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Perez’s brain lapse costly to his team

3 min read

PITTSBURGH – Pirates pitcher Oliver Perez broke a toe kicking a metal laundry cart and may be sidelined for six weeks. He should have been apologizing in two languages to his teammates for taking himself off the field.

He could have apologized for being amazingly dumb, too. If you’re going to beat up a metal laundry cart, grab a bat. If you’re going to risk breaking something in a rage, make it an easily replaceable Louisville Slugger rather than a bone.

One Sunday morning about a decade ago, there was a dispute about what kind of music the Pirates would play in the clubhouse. When it looked as though the mellow salsa he favored was losing, Jose Lind grabbed a bat and smashed the stereo. Point made, no x-rays required.

Jason Kendall took a bat to the television monitor in a small room behind the Pirates’ dugout in PNC Park. Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs did similar fine-tuning on a TV behind the visitors dugout. You visit Circuit City instead of Allegheny General.

The old dugout fountain at Three Rivers Stadium had more dents than a demolition derby car. The restroom door further down the hall was similarly scarred.

Perez had a right to be mad, but he should have grabbed a bat. The Pirates pack plenty of extras. If you’ve seen the games, you know most of them are barely used.

When baseball commissioner Bud Selig suspended Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers for attacking a TV photographer, he invoked one of his favorite lines.

“Baseball is a social institution,” he said.

You can’t repeat it enough. Sometimes when franchises are shaking down cities for new ballparks and gouging customers with obscene mark-ups on food and drinks, it’s easy to forget baseball is a social institution.

The Pirates released former No. 1 draft pick Bobby Bradley.

Bradley never pitched a complete season in six years of pro ball because of injuries. This year he developed an inexplicable loss of control.

His signing bonus in 1999 was $2.25 million. So figure with minor league salaries and other miscellaneous costs, the Pirates flushed at least $2.5 million on him.

Jim Brown, the greatest running back in NFL history, has some interesting comments on the current game in GQ:

“What you have now is something that’s less a game and more an entertainment entity. Guys are dancing, prancing, doing everything they can think of, and that has substituted for straight-out hard, dedicated football. The entertainment isn’t high class or funny. It’s a kind of buffoonery. It’s a throwback to stereotypes of African-Americans mugging and dancing. It represents all the things we tried to get rid of.”

Maybe Rogers got off easy.

Instead of a 20-game suspension, they could have made him serve 40 games with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

John Mehno can be reached at johnmehno@lycos.com

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