08.22.05
Choosing the lesser
The spat between Milton Bradley and Jeff Kent is sad in one sense only. Really, I don’t care if teammates fight all that often. In the 1970s when Steve Garvey and Don Sutton fought in the clubhouse, Yankee players said it made the Dodgers the team to watch the rest of the year. The Dodgers didn’t win that year, but the Yankees had won before despite the fact there were times players on the team couldn’t stand being on the same field as each other.
The reason the Bradley-Kent dustup is sad is because it’s happening on a team that is only in contention because the rest of the division is awful. The Dodgers are 11 games under .500, but only five games behind the division-leading Padres. In any other division they’d be more than a dozen games back. This would be really big news if the Dodgers were living up to their history.
It’s hard to know whose side to take. Initially I go with Bradley. He was a hothead last year, but I have a soft spot for guys who reveal their emotions so visibly. Then again, I don’t like how he was so easy to call out Kent Saturday, even if it wasn’t by name. Kent, on the other hand, revealed a public dislike for Barry Bonds (We’ve all joined that club by now), but then got injured riding a motorcyle, then lied about it.
In the end, I suppose I shouldn’t care. So for now, I won’t. It’s more of an off-season concern.