Jonathan Kozol on Trading for Miguel Tejada

[Elster88]

Zvon wrote: ="Elster88"] When I read lines like this, Sal's complaint---that fans get too attached to their guys at the expense of the overall quality of their team---rings true. Talk to me again when Reyes is no longer on the up quality side of the equation. Right now your just blowin wind.

Then I can talk to you right now, because he's not on the upside of quality to what I am comparing him too (Tejada). I want to improve the quality of the team by getting Tejada.

[G-Fafif]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Imported players who stick around can become one of our guys.

I agree that this sentence nails the sentiment square on the head.

We all likely see Cliff Floyd as one of Our Guys. He wasn't once. Pesonally, I couldn't stand him for years. Thought he was surly, unnecessarily harsh toward Valentine and too much of a Met killer to ever adopt. Now he is, to borrow an unfortunate construction from another team, a true Met. He came over in a flurry of moves that I didn't like. I didn't recognize my team. But he endured. Glavine, even, endured from then and I tend to think of him as a Met.

This is really more an issue for December (which is fine, because we need issues for December) than it is for June. Come June if the Delgado, Wagner, Julio Franco, Tike Redman Mets are in first place, and those guys are playing beautifully alongside David Wright, Jose Reyes, Cliff Floyd and Pedro Martinez, then we're less likely to think of the new guys as mercenaries or interlopers. They'll be Mets and we'll be happy. Assimiliation happens.

Why not Clemens? Because unlike what some talk show hosts would have you believe, life and fandom are not either/or propositions. We do make choices. We do stretch and narrow parameters as logic and emotion instructs us. That's why not Clemens. He's fucking Roger Clemens, that's why.

Invoking Robin, Mike, Al and other 1999 Mets who came from elsewhere wasn't intended as parody, Edge. They are proof that you never know where Our Guys are going to come from and how quickly they will become Our Guys. Robin Ventura was just some American Leaguer to me. Olerud was taking over for my man Rico. Mike was the guy who, to my warped sensibility, was getting credit that Todd Hundley deserved. Leiter was an annoying Marlin. Rick Reed beat us an important game in 1988 and then played in replacement games. Turk Wendell was a flake. And so on. Especially in this era, baseball teams are a process. The process tends to spit some guys out faster than we care for and absorb some guys we're reticent to have. The proof, generally speaking, lies on the diamond.

[Benjamin Grimm]

]Pedro was never my favorite, but Zimmer attacked him on the field during that fight. I never faulted Pedro for defending himself from the old fool.

That's how I saw it too.

It's Zimmer who was the thug that day.

[Elster88]

]He's fucking Roger Clemens, that's why.

I agree completely, though I prefer Roger Fucking Clemens.

[G-Fafif]

Elster88 wrote: ]He's fucking Roger Clemens, that's why. I agree completely, though I prefer Roger Fucking Clemens.

Yeah, I don't think anyone prefers the other thing.

[Vic Sage]

="Edgy DC"]Vic Sage: It works for me. Is that INCONSTANT of me? Edgy DC: You're the one with the whole blow-against-the-ubermensch position. Vic Sage: Does that mean I have to fall in line with your RELIGION? Is religious observation compulsory again? Edgy DC: Nobody mentioned anything about religion. Or any of that other crap your trying to stick to me. Vic Sage: No, you just forward your doctrine and expect me to kneel. And that's crapCAKE. (Yes I do all-caps because I don't use your fascio-elitist coding tools.) So you're acknowldging that religion is crap? Edgy DC: You're getting way far away from the argument. Vic Sage: You're AVOIDING the argument. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT (Exodus 20:2-6) I am the Lord, your God, you shall not have any other God besides me... Edgy DC: Oh, Jesus. metsmarathon: is that a curse?

now that is... i mean, THAT is funny.
why? because its true...

[Zvon]

Elster88 wrote: So he's your shortstop, come hell or high water....OR loss of ability.

Yes. Thats baseball, and its a game where if you do whats expected or hoped for you shine in a fans eyes. Im passionately for him now.
If you fail, you falter in a fans eyes.
Its no contridiction. Its the way it is. (for me, at least)

]You're not any more attached to him than I am

Apparently I am because I think he should be untouchable this off season.
I want him playin short for the Mets in 2006 no matter who we could get.
Even if A-Rod was available to play short for the Mets, Id rather watch Reyes either flourish or fail over the next few years.
I see his potential.
If it is realized I want to see him become the player he could be with the Mets.

This is not a personal affront, just the way I feel.
My opinion.
I respect yours.
I simply disagree.

[Elster88]

]This is not a personal affront, just the way I feel. My opinion. I respect yours. I simply disagree.

Same.

[nymr83]

]Who, after the scene when he headlocked Zimmer, didnt have anything but ill will for Martinez

the old man was LUCKY that pedro had enough respect to simply push him to the ground. if someone charged at me i'd clock them and pedro should have done just that. whatever "shield" being old/handicapped/sick/etc gives you is forfeit when you are clearly the aggressor

[Guest Edgy DC]

I wouldn't say Zimmer was headlocked.

Invoking Robin, Mike, Al and other 1999 Mets who came from elsewhere wasn't intended as parody, Edge.

Well, calling them "homegrown" guys when they're not certainly had an ironic point to make.

Look, I wasn't born yesterday. I know where where veal came from and I know where the presents under the tree came from and I know where Turk Wendell came from, and it wasn't Norfolk and Binghamton. I don't reject players because they came through wheeling and dealing. But I think two related points are clear.

(1) The credibilty of Plan C is suspect when you summon the perspective to recall how quickly Plan A and Plan B were tossed aside. Eventually, you have to respect your own plan enough to see it through and not jump on the next shiny oppotunity. You don't like the 2003 Mets? Tough crap, this was the team you demanded Steve Phillips assemble after 2001, you fickle ones.

We demand constant change, holding the team in contempt every time they fail, never blaming ourselves for the unrestrained values promoted in this roto-culture. Another lesson I learned from school heads as I edited today --- many problems, left alone, are better at solving themselves than we are when we try and move Heaven and Earth to solve them. It takes twin doses of humilty and faith in the resources you carefully and and deliberately set in place. That's leadership.

(2) Every time people start lusting after the sour athlete who is crying that he's not winning enough, and start making plans to sell down the river the guy they were cheering their hearts out for --- and demanding the heart from --- not weeks earlier, I'm depressed.

Basically, once we start throwing around plans to deal humans --- even rich ones --- we're diminished. The player, the game, and ourselves.

I'm neither the smartest nor the most talented guy around. But smart folks I know wonder why I give so much of the time and energy to baseball. It's not to diminish myself.

But there's been like a half dozen mis-understandings of my initial point in this thread. I guess I should just sit out the off-season.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I see what you're saying anyway. I often find fans' covetousness distateful and ugly too.

On the other hand, I'd guess the majority of trades aren't made so as to screw over or rob the dignity of a guy and indeed frequently provide them with better career opportunities than they might have had otherwise.

[nymr83]

There is no reason to stick to a plan if a better one comes along.
The only plan the Mets need to have is to put the best possible team on the field. If that means dealing a guy who was yesterday untradeable (Reyes) because a better player (Tejada) is available then just do it. it doesn't have to fall in line with the old plan.

[Guest Edgy DC]

What's better is always a guess. Plans don't come along. They're created.

Planning is not recognizing a gold nugget and trying and buy it in the marketplace. Planning is knowing where to find them in the ground, and so investing your resources.

If you keep deciding that yesterday's values don't matter today, I'm going to ask why I should put much stock in today's values. Every time. New circumstances shouldn't matter so much. Circumstances always change. Act, don't react.

[nymr83]

yesterday's values are irrelevant to today, new circumstances matter plenty as your plan must be re-evaluated based on them.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Well, then, yeah, I don't believe in that irrelevance for a minute. My original post says why.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

This is a funny argument. Edgy’s full of crap and Vic’s full of cake, and I don’t know who I disagree with more. Um….Edgy. He’s made about six offensive points, while Vic’s only offended me thrice in this thread, but they’re both being silly and sentimental here—let’s keep the violin music down, hey, fellas?

Edgy offends me because his sentimentality is so reactionary: “But we shouldn't have to or be so willing to adapt so much. It diminishes the team, diminishes the fans, diminishes the relationship between the two.” Yeah—adaptability, change, all sorts of progress are deeply upsetting to those who fool themselves into thinking that everything will stay the way it is, or that it should stay, at some glorious frozen moment of time. Such sentimentalists (usually but not always drunks) often get angry or sad or both when you try to talk sense into them.

Edgy tries defending his silliness by listing all the things he’s a hard-headed realist about: when he was and wasn‘t born, where veal, Xmas presents, Turk Wendell and maybe even babies come from, but for all his hard-bitten, gritty, world-weary, tough-guy stance, he’s still your basic six-year-old going wah-wah-wah they keep trading all my PWAYERS away!

Wah!

He dresses it up in fancy sentences, but is he saying much more than WAH! when he opines that ”once we start throwing around plans to deal humans --- even rich ones --- we're diminished. The player, the game, and ourselves”?

Diminished? No, making your team better (a strange concept for a Met fan, I know) doesn’t diminish you at all—hanging onto crappy players while they get crappier and crappier (and while you tell yourself that they’ve got a big comeback year left in them) diminishes you and your team, big-time. The Mets have lacked a plan since way before Edgy first mocked Ambler for demanding to see it. Now he angrily challenges some undefined “you” to live with a failed plan: “Tough crap, this was the team you demanded Steve Phillips assemble after 2001, you fickle ones.” Uh, I didn’t ask for this—I asked for the opposite of this. Instead of buying other teams’ retreads and giving up our prospects, I asked that we get some talent-scouts together and rebuild with kids, ours and everyone elses’. To do that, you might have to give up some valuable players who have value in the short-term, while you’re putting a new team together.

What I wanted in 2001 was to acknowledge that the Mets had a nice run from 1997 to 2000, and that run was over. By 2001, they had gotten good value out of Piazza’s seven-year deal, three solid years worth, and he could have been dealt off to any team looking for a catcher or a bat or both. What I was angry about was that the Mets held on to Piazza because of what he HAD done, and denied what he was probably GOING to do over the last four years of his contract. This denial stemmed from his enormous popularity with the fan base, which is an ass-backwards way of doing business.

The business of a baseball team is winning pennants. Piazza was never going to win another pennant after 2000. (I wrote that here once, which got KC so pissed off he adopted it as his mocking sig line “’The Mets will never play another post-season game as long as they have Mike Piazza’—Sal Q”—for some strange reason, KC changed sig lines after a while.) Now they could have been cynical in keeping Piazza all those years (I think they were, hoping he’d keep the fan base satisfied even if the team went south, which they did), or they could have been acting sentimentally themselves (which I doubt) or they could have been too befuddled to recognize that his skills would decline fast (which is entirely possible, given their general befuddlement). But if I were a shareholder in the Mets organization, and I felt (as I do) that it’s good business to win pennants, and fun besides, then I would have felt (and did feel) defrauded by the team policy of not assembling a team geared to win pennants. They kept pretending they were a good team, for the last five years at least, while their W-L record spoke otherwise—and loudly. I did not believe, and I don’t believe now, that they’re very perceptive about what the team’s ability is.

The one thing I do agree with Vic about is that the Mets needed to acquire Carlos Delgado desperately—last year. As you may recall, I offered the opinion that it was shameful, unforgivable really, for the Mets to come away last winter without having signed Delgado. If they would have had Delgado, as I opined last winter and spring, they could have won perhaps 88 to 90 games, which would have put them in the pennant race at least through September. Only Vic and I, as I recall, were furious that the cheap bastards had decided that Mientkiewicz would be their first baseman. Now they’ve virtually admitted what colossal dumbasses they were, having paid Mientkiewicz about what the Marlins paid Delgado for 2005, and then they’ve given up some bright prospects for the privilege of paying the expensive part of Delgado’s contract.. Meantime, they’ve completely fucked away another summer of my life (and Pedro’s life) doing business on the cheap (and not even saving any money, the dumb shits).

But where Vic’s wrong is in the principle of defining himself by his chosen baseball team. What diminishes you, in my view, is to allow ANY label to be attached to you so permanently that you define yourself by it, rather than defining it by you. I have been an ardent Democrat, but I refused to support Clinton when he wagged his finger in my face and claiming that he hadn’t had sexual relations with that woman. I had been an ardent Mets fan, but when they traded Seaver I stopped coming to the park for a while. I had been the world’s biggest fan of Norman Mailer, but when he started writing flaccid, crappy books, I found other books to read. Eventually, I started voting Democratic again (when they gave me supportable candidates), started following the Mets again (when they brought up Hubie and Mookie and Wally), started reading Mailer again (when he wrote OSWALD’S TALE, a wonderful book). I wear the labels I wear proudly BECAUSE I choose to wear them. I can’t just put my emotions and my mind into a blind trust and say “I’m going to support my team no matter what.” I’m going to support them as long as I like, and whenever I don’t like, I won’t support them.

Figuring out what you will support, and what you won’t support, is difficult, I won’t deny that. It IS about the laundry, to the degree that part of everyone is a lazy slob who finds it convenient to stick with the same tastes, year after year, without questioning those tastes too closely. Having a taste for something, and allowing yourself to be labeled by those tastes , is fine, up to a point.

But when you’re tasting Kool-Aid, maybe it’s time to let the cup pass from your lips.

I mean, Julio F. FRANCO? To a 2-year contract? I'd be getting killed around here if I made up such absurd hyperbole.

[nymr83]

welcome back (again.)
who are you rooting for now that boston has abandoned sanity?

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Still holding out hope that Theo will come back and restore some sense. (There was a report today in a Boston paper that he would come back, but my sources tell me he's having too much fun). We'll see.

Last season showed me that I can just follow baseball, and or a few teams simultaneously, and get as much out of it as rooting for a team. I mean, I followed the NL all season (probably more closely than the AL, while rooting for the Sox) and found myself reasonably well informed throughout the playoffs and entertained. I also found some terrific Red Sox bars near where I work, so I really hope Theo gets his fill of the partying, and soon....

I did re-connect with my closest boyhood friend recently, the shortstop on our softball team, and he asked me if I was still a loony Mets fan, because he still is. Haven't had the heart to answer him directly yet.

[metirish]

The report I read outta Boston was that Theo might have a role to play in the running of the Sox, the owner Henry loves the guy, there has to be more going on with Theo though, you would think that other teams would have snapped him up by now, we will wait and see.

Theo did have a major fuck up with Renteria so he's not God, that deal is costing the Sox, they kicked in $11 million to trade him to the Braves, so if you add in what they paid him last season he cost them close to $23 million for one horrible season.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

you would think that other teams would have snapped him up by now,

They've tried.

[nymr83]

="Bret Sabermetric"]you would think that other teams would have snapped him up by now, They've tried.

where have you seen this

[MFS62]

="Bret Sabermetric"] Only Vic and I, as I recall, were furious that the cheap bastards had decided that Mientkiewicz would be their first baseman.

Ahem

Welcome back.


Later

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Sometimes my recall is less than total, MFS62.

That said, and present company excluded, I'm quite sure that within a few months, we will be completely united in remembering our powerful and unanimous opposition to Mienkiewicz.

Sic semper Mets fans.

[metirish]

Not to piss on the parade guys but if memory serves Delgado chose to join the Marlins when an equel if not better offer was on the table form the Mets, so no the mets were not cheap.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Stop hogging the Kool Aid.

[Guest Rotblatt]

Well, I, for one, still think signing Mientkiewicz was a decent bet, given that we had failed to sign Delgado (my #1 choice).

Clearly, that bet (perhaps in part made from sentimentality, as I got to witness a GOOD Mientkiewicz season first hand) failed spectacularly. I may actually owe Vic something or other for being so wrong, now that I think about it . . .

Anyway, welcome back, BS.

[Vic Sage]

i love that his initials are BS.
And you can send me a No Prize.
I've always wanted one.