"I want him on the hill tomorrow,
Barry."
"John, I know you like the kid."
"Like him, hell. He's got a 2.81 ERA. Fuck if I like him, he's got the goods."
"He's clubhouse poison."
"You've been reading the papers again."
"With all due respect, John, I see him in there every goddamn day. All you see is the box score."
"That's all I need to see. I don't give a shit what the columnists print. He could be Saddam fucking Hussein as long as he's winning ballgames."
"He ain't gonna be winning them for long, John. Guys like this, they burn themselves out."
"That's not what the scouts say. Lefty, sidewider, he could go for ten years."
"You know what I mean. It's the arguments with the umpires."
"So he's hotheaded! I like a kid with a little fire."
"Did you hear what he said to Culbreath the other day, when he got tossed?"
"I know he was arguing balls and strikes. And I know you can't do that. But he's young. He'll learn."
"He wasn't arguing balls and strikes. He was arguing against the whole notion of balls and strikes. He said they were arbitrarily created delineations that, while useful in the practical sense of moving play ahead, were often enforced unscientifically according to judgments that had more to do with the realm of aesthetics than they did with game-theoristic arbitrage. And he said if you were going to call the game purely from an artistic standpoint, he didn't see how a knuckleball, which embodies theory and structure, could be construed as inferior to the brute praxis of a hitter, no matter how far away from the plate it was."
"College boys. What are you gonna do?"
"He also suggested that in the absence of a mechanical device that measured pitches accurately, his own interpretation of strikes was no less valid than anyone else's and that Merriweather's master narrative devalorized his own, thus negating all the hard work he put in to get to the Show."
"Merriweather is kind of fat, Barry. You have to admit that."
"And this stuff goes on every day, John. If I hear one more word about Donna Haraway in the locker room, I'm gonna scream."
"Who is that? His agent?"
"I think she's a robot or something. It's all robots and priveleging with that guy."
"The fans like him."
"That's because they don't have to listen to him all day."
"The press is crazy about him."
"That's because they like a guy who says a bunch of horseshit every time he opens his mouth. The press was crazy about Dennis Rodman. The press was crazy about Mike Tyson."
"He's got a 2.81 ERA, Barry."
"Christ, John, don't do this to me. I have enough guys yelling at me because I told them no big screen TV in the clubhouse when we're under .500. Some of the other pitchers hide in the bathroom when they see he's finished his warmups."
"You wanna stay above .500, you don't bench one of your best pitchers because he's kind of a headcase."
"He threw a beanball at Scott Rolen last week because he heard that Rolen liked Alfred Ayer, John. Something has to be done."
"Well...maybe I got a way to make this work for us. Who we got next week?"
"Uh...Pittsburgh, then Atlanta."
"Okay. Here's the deal. We sit him for Pittsburgh. And keep him away from the press. Maybe float a trade rumor."
"Yeah?"
"Then we tell him that Maddux said that the Paris post-structuralists were nothing but a cadre of articulate sophists. If that's not bulletin board material I don't know what is."
"You know, John, I liked it better when we had all Dominican guys on the staff."
"Don't kid yourself, Barry. It's all smiles and thank yous with those guys when you're winning, but the minute the team starts to look second division, it's una acumulación inmensa de espectáculos day in and day out."
"I guess so."
"College boys, Barry. What are you gonna do?"
Quote of the Day: "I am awake only in what I love and desire." (Hakim Bey)