I've said before that I
greatly enjoy Joe Cowley's work as a beat writer, but this is the second time where he's used column space to delve into the completely unnecessary. The first one was his
well-I-never rip job of Cleveland after Indians fans booed Jim Thome upon his return.
This time, he
tries to smear the name of a columnist I admire, Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star, who
opined in a column that Ozzie Guillen should've taken Mark Grudzielanek instead of Mark Redman for the Royals representative in the All-Star Game.
I don't agree with Posnanski's assertion that he should've taken anybody but Redman. No Royals are deserving of the All-Star Game, and I think Redman is the easiest to bury in the depth chart. But I can see where Posnanski's coming from; he's basically saying that picking "Mark Grudzielanek" or "Reggie Sanders" (using quotes because their names are better than their games this year) wouldn't be as big of laughingstocks as Redman currently is. He's trying to defend his city's honor.
Guillen has the right to defend his honor, and it's fair when he says the following:
"Look, I don't even
know this 'Posney' guy, and I really don't care anything about him, but I said if anyone has a problem or question to call
me and I would explain it to them. He doesn't know anything about
picking an All-Star team and what goes into it. But yet he's going to
sit back and rip me?"
Nothing wrong with Ozzie's reaction there. But why is Cowley even bringing Joe Posnanski up to Guillen, much less using his column space as a soapbox on which to denigrate the work of a fine columnist whom nobody in Chicago knows?
If you read Posnanski regularly (and I recommend bookmarking
his column page), he knows a lot about baseball, and better yet, he loves baseball. That comes across in his writing, even though the Royals try their best to beat his morale into the ground. Read
this piece on Satchel Paige, to name a recent example.
Guillen isn't expected to know what Posnanski does; Cowley is. That Posnanski wrote one piece Cowley doesn't agree with doesn't give Cowley the right to put Posnanski in the
same position as Jay Mariotti was in a couple of weeks ago.
Mariotti has a long track record in Chicago of launching missiles from miles away, yet not showing up -- or even calling -- to defend his word. He's a loud-mouthed coward who will mercilessly rip on a team, player, coach, or other figure, but not to their faces. Posanski, meanwhile, has played chess with guys he's written about. If anything, he's too fair, occasionally called too light-hearted and not critical enough.
Yet Cowley puts Posnanski on the same level by cutting a story out of the same cloth -- columnist says something about Guillen without calling him, Guillen disagrees, columnist is then a weak-willed hack. There are distinct differences, though -- Mariotti is five miles away, Posnanski is 605 miles away. Mariotti writes about Chicago, Posnanski writes about Kansas City. But I wouldn't be surprised if Posnanski calls Guillen and writes about it, because that's the kind of guy he is, even though the manager of the White Sox isn't in his jurisdiction.
But if he does, chalk it up to an unnecessary nuisance created by Cowley. Forget that he's writing about writers, which is probably something most people aren't interested in. But all this piece will do is make both sides look bad. On one side, Posnanski is a know-nothing coward; on the other, Guillen is an oversensitive loudmouth. Neither are true, but if nobody's familiar with the parties involved before reading this, it can surely come off that way.
Of course, one could criticize Cowley's judgment of Kansas City like he criticized Posnanski's opinion. If Cowley knew anything about KC, he'd know that Gates Barbecue is second-rate compared to
Arthur Bryant's, especially the one that's four blocks away from the
Negro League Baseball Museum.
If there's one positive that came out of this, at least Ozzie didn't call Posnanski a "fag." Looks like those
sensitivity classes are paying off.
Update (10:03 AM, 7/6): The Chicago Tribune's Teddy Greenstein has stepped up to defend Poz, making a
lot of the same points I did, though he added that he's a two-time APSE Best Columnist.
Still, I'm not a fan of the way Greenstein pinned the blame on Ozzie, saying, "But these days Guillen seems determined to stifle dissension. Disagree
with him on something and it's clear you know nothing about baseball."
I guess the Trib used up its yearly allotment of Sun-Times bashing to assault Mariotti through print and blog, because, again, Cowley is at fault here. I doubt Cowley raised the issue to Ozzie saying, "Ozzie, Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star said Redman was a bad pick, but before ripping into him, please note that he's a terrific, award-winning columnist noted for his baseball writing. In fact, here is a copious sample of his work. Please peruse them before forming your answer, lest you look like a dolt."
Given the tone Cowley used in this column, I'm guessing it was closer to, "Hey Ozzie, get a load of this assh-le."