Rural Thread, Continued--a Jerry Springer Event

MC:  And now, Your AN Day Special Guests, Mycheal Urban and Susan Slusser!!

Audience:  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

That's not me boo-ing; that's just a scenario I was imagining in my mind's eye as I read through yesterday's rural (anti-Urban) thread.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, reading only the block-quoted parts of Urban's Examiner column, I had to agree with Poppy and others who pointed out that Urban stated that the team was "clear that they are tired of Bradley's act," without giving us a single actual source ... weakly substiting the phrase, "none of his teammates would go on the record."

On the other hand, reading the entire column, you see that outside of that "teammates" comment, the rest of the piece is clearly Urban stating his own opinion.  Was it nevertheless over the top?  Probably so.  Milton's Excellent East Coast Adventures (Bogus East Coast Journeys?) merit a roll of the eyes.  Instead, Urban was like the school principal who calls a kid into the office to deal with the issue of chronic nose-picking.  <strains oblique trying to follow own analogy>

Still, if the piece was over the top, so was the backlash here.  I thought it was particularly bizarre to hear Urban's article referred to as Ratto-like.  What, because it's n- ... n-... negative?  Audience:  GASP!!  <Sirens, everybody hides under desks and doorways until the negativity is done passing through>  

Well more bad news, neighbor-inos.  I asked Ned Flanders about whether he could do all the media reporting on the A's, and he's unavailable, although he did pass on his congratulations on the new dry clubhouse.  To those who are horribly disappointed, I offer this encouragement:  You can't always get what you want.  But sometimes ... you just might find ... As the A's are surrounded, for the most part, by beat writers and medi-oids too timid to criticize, they get to hear just what they want to hear.  Just as only your good friends will tell you if you've been shunning deodorant for too long, only Ray Ratto will tell the A's their own failings.  

Negative?  Yeah, the piece was negative, but that wasn't the problem.  The problem was its unnamed sources, its overly-ominous predictions of doom, and the writer's own plentiful conflicts of interest.  But negativity?  Thoughtful criticism of our boys in green and gold?  That's something this A's fan, frankly, is starved for.  

Use this thread to continue yesterday's Urban-article discussion.  Be good to yourselves, and each other.