Hard to Argue with That Logic

Jim’s pretty much summed up my thoughts on Devil Rays prospect Delmon Young. The paraphrase Crash Davis, the guy’s got a million dollar bat and a five cent head.

I came across another, quite different take on Young’s latest excursion over the line. A poster on the Yahoo baseball message board I frequent pointed out that this is not Young’s first run-in with an umpire. Then he suggested that such behavior could be the result of steroid use.

If behaving like an ass is a clue that a player is on ‘roids, then we’re in deep doo-doo. Just think of all the potential cheaters out there: Jeff Kent, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Kenny Rogers, Carl Everett, Mike DeFelice…if we drop the standard of “reasonable doubt” to merely being a jerk, the possibilities are endless.

This novel theory showed up in one of Ken Rosenthal’s columns:

There's no defending Devil Rays prospect Delmon Young, who was suspended indefinitely by the International League for throwing a bat that hit a replacement umpire in the chest. But with the minor-league umpires on strike, the ineptitude of the replacement umps should not be discounted as a factor in the incident, says a scout who currently is assigned to the minors. "I think it was a cumulative effect," says the scout, who contacted FOXSports.com to volunteer his thoughts while emphasizing that he does not condone Young's action. "There were a multitude of events that led up to this. It was representative of the frustration that all the players are feeling throughout the minor leagues. This is a byproduct of the labor situation. I just watched five games in Triple A and saw horrendous calls. There were inconsistent ball-strike calls, (missed) balk calls, out calls, speed-of-game issues, control-of-game issues. It's affecting the players' development, their strike-zone judgment."

Blaming the umpire? Sure, why not?

On another note, I guess Albert Pujols must be juicing, too. After all, the court of public opinion has decided that many other players who hit lots of home runs in a short period of time must be on steroids. And no one’s hit more dingers this year than Albert. QED.

I exaggerate, of course. No sane person would accept the assertion that Pujols uses steroids. And yet on the message board, people whose previous postings indicated they were sane were more than willing to entertain speculation about Young. I’d attribute it to simple human folly if I could be sure the umpires weren’t somehow to blame…