Wednesday, June 20, 2012

"Cowardly"

That's a paraphrase of the word Joe Maddon used to describe Davey Johnson's actions last night. His offense? Asking Tim Tschida to check Joel Peralta's glove for pine tar. The glove was soiled, Peralta was ejected, and the Nats still lost the game. The next inning, Maddon had Tschida check Mattheus's glove. But will it end there? I assume Joel Peralta has some kind of idea who ratted him out (since he played for the Nats two years ago). I assume that person's identity will be whispered throughout MLB clubhouses, including the one in DC. It's easy to say this is a cut and dried case of Peralta cheating and Peralta getting caught, but baseball is famous for its unwritten rules, and Davey Johnson breached a big one in this case. I think Joe Maddon is too creative to do something boring like throw at Bryce Harper tonight, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something.
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3 comments:

  1. RyanJune 21, 2012 at 1:46 PM

    It's funny that a guy like Joe Maddon is lecturing a guy like Davey Johnson on how baseball works. Joe Maddon is a pompous ass who has both the philosophical chops and self-importance of a second-week college freshman.

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  2. RyanJune 21, 2012 at 1:55 PM

    Also, there are a lot of negative adjectives you could use for Davey if you disagreed with his actions, but how is 'cowardly' relevant? He did something he thought would help his team that would obviously put him in media/opposition crosshairs. In spite of this, he acted anyway. Devious? Maybe. Disloyal? OK. Ignorant? Sure. There are a lot of adjectives that would make sense to me, but cowardly does not.

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  3. UnknownJune 21, 2012 at 3:07 PM

    See, I don't know if Maddon actually used the word cowardly. He used another term that's not as family-friendly. I think you know what I'm talking about. And of course he was referring to Johnson's actions, not Johnson himself. Some people think that's a small distinction, but it's not.

    But Davey Johnson was clearly referring to Joe Maddon's person when he called him a "weird wuss."

    I like both Joe Maddon and Davey Johnson quite a bit, and this incident hasn't diminished my opinion of either. I don't think Davey Johnson should have asked Tschida to look at Perlata's glove, and I don't think Tschida should have ejected Peralta (the rules give him discretion, especially since Peralta had not thrown a pitch), but I do think that all of the harping in the press afterwards is hilarious and useful. Managers get paid a lot of money to protect their players, and if Joe Maddon and Davey Johnson are making noise to the media, the media won't ask Nationals players what they think about their manager throwing a former teammate under the bus.

    What is it about Nationals skippers? Frank Robinson was the last to do this, and Mike Scioscia was even more irate than Joe Maddon.

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