I know, I know. I'm late. I wrote this piece and then forgot about it. Oh, well. Indeed, the month was just clogged with lots of candidates for the Len Speaks monthly award for excessive stupidity. But we're here now and ready to bestow the April 2010 honor to...
New York Daily News baseball columnist Bill Madden. It's the only photo I could find of this numbskull and, admittedly, it's a little small. But, I suppose the little snapshot matches the size of his talent. Small. Miniscule. Bordering on non-existent.
This old fart has been hanging around baseball stadiums for years. Listening for the latest gossip and then printing the exact opposite. Revered in baseball circles, this jerk is even being inducted into the journalism wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. This could only signify to me that they are running out of candidates and that I might actually be next in line.
I never realized how out-of-touch this dumbbell is until I moved three thousand miles away from New York. Admittedly, while I was growing up on the East Coast, I just assumed that everything Madden wrote was the gospel truth. I read him all the time. The guy must be on target, right?
Wrong.
Since I have lived in another baseball market and another team's backyard, I now see tons of mis-information when I read Dopey Bill's columns on-line. Basic facts that are totally ignored. Hypotheses that are completely unsubstantiated. In short, pure garbage. And, for this mess, he gets a Hall of Fame plaque? I'd argue he doesn't even deserve a driver's license.
Over this past winter, the tumor that is Bill Madden got a lot bigger. With the impending Dodger ownership divorce, Madden went to town talking and writing about how much the organization was going to fall apart. He had heard this. He had heard that. Most of it was heresay. All of it was incessant babbling.
When he wrote that the Dodgers money woes forced them not to re-sign potential free agent third baseman Casey Blake, I had sipped on the last straw.
You see, the Dodgers had re-signed Blake to a three year contract the winter before. Casey Blake was going nowhere. But, if you read Bill Madden on a daily basis, Blake was a free agent that the Dodgers could no longer afford to have. His pronouncements took on the tone of a mental patient who had missed the afternoon's medication wagon.
If nobody else at the Daily News was going to rein this asshole in, I would.
Now, mind you, I have communicated with some sports writers in the past. In this day of e-mail directories and accountability, most people in the media are easily accessible. Here in Los Angeles, I have had past dialogues with the likes of Tony Jackson of ESPN.COM, Bill Plaschke and TJ Simers of the Los Angeles Times, and Mark Langill who is the official historian of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Back in NY, the New York Post's Phil Mushnick and I have conversed in writing several times. The bottom line is that these guys are all easy to get a hold of.
Try to find Bill Madden. I dare you. No, really, try. There is no e-mail contact for him. There is no office phone number for him. And, surprisingly, he has no direct address with the NY Daily News. It's easier to find Waldo. Meanwhile, I had absolutely no way to tell him that he didn't know jack shit about Casey Blake.
Last Sunday, Madden devoted a lot of his column to manager Joe Torre. He hates Los Angeles. He isn't speaking to the owner. The players no longer listen to him. I read the papers here and see none of the same. And I keep wondering why anybody bothers to even read this jerk's vomit day after day.
And then I wonder even more. Why am I bothering to read this jerk's vomit day after day? Just who should be the Moron of the Month for April 2010? I think it should be Bill Madden. One could argue that it really could be me.
Dinner last night: Turkey smoked sausage, potato salad, and pickled beets.
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