Before you ask ...
Let it never be said that Ned Colletti isn't a proactive general manager. This morning, while the writers were holding their normal briefing with manager Joe Torre, Colletti walked over to the group and waited for a pause in the conversation. My original thought was that Colletti, himself a former sportswriter, might have some questions for Joe. Instead, Colletti simply looked at all of us and said:
``No. Nothing new. Haven't heard.''
He then turned and walked away. He was referring, of course, to the ongoing Manny Ramirez negotiations, which are more ongoing on some days than others. But now that we're all down here and have access every day, Ned knows he is going to be asked about this every day. It was a light moment that we all laughed about. But if it drags on much longer, we scribes are going to get as sick of asking the questions as Ned is of answering them.
Ned is most assuredly hoping that's the case.
What most of you wannabe expert FA contract negotiators fail to see is that we are not dealing with set contracts with set dollars allocated for certain numbers of fungibles. If we were dealing with fungible goods your arguments would have some merit. Manny Ramirez is the furthest thing imaginable from a fungible good. When you put together a plan to build a winning team from very unique parts which you may or may not be able to sign for a variety of reasons you want to have more than one plan at the start. If your first plan doesn’t work out for what ever reason, you’ve got to be able to recognize that fact and move on to plan B (and plan C if plan B fails) while you still have time.
If we were simply trying to buy 10,000 bats and Manny was our number one choice because he had the strongest materials with the best handles-=-and Dunn and Abreu were simply other bat makers we’d fall back on if Manny got pissed off at Frank’s wife and decided he’d rather piss on Frank than sell him a broken bat then your arguments wouldn’t be as silly as they are when you’re in the market for a slugger who is not a fungible but a unique human being who can never be replaced with another unique human even if they had similar stats.
So instead of forcing Boras to give us the best price on the bats we want by eliminating all the competition for his product and refusing to bid against ourselves–which in the business world might end up where we get the deal we want but lose a potential source of bats in the future because after signing the contract Boras and Manny are both so mad they both piss on Frank and his wife. No-that would be “good business”. At least for this year.
But Manny, Dunn, and Abreu are not fungible goods. By staring down Boras and pissing off Manny so that he’ll be bad news for whoever signs him no matter how wonderful the price, Frankieboy soured the Manny deal all by himself without the need of any outside bidders. Once Dunn and Abreu saw Frankie was insane–they quickly went to their own Plan B and/or Plan C and signed deals within minutes of each other without giving Frankieboy the option of coming out of his psychotic coma long enough to bid for their services before they signed with the other teams.
Yep. McCourt’s a real genius all right. He managed to ruin three deals–two before he even got to bid on them and the other by refusing to come to his senses and realize he wasn’t buying buns for Dodger Dogs or bats that won’t break as often as last year’s model. All by his lonesome he managed to condemn the dogs to second division finishes for at least two more years when Manny and Dunn wanted to sign with him the whole time. Dunn or Abreu would have made us competitive. Manny would have won a World Series Title for us in all probability. That’s one dumb bastard we have running our operation and masquerading as a hands on owner. Felony stupid isn’t strong enough to describe his lack of brain power. A sack of hammers could have done a better job.
Brevity, for the win...
Jesus...STFU, lawdog. Who's going to read your manifesto and not think you're a shut-in?
Nobody cares, old man.
Same goes for you and your aliases, snuffy02.
If the comments were turned off on this blog, it would help it immensely.