It's been a few days now since O's general manager Andy MacPhail made his now famous "not a suicide pact" proclamation, threatening to send the club's struggling ballplayers to Norfolk if they didn't start hitting.
Forget for a minute that the suicide pact line may be the coolest phrase ever uttered by anyone in Balmer. Certainly the coolest by a sports upper-management type.
MacPhail's point is well taken, and he's certainly giving voice to the tens of fans who watch and love the Orioles, but is that his place? Peter Schmuck has an interesting, rational take (as usual) on MacPhail's threat. And maybe I agree with him.
This is not Peter Angelos's team or Dave Trembley's team. Pete pays the bills and Dave just rents space in the dug out.
No, this Balmer squad is 100 percent Andy's.
On the one hand, that gives him the right to discipline his own children. On the other, as Schmuck writes, what good does it do to add pressure to the young players he's chosen to stock this team with?
Even as I write, I go back and forth. It seems to me that if you're choosing a career as a professional baseball player and you're blessed with enough talent to make it to the Big Leagues, you ought to be able to handle a little extra pressure put on top of you by the boss. Use it as fuel. Don't athletes love that "nobody believed in me" crap? And it's not as if every other working professional doesn't live and work under at least a modest fear of screwing up so bad that they lose their job.
Luke Scott is hitting .177 right now. Do you think if I got less than 18 percent of my facts correct I'd have much of a career in journalism?
Stop snickering. The answer is no.
But professional sports are a tremendously different animal. Every day these guys go out and play in a fishbowl in front of thousands. Every day, win or lose, they come back to the clubhouse to face questions from a bunch of guys who probably couldn't jog a mile without keeling over. The athletes can't even go and blow off steam by having a drink for fear of someone snapping a picture.
What are you doing drinking on a game night?? Don't you know you're a role model?!?
Ballplayers are already under a great deal of pressure. Not "Mr. President we need the launch codes" pressure, but pressure still.
But they're paid well for it. And while I have a great deal of sympathy and admiration for individuals who by such great percentages live appropriately so directly in the public eye, after 13 years of losing baseball, I just can't take any more.
I'm with Andy. Are you?
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