Idiots Write About Sports

Baseball’s trade deadline usually brings a torrent of activity around the Oakland Athletics and the franchise’s gifted general manager Billy Beane. And this year was no exception — join us now as we take an in-depth look at each and every one of Billy Beane’s trade deadline moves.

Move #1: Billy Beane Decides to Wear Khakis Instead of Shorts

Khakis versus shorts has been the subject of spirited debate within the A’s organization. While some of the younger office employees favor shorts and the laid-back atmosphere they help promote, other old-line types prefer khakis, which they believe are not only more professional looking, but also help safeguard against rapid changes in weather during the Bay Area’s unpredictable summers. Indeed, the khakis-or-shorts debate has become something of an ideological divide, with some pundits — chief among them ESPN’s Joe Morgan — chiding the Athletics for seemingly turning their back on the khakis favored by so many other organizations.

On this particular deadline day, Beane opted for khakis, feeling they would be a better match with the navy blue golf shirt he decided to wear that morning. It was a bold maneuver by the A’s GM, at once signaling a willingness to compete for a division title but a refusal to mortgage the future — and risk potentially chilly legs — to do it.

Move #2: Billy Beane orders a roast beef-and-swiss sandwich for lunch

Beane has long argued that pastrami has been over-valued as a luncheon meat by other general managers. Plus, given Oakland’s small-market status and modest budget, the team can ill-afford to go out and obtain a meatball sandwich or other speciality offering. Besides, Beane left his “Buy Six Sandwiches and Get a Half-Sandwich for Free” Frequent Sub Club card in his other pants, so he was unable to go out and splurge on Monday. And he doesn’t much care for turkey.

So instead, Beane went with roast beef-and-swiss, a classic sandwich combo that proves the Athletics GM understands this game at a level mere mortals could never even hope to comprehend, not even if all the world’s knowledge could be condensed down into a single pill and force-fed to them every night for the next 15 years.

ESPN reported that Beane’s roast beef-and-swiss deal nearly fell apart in the waning hours before the trade deadline when the deli owner demanded Jay Payton, Jason Windsor, and cash in exchange for the sour cream-and-onion potato chips Beane ordered with his sandwich. But Beane cagily pointed out that the chips came with the sandwich as part of the deli’s Meal Deal, and the order was able to go through just under the wire. Again, this is the sign of a general manager who will sacrifice neither prospects nor proven veterans just so that he can have lunch. Can the guy running your team say the same, fans of the 29 other Major League Baseball clubs?

This is a rhetorical question: that guy cannot.

Move #3: Billy Beane uploads photos from his World Cup trip to his Flickr account

Some people might say that a general manager who takes off in the middle of the baseball season to go watch a bunch of soccer matches in Germany has taken his eye of the ball, especially when the team that he’s assembled is at or near the bottom of the American League in nearly every relevant metric of offensive achievement. Those people are dullards and fools and should be poked with the sharp ends of sticks for even thinking to question the ability of a man so smart that his brain sleeps on pillows fluffed each night by seraphim and sheets cleaned and pressed by cherubim.

When Billy Beane spends part of the season watching soccer games instead of improving his roster, he is saying to the 25 men in the Oakland clubhouse, “Hey, I trust your ability to win this division, even if the preceding three months have produced no tangible evidence that you are capable of doing so.” And that, in turn, instills confidence in Billy Beane’s handpicked charges that they might be able to stumble boldly and decisively into an American League Western Division crown. And from there, if the Red Sox are having an off-week and the Yankees are distracted and the White Sox aren’t feeling particularly up to snuff and the Tigers get lost on the way to the ballpark, that 25-man roster assembled by Billy Beane can claim the American League pennant that was this team’s to lose back when the roster was more or less set in place in February.

Besides, it beats working.

Sources close to Beane report that he was particularly pleased with the photo he took of Athletics owner Lew Wolff wearing a “My GM went to the World Cup and all I got was Scott Sauerbeck” t-shirt.

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