laughing out loud* Seriously? Look, it all comes down to one simple thing, which was summed up by Jim Carrey's character in the movie "Liar, Liar"...