Joe Maddon On Shortness
August 17th, 2012 by terrybenishFrom Larry STone’s compilation:
Maddon strongly disputed the notion he had ulterior motives. His only motivation, he said, was displeasure with the strike zone of home-plate umpire Rob Drake, and his desire to win what was at the time, and remained, a 1-0 game.
“It had everything to do with us trying to win the game,” Maddon told reporters in Anaheim. “All game I’d been hearing how big (Drake’s strike zone) was against left-hand hitters, and furthermore, I’m listening to our guys, and there was kind of an abrasiveness in the way it was handled from the ump to our players, which I didn’t like, either.”
“And on top of all that, that game’s 1-0,” Maddon told the Tampa Bay Times and other outlets. “And on top of all that, we’re trying to win a pennant. So it had nothing to do with delaying the other guy.”
Maddon added that Hernandez’s brewing perfect game was not a consideration in his argument.
“With all due respect, I don’t care about that whatsoever,
whether he pitches a perfect game, a no-hitter, whatever,” Maddon
said. “I have no interest at all in the success of the Seattle
Mariners. I have zero interest in that. So however it’s perceived
from the other side, that is a matter of perception, how they’re
going to look at things.
“From my perspective, it’s about the Rays, period. And
what’s right for our guys at a specific moment. And I’ll always
defend our guys first as opposed to trying to put an opposition
member into some form of the history book.”
On another matter, Maddon said he wouldn’t have been averse to
one of his players trying to bunt for a base hit, despite the
unwritten rule against bunting in the latter stages of a no-hitter
or perfect game. Ben Davis, then with the Padres, was castigated
for doing so late in a game in which Curt Schilling of Arizona was
pitching a perfect game in 2001. Davis got a bunt single in the
eighth to break up the perfect game, much to the fury of
Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly.
Sean Rodriguez, who struck out to end the perfect game, told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times he considered bunting during his at-bat in the ninth inning. But once Hernandez fell behind 2-0, Rodriguez said he thought he would get a fastball that he could possibly drive to the gap or hit over the fence for a game-tying homer. Instead, he swung and missed at a slider, and eventually struck out looking at a changeup.
“Maddon said Thursday night he feels the unwritten
prohibition against bunting in a no-hitter is “archaic. A lot of
that stuff to me is ill-advised, ill-informed, just ill. Why is
bunting a non-masculine way of getting on first base? I don’t
understand that.”
Joe Maddon not so subtly contradicts himself in the middle there: He says he wasn’t icing Felix, doesn’t care Felix, Felix’s no hitter, he’s just about Rays and winning the game. So he wasn’t trying to disrupt Felix?
Two things about him as revealed in seeing him and in last paragraph, he is really, really short in every way figuratively and literally, a virtual Napoleon.
He riffs on masculinity and bunting…he does, nobody else, he does.
A Freudian shrink could have a field day with all of his shortness and insecurity.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
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