I have to admit that I keep hearing Prince’s song “Delirious” when I read this, and even now, as I type. One of the things I like most about sport is that you can judge someone performance all the time, real time, and, with ESPN, You Tube and other resources, you can watch an athlete perform over and over again. Which is to say that you can watch Michael Jordan dunk over someone; you can see and analyze who’s to blame in last night’s Bulls’ loss.
Athletes get paid (very well) to perform and most of the time, they can’t hide behind anyone. Miss a tackle – there it is on film. Turn over the puck in your own zone that leads to a goal – everyone sees it. Have a bad season – there are the statistics to show how bad you were.
That is, except perhaps in the “mind” of former Cub outfielder Milton Bradley. Bradley, now with Seattle, took no blame for his disastrous 2009 in an interview with the New York Times. “Two years ago, I played, and I was good,” he said. “I go to Chicago, not good. I’ve been good my whole career. So, obviously, it was something with Chicago, not me.”
Bradley places the blame on lack of communication and his perception that the Cubs wanted him to be a home run hitter. “Just no communication,” he said. “I never hit more than 22 homers in my career, and all of a sudden I get to Chicago and they expect me to hit 30. It doesn’t make sense. History tells you I’m not going to hit that many. Just a lot of things that try to make me a player I’m not.”
But, IT WAS HIM! He was the same guy that led the American League in OPS in 2008, and the Cubs needed a switch-hitter who could get on base, drive in some runs. Instead, the Cubs got an outfielder Manager Lou Pinella called “a piece of ####,” and who played like one, hitting a lowly .257 with 12 home runs and 40 RBI in 393 at-bats. Bradley was suspended for the final two weeks of the season for detrimental comments and a run-in with then hitting coach Von Joshua.
It just goes back to what I said when the Cubs signed Bradley – he’s nuts, and a clubhouse cancer, both of the predictions came true on the North Side last year. Admittedly, Chicago isn’t an easy place to play, especially for the Cubs – there’s constant media scrutiny; high expectations amid a losing history for the Cubs; and a need from all to see a hard work ethic, something that wasn’t in evidence in right field last season.
The nice thing about Milton Bradley is that in Seattle, we won’t have to see or hear about him very often; the bad thing is that we won’t have a chance to watch him implode live and in person.