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The Jester’s Quart
August 4, 2006
The Jester's Quart: Soriano Losers
"I want to win a World Series and get to the Hall of Fame"
-- Second baseman Alfonso Soriano, 3/1/2004 to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Attempting to discover truth at the trade deadline is like trying to read smoke
signals in a hurricane. To hear Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowdon
spin his team's complete inability to broker a trade for all-star outfielder
Alfonso Soriano is at best confusing, at worst symbolic of a man who's clawing
so hard to stay in a job that he's down to the bone.
"We felt the best deal we could make is no deal," Bowden said in a conference
call.
Pathetic. Here is a franchise that is clearly building for the future, because
the future is the building: that sterling new stadium on the Anacostia
waterfront that's really the only thing keeping this vagabond team from floating
on to the next baseball friendly port. Whatever happens for this last
season-and-a-quarter in RFK Stadium or in the honeymoon 2008 season when Viagra
Park at Anthony Williams Yards (or whatever) opens is immaterial; the next time
the Nationals need worry about contending is in 2009, when all of the luster of
this new ballpark, and its still-novel tenants, has worn off. If that season's
team is 49-60 at the beginning of August, then D.C. baseball will completely
disappear from the hearts and minds of fans when Redskins camp opens.
So the Nats need to start constructing a winner, and to do so requires players
you can win with. They appear to have a core of batsmen they can build around: I
love third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, catcher Brian Schneider and first baseman
Nick Johnson. At least two of them will be in their primes come 2009, and it's
never too difficult to find bats to surround them if the Nats' new owners are as
committed to winning as they claim to be.
Arms are a different issue. For a team that should be in a rebuilding mode, the
Nationals have only seven pitchers born after 1980 on their 40-man roster.
Combine that with the fact that the Nats are ranked 24th in Baseball America's
minor league organizational talent rankings - after being ranked 26th in 2005
and 30th in 2004 -- and the team's future is about as bleak as Mel Gibson's
chances of working with Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Trading Soriano would have brought back something. Not the blue-chippers Bowden
believed the trade required, but at least three or four bodies Washington
doesn't have now. If one pitcher from a Soriano trade makes the Nats' starting
rotation in 2009, it's a successful trade. Keep in mind that Washington traded
Brad Wilkerson and Terrmel Sledge for Soriano to begin with.
Bowden's other message, however, may have revealed the true reason why Soriano
wasn't dealt: the team's hope-against-hope wish that this 30-year-old superstar
who publicly yearned to win a World Series two years ago will re-sign with a
team several years from hitting that mark.
"He wants to stay in D.C. and did not want to be traded," said Bowden, cowing to
Soriano in a way I never thought he would after winning that spring training
battle over his move to the outfield.
This is a direct reaction to Soriano's anti-trade rant, as reported by the
Baltimore Sun: "To be honest, it's tough to say I'd come back if they trade me
because you know if they trade me I'm going to think that I cannot be good for
this team, because they traded me, because they [do] not need me anymore."
This guy has played the good citizen, "I want to stay in D.C." card all season,
and to be honest I haven't believed it once. As I reiterated at the top of the
column: "I want to win a World Series and get to the Hall of Fame." The Hall of
Fame business won't be hard, because the bar for enshrinement is dropping faster
than Patrick Ramsey's fantasy football stock. He'll need over 300 home runs and
a way to get those RBI totals up, but it's not out of the question. But the
World Series victory isn't going to happen with the Nationals until he's in his
mid-30s, if at all, because this team's pitching is in such sorry shape for the
future. If he does stay in D.C., he wants a no-trade clause, which Nationals
President Stan Kasten doesn't believe in. If Soriano really wants to win and to
stay put with one team, he's not re-signing in
Washington.
If the stars align, priorities change, and he does re-sign, Bowden doesn't just
deserve to keep his job, but to have a bronze statue of him hanging up on
general managers during the trade deadline erected near the left-field fence.
But if Soriano leaves for greener pastures - OK, the Yankees - and all the
Nationals get are a couple of lousy draft picks, then Bowden lost this crap
shoot, big time.
At least the Expos got some prospects back when waving goodbye to their best
players.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
Guilty or not guilty, Floyd Landis
blew a major marketing opportunity.
How does that guy not stand up in front of the press and say: "Yeah, elevated
testosterone. I don't like to brag, but THAT'S JUST HOW MUCH OF A MAN I AM,
BA-BY!"
Reporter: "Uh, Mr. Landis, and those reports about finding synthetic testosterone in your system?"
Floyd: "What are you, a hater? How'd you like it if I turned my bike sideways and shoved it up yer Tour de Ass?"
OK, it might not have helped his cause...but it would have at least gotten him
an endorsement deal with Axe Body Spray or Slim Jim...
The NBA's new playoff format
is a joke, completely undermining the divisional format because Mark Cuban went
crying to his blog about homecourt advantage. But the real bonehead move out of
the off-season rules meeting was this strange decision: "If a team has two
60-second timeouts left in the final 2 minutes of regulation or in overtime, one
will be reduced to a 20-second timeout."
Since when did smart coaching become an affront to basketball? I'm stunned the
NBA is against having two 60-second timeouts in the last two minutes of a game;
I mean, that's at least three commercials, right?
Eric Lindros recently
signed a free agent contract in
Dallas. Makes sense - he's
been seeing Stars for the last seven years...
Finally, a report out of
New Jersey
has the New York Jets naming Chad Pennington as the starter for the 2006 NFL
season.
As a fan, I will cherish those two or three weeks of exciting football until the
Porcelain Princess gets knocked back on the shelf...
 Get Greg Wyshynski's new book,
"Glow Pucks & 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History,"
available in stores and online now!
"The only folks who won't like this book are employers, whose employees will spend the day around the water cooler arguing over which idea was worse: the overtime shootout or Disco Demolition Night. Just as I had successfully eliminated some of these horrendous sports ideas from my memory bank, here comes Greg Wyshynski putting 'em on a tee, inviting readers to take a swing. Great stuff." -- Ernie Johnson, TNT's "Inside the NBA" |
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Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Senior Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" can be ordered now. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail.com.
