Idiots Write About Sports

Pressed as I am for time this afternoon, I cannot spend the proper time outlining the idiocies advanced by Bill Plaschke in this awful-even-by-his-low-standards column. Suffice it to say, it is not injuries that have done in the Dodgers this year or Jim Tracy’s manic obsession with bunting or the inexplicable decision to affix one of the team’s better hitter’s posterior to the bench for prolonged stretches. No, in Plaschke’s wine-dark mind, all the fault lies with Paul DePodesta and the sinister computer that forces him to do its bidding.

After watching his personality-as-afterthought philosophy collapse like a thrown clubhouse chair, will DePodesta finally realize that you can’t just build a team from double clicks?

Everyone in baseball — including those who mentioned it to me in the Dodger clubhouse in Vero Beach five months ago — knew that Bradley and Kent could not coexist.

Everyone in baseball knew that J.D. Drew looked good on paper, and uninterested and injury-prone on the field.

Everyone except DePodesta, whose off-season remodel put his manager in an untenable position and his team in an unworkable one.

OK, so Plaschke hates DePodesta. Anyone who reads just a smatter of Plaschke’s single-sentence paragraphs can grasp that dynamic. Who knows why? Maybe DePodesta failed to genuflect sufficiently to Plaschke’s liking or never complimented the columnist on those giant crayon marks on his forehead that Plaschke contends are eyebrows. Maybe Plaschke’s just one of the new breed of sports columnists who values his worth by the number of guys he can run out of town. It’s not for me to say.

What’s interesting about this particular column however is how Plaschke gets weaselly Dodger owner Frank McCourt to throw his general manager under a bus:

The Dodgers probably won’t. While McCourt wouldn’t comment, Bradley’s Dodger career is likely history.

“No question, the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is the importance of character in building a winning baseball team,” McCourt repeated.

Does this mean it will be more of a factor in personnel decisions?

“No question,” he said.

No matter what sort of cool numbers are spit from Paul DePodesta’s computer?

“I think Paul, for some of the reasons I experienced, now sees things in a different light,” said McCourt.

This kind of hack work must not be allowed to stand. Where have you gone, Fire Jim Tracy? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

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