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Friday, October 01, 2004 |
Steve Stone Soup
Kerry Wood just lost to the Atlanta Braves, 5-4, though the game wasn't really as close as the final score would indicate. The Braves led throughout, all the runs scoring off Wood, with only a three-run ninth pushing the game to respectability. The real fireworks, offensive if you happened to be GM Jim Hendry, team president Andy McPhail (a curious name for a Cubs president, no?), or manager Dusty Baker, were broadcaster Steve Stone's comments after yesterday's appalling loss to the bottom-feeding Reds:
"You want the truth? You can't handle the truth," Stone said on WGN Radio. "Let me tell you something, guys, the truth of this situation is [this is] an extremely talented bunch of guys who want to look at all directions except where they should really look, and kind of make excuses for what happened.Well, make that death-and-death right now, with a Wild Card elimination number of only two. What he said may be true, though there's an argument either way. The important thing was Stone needed to realize it was impolitic for him to mention it at the microphone. The truth -- if that's what he spoke -- might be too hard for some to handle, but I imagine Vin Scully kept his counsel off the airwaves back in 1992."At the end of the day, boys, you don't tell me how rough the water is, you bring in the ship. The best eight [teams] go on, the other teams go home," Stone said. "This team should have won the Wild Card [playoff berth] by six, seven games. No doubt about it. They have the talent to do that. They're life-and-death right now."
Comments:
I think there is a slight difference between what Vin Scully was seeing in 1992 and what Steve Stone and Chip Caray have seen this season. That was then: the Dodgers dead last. (And Mr. Scully has been known to let his thinking be known on the air, whenever the Dodgers might play as though having oatmeal between their ears, though certainly Viscount Vincent is a far more facile wordsmith than Rolling Stone.) This is now: The 1992 Dodgers were not exactly poised to end their season as an object lesson in what occurs when Stoning the messenger and machoing the opposition are a team's idea about how to make friends and win pennants.
Vinny might comment about the play, but never, so far as I have ever heard him, mentioned the plays, that is to say, the managerial in-game decisions. The only way to interpret Stone's comments are as a slam against Dusty Baker. But the rumor is Stone was done after this year regardless. So perhaps this was a parting shot.
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