The Soriano Circus

Today in Florida, Alfonso Soriano, fresh back from a big fat doughnut at the World Baseball Classic, refused to play left field for the Washington Nationals in a Spring Training game.

As we saw yesterday, we now know the Nats acquired Soriano over the Winter in exchange for Brad Wilkerson and some spare parts, even after the Texas Rangers refused to allow Nats GM Jim Bowden to speak to Soriano before the trade to broach the topic of moving the mercurial second baseman to left field.

Here's Tom Boswell of the Washington Post:

Can you imagine Alfonso Soriano refusing to switch from second base to left field if Manager Sadaharu Oh had asked him to make the sacrifice for the sake of Japan's team in last night's World Baseball Classic championship? Such selfishness, placing the individual ego far above the team's needs, especially in response to a reasonable request, would be virtually unthinkable in Japanese baseball, where diva behavior is anathema.

To carry the illustration to an extreme, imagine Soriano refusing to change positions if he played for the Cuban team in that WBC title game. Fidel Castro might have disposed of the body before game time...

We don't need to emulate the cultures of Japan, South Korea, or certainly Cuba. But there's something for everybody to learn.

Something for everybody to learn, eh? Well, consider what we've learned so far.

Yesterday the Nationals made a show of putting eight players on the field to start the game, all the better to dramatize the conflict between the team and Soriano for the cameras.

Better yet, when ESPN covered the incident this evening, they ignored the news that's surfaced over the last 24 hours that Bowden was completely hoodwinked by the Rangers, and that this mess is entirely of the team's own making -- undoubtedly just the way the Nats wanted it to play out.

In terms of PR, it's a heck of a turnaround for Bowden and the Nats. Of course, it doesn't do anything to make the team any better, but then again, that wasn't the point in the first place, was it?

POSTSCRIPT: What is it about certain middle aged folks in sports journalism business who seem to like to give Fidel Castro and his police state a free pass. On tonight's ESPN broadcast of the World Baseball Classic final, Joe Morgan made sure to mention that the Cuban team was full of players who could easily play in MLB.

Would it have killed Morgan to mention that just like Soviet ice hockey players in an earlier era, there are a number of incredible talents in Cuba who will never play in MLB, and Castro is the only reason why?

Then we have that analogy that Boswell used in his column today that Soriano would have wound up in a body bag if he had refused to switch positions for the Cubans. What the heck is up with that?

UPDATE: Capitol Punishment has a gentle reminder of some events from earlier in Soriano's career that we ought to remember::

When he signed a contract with the Karp as a teenager, he went to their training academy. When he blossomed and showed promise he had a chance to play in Japan, but was miserable. He also saw dollar signs, and the restrictive Japanese system gives players even less control over their contracts than MLB's does. As a result, he found a loophole. He simply retired from Japanese baseball. In doing so, he sat out an entire season, and was officially free from the Japanese League's reserve clause. He then declared himself a free agent, and set sail for America, where the Yankees swooped in and made him a millionaire.

Seeing any parallels?

I bet Soriano is.

Eric 01:29 AM

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Posted by: at March 21, 2006 08:46 AM

Posted by: at March 21, 2006 08:47 AM

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