Repoz at Baseball Think Factory is a renaissance man. In addition to being able to drop references to things no one has thought of since the Ford administration, he (a) has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Ass Ponys back catalog (I think he has “Mr. Superlove” on vinyl); and (b) manages to find all of the loony baseball commentary in existence. He does God’s work in this regard, really, because without him we would have no idea of half of the things that should outrage us so.
Anyway, today Repoz found a column by Clark Booth of the Dorchester Reporter talking about how Dumb Arte Moreno is for giving Albert Pujols all that money. And that’s not me paraphrasing: he really calls him dumb. Gives him the “Dumb Owner of the Year” award and everything:
I’m gonna allow for the possibility that Booth is actually being clever here and making the point that dudes like Moreno became rich precisely because they are not dumb, and that anyone who complains about the Pujols contract is totally underselling Moreno’s business acumen.
But I kind of don’t think that’s what he’s doing here. I think he really does think that the “moronic fans in the daily newspapers” have a better idea of how badly the Pujols contract is gonna hurt the Angels than Moreno does. Because they have better access to the details of the $100 million annual raise in TV revenues the Angels are getting and which more than pays for Pujols’ deal, I guess.
Is it the best baseball contract ever? Nah. Like I’ve said, it’s gonna look bad on the back end. But it’s certainly not “dumb.” Not by a longshot.
