I want this story to go away. I really do.
It's awful enough that our best position player is likely out for the year. It's pretty rotten that a USF grad and Bay Area guy trying to make it in the bigs injured him. Even worse, it's becoming a media circus and pecker measuring contest.
Am I mad that Scott Cousins took out Buster? Hell yeah I'm mad. He could have easily slid to the right, avoided the tag, and still scored the winning run. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
It sucks. It all just sucks.
And it's going to get uglier before it gets better.
We have Brian Sabean basically vowing revenge against Cousins and the Marlins, rooting for the young Marlin to never play again. We have Buster refusing to take or return apology calls from his home plate assailant. We have the league office getting involved.
Now, we have one of my favorite young players, Logan Morrison, Cousins's teammate, firing back on satellite radio that Sabean, "...(is) ignorant... inappropriate, and he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”
As I said. It's getting ugly.
If you read my last story about Buster's injury, you'll know that I don't blame Cousins for his violent collision with our golden boy Posey. It's baseball, and I will stand by that. It sucks, it's sad, and we're all angry, but it's still baseball.
We would all be celebrating if Buster or Burrell had run over John Buck or Chris Iannetta to win the game, as Cousins's agent pointed out.
And it's true.
We all have a right to be pissed about it, and we are, but there really is no blame to be handed out. Should Hanley Ramirez or Mike Stanton be drilled in the ribs the next time we play them? Absolutely. Not only that, but we should drill them in their next at bat too.
Guess what. That's baseball too.
The biggest problem we all have in this is that there is no one to blame here. Cousins is the easy target. Some jerks up on their high horse-- the same pansies who don't like fighting in hockey or the tackling of quarterbacks-- want "more to be done" to protect catchers at home plate. Baloney. I don't want to hear it.
I also don't want to hear other people perched atop their tower of morality preaching down to Sabean about "losing his cool" and "not flying off the handle." Buster Posey is like a family member to a lot of people in the Giants organization, and just as if you felt like one of your own got cheapshotted, he called KNBR and vented on the air. He has the right, and if you people living in your glass houses can't take a little natural emotion from our General Manager, then maybe you'd be better off rooting for peewee soccer teams instead of Major League Baseball. I'm sorry, but I support Brian Sabean and everything he's said.
I don't necessarily agree with all of his statements, but I fully, 100% support him defending Posey, rallying the troops, and speaking from the heart. If you ask me, we need more of that in professional sports.
It was a freak thing, I don't condone it, but it's part of the game. The sooner we all accept that fact, and move on to watching our rapidly improving ballclub, the sooner we'll be able to concentrate our energy on praying for Buster's swift recovery and a repeat World Series championship.
It's bad mojo. I'm also tired of Krukow supporting him and some of Kruk's other statements after it happened. I'm starting to lose interest in watching Giants games on TV or radio. I won't even listen to KNBR anymore (not that I ever did much). The fan comments on places like SFGate are really starting to creep me out, at least some of them. I totally believe Cousins has gotten death threats from a few of these yahoos, and considering he lives in the area in the offseason, I just hope none of them ever bothers the dude. Sabean is not acting professionally and the Giants should worry whether his mind is even on his job, and considering they may want to have a GM that can make deals effectively for a few of the needs of their team, it's not a good thing. The Giants should consider forcing him to take a leave for a few weeks to get his emotions under control. He's been there long enough that the people under him should be trained well enough by now to do his job for him for a bit if he cannot. Posey will heal to a large degree if not completely, but Sabean is creating a poison culture in the organization if he doesn't go back on some of his statements. It's implicitly disrespectful of all players who aren't "superstars," including his own. It's also going down like a lead balloon with just about every other city in the majors. It's going to make people disrespect the team and possibly even resent Posey and I don't want to see the players, who I respect down to a man, being booed or harassed when they go to other cities on account of dumb remarks by their irresponsible GM.
ReplyDelete@anonymous....
ReplyDeleteSure sounds like you are a Dodgers fan. Certainly no real Giants fan would make the comments you just made regarding our broadcast team, the Giants team nor our GM who got us a win in the WS last season. It's an emotional game in the first place as is all pro sports.
"Should Hanley Ramirez or Mike Stanton be drilled in the ribs the next time we play them? Absolutely. Not only that, but we should drill them in their next at bat too."
ReplyDeleteThat is NOT baseball.
Going after somebody for something unintentional is NOT how the game is played. Yeah, teams can go shot for shot hitting batters with pitches, but that is usually ONLY when the initial HBP is suspect. Retaliation for this debacle, especially if it comes MONTHS after the incident, would only make the Giants look childish and vindictive.
Honestly, Giants fans shouldn't even be 'angry' that this happened. Disappointed, of course. Angry, absolutely not.
Time for everybody to grow up.
DP, thanks for getting this up on Friday!
ReplyDeleteAs for the situation, Retaliation is most def part of the game, even if it is months later, but im gonna go with them taking one between the numbers and leave it there. Shows we support our teammate but are not trying to take one of there players out permanently. Tit for a Tat doesn't work, someone else will end up hurt and that is not part of baseball. That is what Sabean also should have left it up to, not publicly going off on a tangant... but he has made his "appology" to Cousins, so this is a time we need to leave this behind us. It sucks it happened, it sucks we lost Posey for the season, but Cousins didn't mean to take Buster out for the season. this needs to be left in the past and we need to concentrate on retaining first place and defending our title. We knew coming into this season it wouldn't be easy, we have a target on our back, we are the team to beat, and it is time to stay on track...