40. Dag Nabbit apealing [sic] his own check swing Posted: May 22, 2002 at 08:41 PM (#118062)
I'm totally dumbfounded. . . That being said, as I read this thread - am I the only one reminded of Whitey Herzog's Keith Hernandez for Neil Allen trade? (And that was shortly after Keith's co-MVP award). The general theory about that was that Whitey found out about Keith's coke habit, and wanted that out of his clubhouse ASAP. I've even heard it argued Herzog intentionally got too little for Keith to send a message to any other users or potential users on the team that this would not be tolerated. . . I know Jeremy's been busted for pot, maybe he does other stuff? Then again, maybe Beane's the one smoking pot. JOHN MABRY?!?

On May 22, 2012

Posted 2:37 p.m., May 23, 2002 (#397) - A's Fan
A huge question mark is suddenly placed against the mental state of Billy Beane after his sudden trade of Jeremy Giambi.

Has the extraordinary pressure he applies to himself and all those around him professionally finally carried him over the top? Has the GM become power-crazed and impossibly intolerant of anybody who he believes has fallen below his own standards?

The profile is of a man obsessed with success, who has literally become maddened by his failure to get his hands on the pennant that has eluded him.

There is no doubt that Beane is in great turmoil - but this is not a man who has lost his wits. It is a supreme professional who has looked around and been angered by what he sees as a shortfall of professionalism around him.

The basic truth is that Beane is suffering from rage. A rage to win. An insistence that nothing is left to chance in the pursuit of that goal.

Any judgment of Beane's behaviour now has to be balanced against the reality of his place in the game. It is an extraordinary one he has fashioned for himself. It does not speak, it yells of commitment.

We also have to remember that Beane has no sense of public relations or celebrity. He does not think in terms of image. He thinks just about the margins between victory and loss. He is a supreme loner - and he knows more clearly than most of today's professionals what it takes to win.

So what does Beane do? Given his nature, he will march on, breathing fire.

There is a by-product of this, though, that the A's, A's fans and all of Beane's potentially damning critics must not forget. It is that as Beane racks up the demands on himself, he also raises his expectations of all those around him.

No, Billy Beane hasn't gone mad. He has simply reached breaking point. How well he comes back from it depends on the depth of his own will - and the ability of the A's and staff to at least begin to meet their GM's own amazing standards.

Posted 6:49 p.m., May 23, 2002 (#470) - Jonathan
++that's the part of it that bothers me: not that he might have had to trade Giambi for non-baseball reasons, but that he didn't, or didn't care to, make it look good.++ -Joe Sheehan

Theory #3562 - Occam's Razer is Dull. It's conspiracy theory time.

Beane has been ordered by the A's ownership to tank the season. (Either to force the stadium issue or more likely to strengthen the owner's bargaining position by eliminating the strongest case for "small-market success".)

Disgusted by this directive, he sends down Pena, Menachino & Tam, thinking "this is so obviously out of character for me that the snoops will come out of the woodwork and all will be brought into the open." (Pena's demotion was - if nothing else - more surprising than Blalock's. Pena had shown greater ability to function at the ML level. The Beane A's are known for patience with young talent.)

It doesn't work. Beane is driven to desperate measures. He has to do something so painfully out of character that there will be no question but that something is going on behind the scenes. (After all this is not only a bad trade, it is completely opposite to his philosophy as revealed through many years of track record.)

Ok, like any conspiracy theory, this one's probably wrong. But it does seem to fit the facts as we know them. I'm more inclined to think Beane would do something to protest ownership than something to destroy a player's reputation (deserved or otherwise.)

I also will point out that Beane implied he would have given Jason Giambi the no-trade clause, but was blocked by ownership on that move.

So which thread is Shea Hillenbrand?

That and the first Edgar HoF thread are my two favorite threads of all time.

Homer: How come you never made the World Series Moe?

Moe Beane: Ah, probably the fact that I lost nine consecutive series clinching games. That and politics, its always politics.

Homer (angrily): Lousy Democrats!

Graham Koonce! Esteban German! Adam Piatt! Those were the days...

So what would be the closest 2012 parallel?

Allen Craig for Greg Dobbs?

This one was great obviously but for me the strongest 'I've got to get to Primer to see the meltdown' moment ever was when I heard about Kasmir for Zambrano.

While we're on the subject of favorite threads...

Game Six

Look, there's no possible parallel today. There's no GM that is held in as much reverence as Beane was.

BBC goes to command the Southern Front:
my HOTTT aide and driver, commander Summersby Ausmus brings me the port-a-phone
General Gray, it's your Husband on line 1. AGAIN!!! sez one of the Dogss ate the kidz homework and the Dog won't eat the mustard to make him barf. what should he DOOOOOOOOO?

There's no GM that is held in as much reverence as Beane was.

There's no cult of personality around Friedman, but the Rays doing something like the Giambi-Mabry trade would have a similar feeling to it, I suspect. What would the equivalent be? Like . . . ditching Matt Joyce for, uh, uh, uh . . . uh . . . nope, I got nothing.