One last thing tonight...a snippet from the latest Gammons column...
Buck Showalter was, along with Gene Michael, the architect of the Yankees team that had the great run from 1996 through 2001 (and since has lost in the postseason only to the eventual world champion) -- and he is doing the same building in Texas. "You have to build a culture where young players are embraced," says Showalter. "The transition has to be made easier by the veterans. The Angels are a great example of that. They have one of the best, if not the best, farm systems in baseball, and the manager, coaches and players embrace the players they bring out of their system."
Maybe I'm being unfair, but my immediate reaction was to wonder how embraced Kevin Mench, Adrian Gonzalez, Ricardo Rodriguez and Gerald Laird have felt with this Buck-culture...
Gammons also mentions the Rangers as a team kicking the tires on Preston Wilson, a notion I find pretty troubling...I've got zero interest in Wilson...
A final Gammons blurb:
Keith Foulke now admits that he refused to have his knee scoped at the beginning of spring training. And still gets paid in full, despite what it did to the Red Sox.
Uh-huh. What does Gammons want, Foulke to cut a check over to Petey's beloved BoSox, because he didn't want to scope his knee this spring?
I'll tell you what...when teams start paying for players that they hurt, I'll be sympathetic to Petey's point of view. When the Mets fork over some cash to Bill Pulsipher, Jason Isringhausen, and Paul Wilson to compensate them for trashing their careers through overuse back in the day. When the Rangers compensate Gerald Laird for the year's worth of service time he's lost in 2005, as a result of him coming back with a jacked-up thumb to try to help the team in a pennant race last year. When the Yankees pay Brad Arnsberg back some of the money he lost as a result of his career being derailed through overuse.
When the players have some protection, can get some recompense when the actions of the organization damage their careers and cost them money, maybe then I'll come around to Petey's point of view...