why everyone thinks you’re an asshole. There’s a little something called thinking before you hit the Post button. Honestly Paul, you should try it sometime.

You don’t even know me, so don’t suggest I have some kind of holier than thou attitude. As a people manager, I believe in something called integrity when it comes to dealing with employees. It amounts to treating people with respect and dignity and not just always looking at the bottom line. You think a move like this doesn’t hurt the A’s in the long run? When we eventually have a prospect worth keeping and the A’s go to sign him, there’s a strong likelihood he’s going to think back on the way the A’s treat their human resources with the same respect as their equipment, and if a similar deal is on the table from another team that has treated their employees better (and face it, most teams have), who do you think he’ll sign with? Sweeney alluded to this fact in the article about his release; the A’s are building a reputation on being a team so cheap, they treat their employees like garbage. Once you’ve built a reputation like that, what does that do to your team in the long run? It eats away at the morale, and the A’s have little of that left anyway.

Baseball, of all sports, is one that honors tradition. It is the reason we can be so moved to see a relief pitcher break a 100 year old record. Players who have played hard, played fair, and contributed to making the game great deserve to be treated with respect. So when a guy who may never be a HOF player but played the game right is 1 home run short of 200 in what is most likely his final season in the game is on your team, you should let him play it out, for the respect of the tradition of the game.

By the way, you’re the one calling this a crime against humanity, not me. So once again Paul, don’t put words in my mouth because you don’t even know me.