Ed Crosby, former major league infielder, 1967 Wilson High graduate, father of 2004 American League Rookie of the Year Bobby Crosby, says he’s held his tongue long enough about the current plight of his son with the Oakland A’s.
“My feelings are that he has been messed around with, and that Billy Beane (A’s general manager) has done a number on him,” says the 60-year-old Crosby, a retired major league scout who resides in Garden Grove. “Right now Bobby’s on the disabled list, and he’s not even hurt. He had a twinge in his left calf, but it wasn’t serious enough to put him on the DL. But they were just looking for an excuse. Bobby’s not hurt, period.”
...“I know I’m Bobby’s father, and I’m biased when it comes to him,” concedes Ed Crosby. “But I also know he hasn’t been treated properly by Billy Beane. They’re supposed to be making a movie about Billy Beane with Brad Pitt starring. What’s it going to be, a comedy?”...
To put it mildly, Ed Crosby isn’t a passionate advocate of Billyball, which is the A’s trademark take-a-pitch, work-the-count approach that has been a hallmark of the organization under Billy Beane.
“The A’s take the bats out of their players’ hands from the time they’re in the minor leagues,” he says. “Bobby was taught always to take the first pitch. They take all the aggressiveness out of their players. Look how much better guys like Eric Burns and Nick Swisher and Marco Scutaro have become once they got out of Oakland. ...
“I love the way Mike Scioscia has the Angels playing. They’re so aggressive both with their bats and with their baserunning. They’re always attacking. That’s not the case with the A’s.” ...
Repoz
Posted: August 26, 2009 at 07:45 PM |
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1. Dewey, Steven Wright Wannabe and Soupuss Posted: August 26, 2009 at 08:08 PM (#3305937)Eric Burns
Who?
Nick Swisher
How is he better than when he left Oakland?
Marco Scutaro
I didn't even know he was no longer on the A's.
Proof that the National League is far inferior to the American League is the fact that John Smoltz, litup in his AL starts this summer, dominates the San Diego Padres, a minor league team shamelessly masquerading as a major league one.
Well-indemnified proof.
He's having a great year with the Jays ... by being more patient and having a career-high 75 walks...
I'm going to take the low hanging fruit:
Scutaro is having his best season, but his second best was in Oakland.
Swisher had his best two seasons in Oakland.
Eric Byrnes has his best season in Oakland.
Also, Eric Burns!
Edit: A coke to 1 through 7
Krikorian and the Press Telegram deserve the scorn for printing this uninformative tripe.
To tag along with [5], one of the things I've repeatedly heard the Angels talking about this year is their newly patient approach at the plate.
The Angels don't mean they're looking to walk though. They mean it as trying to hit a good pitch instead of hacking away.
I assumed he had a long-term contract.
Sadly, he's the second best SS in the organization.
I've heard people giving credit to Abreu...
Joe Morgan was wrong to have that pre-announcing career.
No comment.
No, he was really good before Bling Devine "did a number on him".
The good news for Ed and Bobby is that they'll finally get their wish and get out of Oakland after this season. I just hope nobody with the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks does a number on him next year.
He deserves a bunch, particularly with Aybar's development. In truth however, I think the Tex deal was really the catalyst. His approach made an impact on veteran guys like Hunter who have really altered their approach. Likewise with Kendrick, though his payoff hasn't happened just yet. Tex also demonstrated to the org at-large that they simply weren't developing plate discipline as well as they should have. They came into the season looking to improve in that area and Abreu, both through his performance and his tutelage, has fit perfectly.
What the heck? At least that makes the hiring decision a snap.
Both Abreu and Teix deserve credit, as do the Red Sox--damned if I can find it, but I remember Scoscia talking about emulating Boston and emphasizing plate discipline after losing in the division series last year.
My favorite was a manager getting a call from a recent young hire's parents about his 6-month performance evaluation. It's not everyone (older parents aren't so much of a problem), but loadsa baby boomers are more friends to their kids than parents.
Well, not so fast. Though Scoscia won't start him every game (which is defensible, as Izturis is also playing well), Kendrick has been amazing since coming back from the minors. Per Yahoo! Sports:
It does occur to me that you might've meant that Kendrick's payoff in stronger plate discipline (and thus more walks and longer at-bats) hasn't happened. That's true, but I don't think folks realize how much better Howie's been since coming back up from the minors and thought I'd mention it.
As a University staff member, amen. Helicoptering is out of control. Two years ago, I overheard one of the students answering phones try to explain to a mother why she couldn't take care of signing her daughter up for her dorm internet service (parents can pay for service if the kid links mommy's ID to theirs, but they can't subscribe) for like 20 minutes. I grabbed the phone and when she said "She is doing sorority rush this week and does not have the time to do this" once again, I told her that her daughter was now a big girl, that big people have to prioritize and with prioritization comes consequences, and thus until she prioritized spending two minutes (max) clicking buttons her daughter would go without.
Christ, my parents *never* would have done this. This past weekend was move-in, and I mentioned in the Lounge that my hero for Sunday was some dad. I was explaining the hows and whens of something he and his son needed to do, something vital (this kid was only 17), and he looked at me and said "This is his situation to handle himself, tell him." Wanted to hug him.
I don't know about job interviews, but they definitely complain to professors. My father tells students the first day of class that every time one of their parents calls, he's lowering their grade one step.
One of my accounting professors last year, who reminds me very much of my father, told us the first day that, if your cell phone goes off during class, he's docking you fifteen points. If you answer it, it's a full letter grade.
If my friend called for my performance review, there'd be hell to pay.
Lame. I just answer it. In Japanese.
Lame. I just answer it. In Japanese.
and you would deserve the letter grade knock. of course knowing you, you would complain it was racially motivated or some other crap, but the fact is, you are in school and should treat it as work. There is almost zero phone calls that would be worth you answering as a 19 year old in college that takes precedent over school/work.
I went back to school in '06, and I was actually shocked at how little this happened. Seriously, I don't need all ten fingers to count the number of times, in two years, a phone went off in a class. It happened way more than that at the job I left, and it happens way more now. Not sure what it is, though I did note when I walked out of my last final and went from vibrate to ringer, I had the same one from two years before (VY's TD run to win the NC.) I literally put it on vibrate walking into my first class, and it never changed in the interim.
And whether or not you should at work really depends on what your work is. I answer mine at work all the time...
I wonder if Ed's dad whined about Phil Seghi when Crosby was stinking it up for the Indians in the 70s?
of course knowing him, he would complain that cardsfanboy leaping to conclusions that paint him in a negative light was racially motivated or some other crap.
Truly an embarrassing moment. I wanted to crawl under my desk.
My professor threatened to fail me on the spot.
At least I didn't have one of those idiotic songs blasting out at 10,000 decibels.
God, I hate those so much.
So my Batman themed ring tone would cause you to stab me in the neck?
Not too long after I was, umm, excused from duty in late '02 as metro editor of the daily paper here, my successor brought in a guy he'd worked with previously to interview, & the guy (who I'm pretty sure was in his 30s) brought his mother along. She would've been elderly, pretty much. And yeah, he got the job. And no, neither of them is there now (granted, the place was pathologically turnover-happy -- I was something like the 8th metro editor in as many years), though they're together in the next place my aforementioned successor wound up. No doubt with mama making 3.
It's enough to make me happy that (a) I didn't get along with my mother (whose mental illness couldn't have helped, sad to say) at all & (b) she's dead.
I'm all for releasing the guy if he sucks, but I'm 100% against endorsing phantom injuries as a way to pick up a roster spot. Teams are doing this all the time now, and it's horseshit. Players (not their parents, but hey, at least someone is bringing it up) should be speaking up about this, no way we should be condoning it.
The commissioner's office should be investigating this.
As for helicoptering parents, I was blogging about the Orioles back in the mid-90s (only we didn't call it blogging back then, and I was using some kludgy software my brother put together), and back in the spring of [checking] 1997, the Orioles inexplicably brought Kelly Gruber in to spring training. I pointed out that this was -- to use a technical term -- asinine; Gruber hadn't played baseball in four years (!), and he was 35 years old, and he hadn't had a good year since he was 29. I may have said a few uncomplimentary things about his skills. His mother actually called me up to yell at me for hurting his feelings.
This is reason #193 why I'm nicer online than in person. You never know who's reading stuff.
I've had to talk to several mothers and fathers of busbuys/busgirls bot not for anyone that is actually legally an adult. I had a husband try to sit in on a job interview for his wife. I asked him to leave and she did not get the job. The funniest thing I ever saw though was when I was about 21 years old and a fellow cook came in one day and gave the chef a note from his mother (and he was about 22) asking the chef to let the guy go on vacation with his mommy and daddy. We got a hold of the note and were cracking up over it for months. I don't remember exactly what was in it but it was pretty sad and pathetic.
As for parents calling professors, we just tell them that FERPA means we can't discuss anything with them. End of conversation. FERPA has been around for a long time, but only recently have colleges and universities gotten pretty fanatical about compliance – possibly as parents get more aggressive.
The should require a mother's note to go on the DL.
And I get more mystified by the people my age who let their parents do this stuff than the parents themselves. It would absolutely kill me to have my mother do things for me for me like that, and the same was true even in my teens.
But then, I know a few of them.
But there's no evidence that this is the case, other than Ed Crosby's rant--which contains several other mistruths.
As is typical with the A's, Crosby spent several days on the active roster being unable to play, being listed as "day to day" with his calf injury, before he was DLed. Bobby Crosby admits he's rehabbing a calf injury. Ed even admits Crosby hurt his calf, but says it's not serious enough to go on the DL.
If the A's were going to force Crosby to the DL with a phantom injury, they wouldn't have done it retroactively after he was unable to play for a few days. They wouldn't have done it just so they could have 13 pitchers on the roster and use Nomar as their backup SS.
I'm sure teams use phantom injuries to make better use of their roster. I don't see how this situation fits that description. If they didn't want him on the team, they could just release him.
It's tough to decide where to draw the line here, though. Take something like a muscle strain that will heal just a little more slowly if a guy plays through the injury, and will force the guy to play at 90% of his capabilities. If the guy is a star, you probably have him they through it. If he's a bench warmer, you probably have someone better than that guy's 90%, so you DL him. And Rocco Baldelli may be a special case, but the Red Sox DL'ed him a month ago because they were down to their last outfielder, and Baldelli couldn't be counted on to be available every day because of the channelopathy. I think he also had some mild muscle strain, but the main thing is that he's capable of playing every two days, but not every day, so they needed to call up Josh Reddick.
I agree that the league should crack down on phantom injuries, but we should also be careful about what we call a phantom injury. As Crosby approaches free agency, he may not want to be branded as injury prone, and he might have wanted to play through something.
Dice K has been sidelined with, as far as anyone can tell, a recurring bout of suck for most of the summer. I don't think it's appropriate, and I hope the league begins to crack down on such DL misuses.
They claim that he had a shoulder strain, and put him on a rehab program. I think that MLB will be extremely reluctant to intervene over pitchers' arm injuries, almost no matter how suspect they seem.
Bud's mom must be dead by now.
Is FERPA HIPAA's sister?
Pretty much. FWIW, I had as many parents call me last semester as cell phones ring in class. I agree that students tend to be fairly good about this and if it happens and the kid is obviously embarrassed and doesn't take the call, shutting it off quickly, I let it go. It's certainly no more disrupting than someone burping or farting loudly, which also happens semi-regularly.
As for not wanting your parents to intercede on your behalf, there is a good bet if the kid is embarrassed by helicoptering parents, the parents won't helicopter. There seems to be a high correlation between parents that come rushing in at the merest hint of a problem and kids who expect their help. It's easy to rant about over-protective parents - and believe me, I do - but there are, and always have been, bad parents who raise whiny, needy, incompetent kids. It may be easier for them to contact you now, but they've always been there.
You know, almost everyone who followed the Mets assumed that Ollie's 2 trips to the DL were for cases of the suck rather than any tangible injury, and yet here he is now having season ending surgery.
So now most Met followers assume that his unusual (even for him) bouts of suckitude were due to pitching while injured, because someone in the Mets hierarchy (STILL) believes players should suck it in and play hurt.
Still wouldn't be worth her calling, but...
True, but that doesn't leave a footprint. Stuff like this lasts for a while.
I still think MLB should require all players placed on the DL to go to a league employed doctor who has no tie to the team to sign off on it.
I realize there'd be a cost to this, but I don't think it would be prohibitive.
The cost would be huge. There'd be an enormous demand on these doctors' time. You'd have teams playing with 24 and 23 man rosters, because the schedules were too tight. I doubt that the teams would be very enthusiastic about the extra travel fees to see these doctors on what are mostly pointless visits. ("Yup, your ligament is indeed torn, looks like your own doctors were right.")
Ahhh this doesn't surprise me. Some of my buddies and I started to notice, during the end of his tenure, that Kelly wasn't taking criticism well. He seemed incredibly sensitive. I never met him so I don't know what he is like in person but I recall at least one of his rants to a reporter reminding everyone he had won the Superstars Competition as a defense to his athleticism. That raised an eyebrow or two in the bar where we were watching.
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