A procedural move concludes fallout from the ice-cream sandwich confrontation between first-baseman/designated hitter Jesus Montero and Mariners crosschecker Butch Baccala... for now.
On Friday, Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik said that, in the aftermath of the bizarre confrontation between former major leaguer Jesus Montero and one of the team's own scouts, Montero would not play again this year. The team, he said, "wants to address [Montero's] non-baseball issues. On Monday, the Mariners made good on that promise by placing Montero on the suspended list. It was a procedural move to make room on the 40-man roster for the club's seven September call-ups. Still, as the symbolic conclusion to a season in which Zduriencik said he had "zero expectations" of Montero, an outright release might have been more humane.
Presumably the "issues" mentioned above are a paraphrase for "threatening to crown a guy with a baseball bat." Sure, there was a provocation in the form of an unasked-for gift of an ice-cream sandwich, which apparently was intended to suggest that Montero is out of shape. Hilarious. Still, you can't just go and kill someone because he made a fat joke. Were that legal, the one-third of U.S. adults that are obese would be free to exercise their Second Amendment rights on the next guy who said, "Hey, fatso", and we would have a gun-violence rate as swollen as our waistlines. Which, you know, we don't. So thank goodness your First Amendment rights make it safe to mock the overweight, because not only do we get to live in comparative peace, but everyone knows that's the most constructive way to reach out to a player who isn't working as hard as you think he should be, or people who eat fast food, or just have a genetic predisposition to piling on the pounds due to their bodies being geared to hoard carbohydrates because their ancestors needed to cross the Gobi desert is to find a way to make the equivalent of a visit from the Good Humor man humorless.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Shaming a puppy may ultimately prevent him from spoiling your carpet, but it doesn't work so well with people. But I digress. Anger management is a real problem, bat, gun, or fish, and no doubt the Mariners are doing what they have to do so as not only to send the proper message to Montero but to all the other hot-headed young men who, confronted with some adverse situation not involving ice cream, will be tempted to take matters into their own hands. Violence is, it is said, the last refuge of the incompetent. Actually, it's often the first refuge of the incompetent, but either way, conventional morality says that the proper thing to do is not harm someone who offended you but instead complain ineffectually to your boss, who may or may not do anything about it. At that point you can sue him and the company for creating a hostile work environment, or perhaps if you're a member of the Players Association, you might file a grievance. Months or years on, you might have some satisfaction, but probably not.
None of this should be read as an endorsement of Montero's spitting, bat-waiving, lack of conditioning, or even his failure to do what little he was supposed to be capable of doing, which is hit. Montero's .286/.350/.489 at Triple-A Tacoma isn't bad, but given the generally high offensive levels of the Pacific Coast League (.276/.344/.427) it's not great either. Still, the minor league season is more or less over. You don't reward the guy with a call-up back to the major league team, but do you suspend him for the final month, thus perpetuating the shaming that brought on the incident in the first place? Given that we don't know exactly what happened, it's difficult to say. However, note that although Baccala told the Seattle Times, "It's not what is being portrayed," he didn't deny sending it:
Baccala at first denied the ice cream sandwich story, then said he couldn’t comment one way or the other. He suggested a reporter check whether they even sell ice cream sandwiches at Memorial Stadium in Boise, where the game was played.
Todd Rahr, president and general manager of the Boise Hawks, confirmed that ice cream sandwiches are indeed sold at the ballpark during games. Rahr declined to comment further, saying it was out of respect to the Mariners organization.
So we have something akin to the "magic bullet" that supposedly hit John F. Kennedy in Dallas and then had several unmotivated changes of direction (this was nicely debunked in Gerald Posner's book Case Closed , by the way), except it's an ice-cream sandwich that somehow made its own way to Jesus Montero and he's the one who is apparently going for counseling or being held in the Safeco dungeon, or whatever. Sure, Baccala was sent home, but his level of humiliation is not comparable to Montero's.
Again, Montero has culpability in the outcome of his season. Coming off of a major injury, he reported to camp overweight, saying, "After winter ball, all I did was eat." This provoked Zduriencik to say, "I have zero expectations for Jesus Montero. Any expectations I had are gone." Thus disavowed, Montero was already on a short leash. That leash apparently snapped last week. As I wrote last week, at 24 years old, Montero still has time to deliver on the promise that he first showed in the Yankees organization. There's apparently enough resentment on both sides that it's not going to happen in Seattle. Time to move on.
In the meantime, Montero has been confined, so we're all safe from ice-cream-crazed homicidal maniacs. We all owe the Mariners for looking out for us even at their own expense -- and ensuring that their designated hitters have the worst production in the history of the position.
from SBNation.com - All Posts http://ift.tt/1CjZfVB
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