Who's Running the Baseball Asylum?

Last football season, one of the NFL owners made a big stink by referencing a phrase that most of the players had never heard before.  We have long used the allusion, "The inmates are running the asylum" to mean that people -- employees, students, whatever -- were acting as if they were in charge, even though they were not the owners, or the bosses, or the teachers or principals or whatever.

We grew up hearing that phrase on occasion and have always known what it was supposed to mean.  Apparently, however, you may no longer ever, ever use the term "inmates", even in an aphorism, to refer to NFL players.  I guess it is because they are so disproportionately black, as are our prison inmate populations.  Yeah, that's it.  Got to be.

Of course, the phrase refers to mental institution inmates, not prison inmates, but the facts are never allowed to get in the way, when the left is doing the arguing.  So the owner was forced to apologize, though for what we are none of us sure.

So ... in this nascent baseball season, there was a piece out there yesterday regarding the New York Yankees.  As you know, after last season they were gifted the slugging outfielder Giancarlo Stanton in a trade from the Miami Marlins, newly part-owned by the Yankees' former shortstop, Derek "I'll Always Be a Yankee" Jeter.  The trade was so lopsided -- Miami received a second-baseman, a batboy and a bag of game-used baseballs -- that the Marlins fans revolted ... both of them.

At any rate, this piece pointed out that when the trade was about to be completed, Brian Cashman called Aaron Judge to ask him if it was OK.  Now, Brian Cashman is the long-time General Manager of the Yankees.  That is not a position we take lightly, given that the Yankees have a fan base somewhat larger than that of the Marlins and consisting, to a great deal, of rabid, entitled New Yorkers who think think that the World Series is their birthright.

Aside -- I have  friends who are Yankee fans.  Let's just say that I have managed to befriend only gentle, kind people, who happen to be Yankee fans through no fault of their own and don't fit that stereotype at all.  Right, Big Tony?

So it is tough to be the GM of the Yankees, and that used to mean that there were only tough men serving that role.  Ed Barrow.  George Weiss.  Roy Hamey.  You would not want to negotiate a contract with Roy Hamey or George Weiss or Ed Barrow.  I read a lot of baseball history; trust me, you would not.

Brian Cashman apparently is not George Weiss.  Aaron Judge, whom he felt obliged to consult on the trade for Stanton, had a really good year last year -- but it was his rookie year, his first full year in the major leagues.  I don't care if he had hit 500 homers; he was a rookie!

On what planet is a GM, particularly a Yankee GM, asking players if he should execute a trade?  George Weiss wouldn't have asked Mickey Mantle for advice on a trade, let alone if he thought it was a good idea or not!  What has changed to where a GM is actually asking players what they think?

Now, I will grant that it is a different era from the 1950s and the days of Weiss and Barrow and the like.  I will even grant that, as a GM, I might ask a player about a former teammate, what kind of guy he might be.  I might do that, because in these lovely social media days, and in these days when free agency has moved players from team to team a lot more than in years past, more players know each other and clubhouse morale can affect performance even more than before.

But I'll be gosh-darned if I think it is a good idea for a GM to ask a rookie for trade advice, even if he had just hit a bunch of home runs and the team had roped off a special section for his oh-so-special fans.  The GM has a lot to concern himself with -- particularly managing a salary budget, given that players can conceivably become free agents after six years, are winning large awards in arbitration, and staying under a luxury-tax cap that costs a lot to exceed repeatedly.

I'm probably a bit old-school in this.  I don't think baseball was such a great thing in the old days, when players had to take what was offered them or not play, and were restricted to only the team that owned their services in perpetuity.  I don't admire those old GMs; they weren't the greatest people for the most part, and they certainly ran a hard line.

But they were the ones, along with the owners, with the money on the line.  The risks were theirs, because the investment was theirs, and/or the job of managing that investment was theirs.  My old-school nature tells me that the involvement of the players in personnel decisions should be limited, private, and of a very narrow focus.  Asking a rookie if he would be OK changing positions if the team pulls off a trade for a veteran just smells like something.

Like, I guess, the inmates running the asylum.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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