John Henry, meet Brian Bruney. They don’t run in the same circles; they most likely don’t even have any mutual acquaintances. And they live on very diverse strata of Major League Baseball. But after their recent remarks about other people in baseball they might want to get together to discuss the wisdom of those remarks.
Let’s begin with Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox. He was so giddy last week after the Red Sox completed a three-game sweep of the Yankees and ran their season record against them to 8-0 that he displayed his feelings for all to see on Twitter, a social-interaction Web site where even an owner of a baseball team can be as goofy as he wants to be.
“The MT Curse?” Henry wrote.
He referred to Mark Teixeira, the Yankees’ home run-hitting first baseman, whom the Red Sox tried to sign as a free agent last winter but lost out to the Yankees. Henry was presumably suggesting that the outcome of that bidding war put a curse on the Yankees just as the Red Sox sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees 90 years ago supposedly put a curse on the Red Sox.
Henry is an intelligent guy, and he runs a very good organization. To poke fun at the Yankees with that unprovoked comment about Teixeira was a foolish thing to do, but Henry is a frequent user of Twitter, writing in a stream of consciousness way, which only shows the perils of becoming immersed in such a highly questionable pursuit.
I called Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox president, to ask him if he thought Henry’s comment was ill advised. “Ask him,” Lucchino said. “What he meant, why he said it, it’s a question best addressed to him and I’m not going to have any comment about it.”
If you were commenting, I replied, I would bet you didn’t think it was smart. “No comment,” said Lucchino, who I doubt tweets.
But I took Lucchino’s advice and sent Henry an e-mail. That’s the way Henry communicates with reporters. It’s not an ideal system, but Henry is more accessible by e-mail than most owners are by telephone.
“Now that several days have gone by since your Twitter post,” I wrote, “do you have any second thoughts about having posted it, do you regret posting it, do you have no problem with having posted it? Have you ever heard the saying let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Sleeping dogs don’t lead the league in HRs,” Henry replied, referring to the Yankees’ power-hitting status. “I’m amazed at the positive response to tweeting. It’s fun.
“I’ve always had a sense of humor. People can sometimes take themselves (and others) too seriously.”
I’m all for owners having a sense of humor, and Henry is a big boy. If he wants to poke fun at the Yankees on Twitter or anywhere else, tweet on.
Henry, in fact spends quite a bit of time on Twitter, which makes his MT curse comment more understandable, though not any smarter, but more about that later.
Brian Bruney, on the other hand, should spend a lot less time talking. His comments about Francisco Rodriguez were far dumber than anything Henry did. Bruney hasn’t earned the right and doesn’t have the stature to say what he did about the Mets’ closer last weekend.
Taking exception to Rodriguez’s demonstrative reaction to inducing a game-ending out, the Yankees’ seemingly forever disabled reliever reveled in the Mets’ first-game loss to the Yankees when Luis Castillo, with Rodriguez pitching, dropped a two-out popup in the ninth inning.
“Unbelievable,” Bruney told a reporter. “I’ve never seen anything like that. I have, but in high school. It couldn’t happen to a better guy on the mound, either. He’s got a tired act. He gets what he deserves. I just don’t like watching the guy pitch. I think it’s embarrassing.”
My first question is why would a reporter ask Bruney what he thought about Rodriguez. Who could possibly care what he thinks? Ask Mariano Rivera if you must. Trevor Hoffman. But Brian Bruney?
And why would Bruney go out of his way to anger or at the least annoy a pitcher who has achieved so much more than he has?
“He better keep his mouth shut and do his job and not worry about somebody else,” Rodriguez said when informed of Bruney’s comments. “If it came out from somebody big, I might pay attention to it. But somebody like that, it doesn’t bother me.”
But it bothered Rodriguez enough that he confronted Bruney on the field at Yankee Stadium before the game the next day.
“I probably shouldn’t have said what I said,” Bruney told reporters after teammates kept the two from making any possible physical contact. “I made that mistake and I’ve learned from it.”
Henry apparently doesn’t see any need to learn anything from his Teixeira tweet. He is an inveterate tweeter. In a 48-hour period surrounding the Teixeira tweet, Henry posted 39 tweets.
(In the interest of full disclosure, contrary to what it might seem, I have not gone over to the dark side. Most of the Twitter information was found by my crack researcher, a.k.a. the executive producer of this Web site.)
As of mid-day Tuesday, 2,000 people were signed up to follow Henry’s tweets. Henry, on the other hand, had signed up to follow the tweets of four others, including Jack Welch, former chief of General Electric, and Ari Emanuel, a prominent Hollywood talent agent and brother of Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff.
Henry seems to do most of his tweeting during Red Sox games. When Mike Lowell’s home run in the fourth inning of the June 10 game with the Yankees gave Boston a 4-1 lead, Henry posted this tweet: “As Lowell homers, what’s the record for beating a team consecutively?”
“Battle of the bullpens now,” he posted after the Yankees closed to 6-5 in the seventh.
When Jonathan Papelbon came in for the ninth, Henry said, “Tex, ARod, Cano vs. Pap. Looks like a drama-filled 9th. Oh my…”
“Not an empty seat at Fenway. Sox fans – everyone – on their feet. 6-5…too close. Can’t beat these guys 18 times this year.”
“95 down the middle, 91 splitter low, 96 outside, nervous, Out #1 to Youk. whew…”
“ARod chants, swung through 96, 96 inside Pap adrenaline flowing 86 slider away 85 slider outside 96 fouled off and then ball four tying run”
“96 fouled by Cano 96 fouled 0-2; 95 outside 2-2 stolen base trying run on 2nd. Blew it by him at 96 for out #2!”
“Posada: Splitter misses at 91. This guy doesn’t swing at bad pitches. 96 inside. 2-0. 96 down the middle. 97 high 95 fouled off. 3-2 2 out.”
“Tying run on second. Posada flies out!! 7-0 vs. the Yanks this year. Love that dirty water…”
Another close game the next night produced another raft of Henry tweets, including this one after the Red Sox rallied for three runs in the eighth: “Here we go again”
And at 10:51 p.m., immediately after the Red Sox secured a 4-3 decision for their eighth victory in eight games with the Yankees: “the MT curse?”
The next morning Henry posted this tweet: “How important are head-to-head games? If we had split the season series thus far, we’d be 6 games behind.” And that evening he posted this one: “Hope I didn’t hurt Mark’s feelings!”