Yeah. And it took them FIVE games to winbb no the Series. Pffft. Millennials.
Call him aloof and in it for himself all you want. But I, for one, am not going to sit here and see Erik Bedard accused of having mob ties.
I initially had to read that twice to make sure that Bedard wasn’t a Mafioso.
FWIW, as someone who has listened to his fair share of pro wrestling-based podcasts, the subject of French-Canadians (Bédard's Franco-Ontarian, too be exact) has come up a few times and the consensus is that a lot of them come off as arrogant or worse unintentionally because of English being a second language and their accent, a combination that often leads to offense being taken when it is not meant in the slightest. I don't know if that's what was the deal with him, but it might be.
As mentioned before, wouldn't this require that Jenks had a good year?
One thing about racism is it often comes out of left field. Like these guys want to intrude on a normal conversation, looking for fellow travelers. Whoever Bill James is alluding to there, there’s not a whole lot of indication and I don’t find it particularly worth speculating over.
Maybe, but I think he tried his best on the beard, not everyone can grow a Mike Napoli.
It was from a question and answer column. Someone asked, he answered. This wasn't brought up out of the blue.
Bill could have been more circumspect in his answer, but who knows why he opened up to the extent he did. I just don't care much about that aspect of the 2011 story, but again YMMV. Any opportunity to reminisce about 2013 is fun though.
James is certainly not under any obligation to keep quiet about what happened in 2011. He was with the team at the time, maybe not in the locker room, but was still involved with the front office quite regularly. It's really up to us, the consumers, to understand the lens through which his comments should be read.
Yeah. I'll give Ellsbury a pass on that one. Part of any reluctance (if there was any at all) might have been due to cultural or genetics due to his Navajo heritage.
I hear that – it’s like people complaining about Grady Little in some ways. But I do think it’s an interesting commentary on the value of team chemistry from a (the) sabremetrician. Without some manner of specifics—and let’s be clear, he’s not really naming names here—it’s kind of an empty point or begs the question of who. In that respect, he’s being fairly thoughtful without ruining guys’ reputations ex-post facto.
This is where I disagree - by putting those comments out there, James is basically inviting speculation about the players on that team. I can't imagine that SoSH is the only place that people are trying to parse his comments and figure out who he was referring to. And alluding to racism but then refusing to go any further is pretty weak in my opinion and risks unfair speculation about players based on surface impressions only.
Thanks for linking. Bill said some things about athletes and "confidence" that really set off an aha moment for me:
I know that the speculation here is all meant to be lighthearted and Bobby didn't exactly cover himself in glory during his time in Boston, but for some context on the DUI, Jenks has said it came about as a result of him becoming addicted to pain pills that he started taking to manage a back injury. He wrote a lengthy article about it for the Players Tribune. Now of course, this is his version of the story, but in the same way that it is overgeneralizing to assume the "racists" were players from the South, maybe we should be a little less free to call someone struggling with opioid addiction a criminal.
Absolutely true... It's amazing how often as a white guy I've had to shoot down another white guy who casually throws out a racial slur thinking you might be one of his bigoted brothers.
I’m with you here about 1,000%, and I see you’re a member; ever read Backwash?
Thanks for sharing that article - what a harrowing story. Poor guy went through absolute hell in 2011-12.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was thinking the same thing as I was reading posts earlier
Oh yeah -- I really couldn't do the criminal one, I was grasping at straws trying to interpret Bill James foolishness. None of these players are, in fact, "criminal" to my knowledge.
Completely agree, and thanks for expounding. I have to agree with @teddywingman -- Bill James initial post just seems worse and worse the more I think on it. I'll stop.
The latter is a great topic worth exploring as it crosses all sports, and -- to at least tie it back a little to the original post -- can often serve as an example of how relations *should* be. I'm sure there are many other endeavors where it is is also true, but since we're all sports fans here, team sports should be a fascinating study of just how much "poison" (to use your word) it takes to derail a team effort in a multiracial and/or multicultural environment, whether its a team from MLB or the EPL. The "poison" could take the form of any of the categories that James listed -- race, selfishness, "instability"/undependability.
Iglesias is going to get a contract, Miller probably will too. But it doesn't seem all that unusual, 10 years is a long time in any sport. Unless I'm missing someone, Ortiz and Arroyo were the only members of the 2004 squad still playing in the bigs in 2014.
That’s a product of the lockout. Lowrie will be on someone’s Opening Day roster. Lavarnway and Reddick won’t be, but they will be on someone’s AAA roster if they want that.
In my experience - which to be clear is not on a major league team - one can do it if he’s the best player. Otherwise it takes 15-20% of the roster to ruin it for everyone else. So call it 2-3 people on a 15 person team. Unless he’s the best player, one asshole you can ignore, and it can actually unite the rest of the ball players against the one shithead. On a 25 man roster I feel like you kind of have two 12-13 person teams so it only takes 2-3 to poison the pitching staff, 2-3 to poison the position players.
Sure, but I don't think that type of camaraderie benefits a team. In my field (marketing) I've had one or two colleagues over the years who, for one reason or another, didn't fit well the rest of the team (about 15-20 total members). Sure, we'd spend a some time complaining about the bad actor, but it never felt good doing it. If anything, it made us resentful of leadership for not listening to our (valid) concerns about his/her deficiencies and how that hurts our collective performance. I suspect it's similar in any communal environment, and perhaps more so in something like baseball where the effect of individual performance on team performance is so readily apparent.
Can we rule out the possibility that the answer to several of these questions is actually Bill James? Not sure. He was always kind of a crank, and that's not the sort of thing that improves in your 70s.
Agree, Jenks' story is not an entirely happy one. I'm really reluctant to assume he's a bad guy for something like that.
Thanks for the perspective. The "two teams" point reminds me of something attributed to Earl Weaver (I think): "there's 24 guys; 8 hate me, 8 love me and 8 don't give a shit about me. My job is to keep the 8 that hate me away from the 8 that don't give a shit."
That makes sense. I think it might be different on a sports team, and even more so on a baseball team, where performance is close to objective.
