Bud Shaw is an Idiot..

[Alex]

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/plai...8455583790.xml

A decision that's defensible
by Bud Shaw

12/05/02

Irrefutable sources swear that Jim Thome is not - repeat not - moving the Indians with him to Philadelphia.

Just wanted to clear that up, given the vilification of Thome over the past few days.

Additional phone calls and interviews with people in the know reveal that baseball is actually played, even enjoyed by those playing it, in cities other than Cleveland.

Really. It's true.

Winning baseball, too. In fact, 19 cities have celebrated World Series victories since the last time the Indians won in 1948.

Not once has the MVP of a recent one smiled and said, "I'm going to Disneyland but I wish I were going to Cleveland in a trade."

Yet Indians fans continue to tell themselves that when players leave here they will rue the day it happened. Albert Belle was done in by his hip, not by homesickness for Cleveland. Manny Ramirez wasn't supposed to be the same in Boston. A batting title later, Ramirez seems to have coped.

If Thome gets booed in Philadelphia in April, it won't sound unfamiliar. He was booed here in April. Just last April.

For all the talk of how staying here for less money would have made Thome a hero, heroes never last long in sports. Charlie Nagy stayed and people made it clear he overstayed. They couldn't wait for him to leave once he couldn't get hitters out.

Anyone who thinks this is baseball's Camelot needs to stop living in the past. It's not 1995-98 any more. The owner and general manager who built that team are gone. So is every other player who mattered, save Omar Vizquel.

Charlie Manuel, the manager/hitting guru whom Thome considered a second father, is gone. Thome watched Bartolo Colon get sold off for prospects. He saw every other veteran who could bring value dealt away.

The Phillies are spending money, perhaps not so wisely. But they are spending. The Indians' payroll is still laced with too much fat, its roster still a mish-mash of young prospects and overpaid veterans.

The choice for Thome was to join a team putting their money where their mission statement is, or stay and hope the new general manager got better value in his 2002 deals than he did for Matt Lawton and Ricky Gutierrez. Then pray the new owner will spend to contend at a later date.

Thome had Dolan's word. That said, he watched ownership strain so much to add a fifth guaranteed year to his deal that Dolan didn't so much offer it as give birth to it.

He heard ownership base a sixth and seventh season on the whimsy of a Most Valuable Player vote while Philadelphia gave him a $10 million signing bonus and a sixth year guaranteed at $14 million.

Heck, half the voters for the league MVP awards hedge on the word "valuable" and are reluctant to vote a player high who plays for a losing team. Thome had to hit 52 homers on a bad team just to finish seventh.

It's unclear what Thome meant about not wanting to "saddle" the Indians with this contract. It sounded self-serving.

He mentioned wanting a "new challenge." You could argue that he had a new and different challenge here if he stayed. Heck, baseball in Cleveland is nothing if not a challenge these days.

Thome is not the first athlete to get himself in trouble with his old city by trying to say all the right things to his new city.

At least he didn't say, "I had no choice." He had one. And the one he made is completely understandable and impossible to cloak in villainy.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

[email protected], 216-999-5639

? 2002 The Plain Dealer.

You are one mixed up sportswriter. You used Charlie Nagy as a reason for Thome to leave, rather than as one Thome to stay? Huh?

After Jim Thome called Charlie Nagy to tell Charlie he was leaving, was Travis Fryman Thome's next call?

I can just picture Thome explaining to Fryman and Nagy why he had to leave, because the Tribe was not serious about winning. Fryman and Nagy were paid almost 30 million dollars of the most UNPRODUCTIVE money in baseball history, over the past two years, (2.5 years for Nagy) and you evoke the name of Nagy as a reason for Thome to leave???

HUH???

Are you that backasswards in your assessment of reality?

What a comedy sketch it would be, Thome, Fryman and Nagy having a sympathy meeting over Thome's decision to leave for more "guaranteed" money. The two players that were paid close to 30 million for two of the least productive years in tribe history! Are you really that clueless?

Your point is so misguided that not only did I at first think it was written by a Philadelphia columnist, I would have fired your boss, not you, over the complete and rampant stupidity of your "piece" (if I could, that it is).

Alex

[Alex]

I'll give Bud Shaw credit for one thing, he did respond to the above e-mail....(although I didn't call him an idiot in the e-mail title [img]redface.gif[/img] )

Alex:
I thought it was fairly clear what the point of the Thome column was. If you think one paragraph two-thirds of the way through a column is the point, then let me try to clear it up.

I received so many emails telling me what a fool Thome was, that by staying there he would be a civic landmark, a hero. The Indians, of course, fueled this by offering Thome a street named after him, a statue, etc.

My point is that when a player can't perform any more, hero status goes out the door rather quickly. Nagy also passed up money in past contracts to stay here. When his arm went bad, people could not wait for him to leave.

Fans are selective in treating sports like a business. If a guy can't play
they want him gone. If he can play and leaves for more money or whatever his reason is, they lash out at him for being disloyal.

That was the point. Thanks for reading.

Bud Shaw

[Alex]

You took the juicy filling of the issue surrounding Nagy and threw out the crust and topping.

Nagy pitched three times in September of 2000, and we lost all three games. That was the year that Chuck Finley went 6-1 in September, and we lost the wildcard by one game. Nagy wasn't ready, but he wanted the ball anyway.

That was not heroic, it was selfish. After the season, we began to lose our ballplayers. Throughout the loss of these ballplayers, due primarily to budget constraints, it appears that Nagy never offered to either defer his contract, nor "retire" so that Insurance would have footed part of the bill.

Just as Travis Fryman collected money for a poor level of play for two consecutive years, so did Nagy, for two and a half years. Both cost the Tribe over 25 million in unproductive play.

You could have easily done a piece on how ballplayers don't get the big picture, ever. Charlie Nagy was the first guy Jim called to tell he was leaving Cleveland. In my book, Nagy will go down as a guy who was given many public accolades over the past two seasons, cost the tribe 15 million dollars in unproductive results, and didn't have the guts to tell Jim the real truth.

Nagy was vested to remind Jim that Nagy and Travis may be the very
reason the Indians didn't go past 5 years on Jim's contract.

"Jim, me and Travis have your sixth year money, two times over." That is what Nagy should have said to Jim when that call came in Monday morning. (yes, even if you argue that money was to be paid out anyway, The Indians LOST ATTENDANCE via a poorer product on the field) Travis and Nagy pocketed Jim's sixth year money, than gladhanded Jim as he left to get more money elsewhere. How can this point be overlooked by you?

This reminds me of when Wil Cordero and Sandy Alomar told Manny to take all the money he could get, (this preceded Sandy not being re-signed.)

I still wonder what happened to attendance bonuses and why 6-8 million of the money could not be guaranteed for the sixth and seventh year of Jim Thome's contract, the rest being earned based on performance.

-Alex