Yahoo! Sports: Sportsticker Baseball Notebook
I started reading this story about the Indians and Reds and stumbled over the following: “In an age of statistics and computers in the world of baseball, these two men understand the concept of building a solid baseball organization with an emphasis on communication, scouting and player development.”
It all adds up to the fact that both the Cleveland Indians, led by Shapiro, and the Cincinnati Reds, headed by O’Brien, will field talented young teams in the 2005 season. ”
Who is writing this tripe, I wondered, and there was the byline: Fred Claire. Hmm, familiar name, not unlike that of the former Dodger GM. I figured it was his son, perhaps, but in fact a bio/disclaimer at the bottom of the piece confirms that it is Fred himself.
It also says Fred is flogging his book, Fred Claire: My 30 years in Dodger Blue.
Fred was a journalist before he joined the Dodgers, but reading this piece it is clear that whatever lust for the jugular he once had (by that I mean a desire to tell the truth) has given way to a kind of PR writing that fortunately doesn’t even try to disguise its partisan impulses.
The piece ends: “The headline-grabbing deals don’t reflect the style of the two general managers from Ohio, or the type of budgets they have been given to build teams.
Even so, the people in the game know the talent on the Cleveland and Cincinnati teams and they know the future of these two franchises is bright.
It has a lot to do with leadership. ”
I don’t know why Sportsticker would want to run this stuff, nor why anyone would want to read it, but I know why Claire wants to write it. He’s had one of the greatest jobs in the world, did a credible job with it, and now gets to root for others to, if anything particular, validate his perspective about how a baseball team should be run.
Not exactly a scandal here, but clearly a case of caveat emptor.
heh, I think Claire, aside from pimping his book, is jumping the gun just a tad. In the 3 years Shapiro has been the GM they have finished 3-4-3 in the Al Central and while one could normally point to him stripping the team that fall (which he did), That still doesn’t entirely explain 3-4-3 since other teams bounced over and under without having anything resembling a roster.
O’Brien just got the job, so it’s far too early to say anything yet about him. He did sign Randa (a person whose leadership can probably best defined as like “Personality” when you ask about whether your blind date is pretty – Can Randa hit? He’s a great leader!!!), but I think he got rid of Boone which has to count for something since the team had stagnated under him.
But isn’t it JUST a bit too early to be annointing these guys genius’s at least until the finish in the top half of their respective divisions or maybe, God forbid, get to the playoffs the way 5 different teams in the 14 team AL have and the 7 teams in the 16 team NL have since they took the reins????