A Not-So Theoretical Theoretical

First, Milton Bradley’s mistake did cost them a run. Throwing the ball in from the outfield to the catcher with a man advancing from 3rd results in a > 0% chance of that run not scoring, where as throwing it into the stands nullifies that chance and guaranteed that the run would score. Since you’re in the mood for splitting hairs and decided that your only purpose in this discussion would be to bash Milton Bradley, I might as well point that out. The fact that Bradley threw the ball into the stands was largely irrelevant to the discussion that we were having as to whether he’s a cancer in the clubhouse; I mentioned it as a testament to his otherwise focused play.

On to you rebuking my comment that most of Bradley’s troubles occurred outside of the clubhouse. Well, let’s go over everything in the press that’s been controversial to Bradley:

Bradley was traded in 2004 from the Indians to the Dodgers after they tried to assign him to minor leagues. With no other press information available, here’s a quote from the ESPN article discussing what was known leading up to the event:

“The majority of his time here he was a good teammate and a good member of our organization,” Shapiro said. “There were moments in time that he compromised the standards and expectations that we communicated to him, not one time, but a pattern of times.” — ESPN

Without an explanation of what these ‘standards’ were, and considering that outside of this one statement, neither the Indians nor Cleveland press had made any comments towards incidents that occurred relating to Bradley’s behavior, it’s impossible to derive what was going on here.

In 2007, while playing for the Padres, Bradley had an altercation with umpire Mike Winters that resulted in Winters being suspended for the remainder of the season and playoffs for baiting Bradley with an expletive while he was asking for an explanation of a comment that Winters had made earlier in the game towards home plate umpire Mike Runge where he interpreted Bradley as throwing a bat at him. This incident has nothing to do with anything that occured in the clubhouse, and both Winters and MLB apologized to Bradley for the incident.

In 2008, While with Texas, Bradley attempted to confront Royals play-by-play announcer Ryan Lefebvre after he made a disparaging comment on-air. From the Dallas News:

Lefebvre said, from what he remembers, that he was complimenting Josh Hamilton and how he’s been accountable for his mistakes and said "it doesn’t appear Milton Bradley has done the same thing in his life. —Dallas News

At the end of this same article, we get this little quote:

“He was upset that somebody that doesn’t know him was passing judgment on TV,” Daniels said. “The guy’s been a tremendous teammate for us, and it’s obvious he was hurt by those comments. That’s my understanding.”

Hmm…comments about being a good clubhouse guy from administrative personnel. That sounds vaguely familiar.

Now, Bradley’s reaction didn’t help him out at all here, but to be frank, if I were Bradley, I might have been looking for him too, seeing how he all but called him a thug:

(Talking about Josh Hamilton) "Here’s a guy, with all the troubles he’s had, he’s showed that if you work at it, you can get your life back in order. And that would be a pretty good role model for Milton Bradley, who clearly has no control over himself, because it’s the same thing year after year…—Ryan Lefebvre

Never mind that there isn’t a whole lot of love lost here on Josh Hamilton, but that’s a completely different story seeing how often that piece of crap buried his nose in piles of cocaine; this comment is clearly ignorant and drips with borderline racism considering the trouble Bradley has caused for teams he’s played for absolutely pales in comparison to the amount of resources the Rays wasted on Josh Hamilton.

Then we come to the article you couldn’t find, where you mention that Bradley “pad(ded) his stats for free agency”. The paper was the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, and the quote was as follows:

“When you’re on one-year deals constantly, you’ve got to put up as good numbers as you can. When you have days where you’re not feeling like you can contribute, you’re not going to go out there, because you’re not going to want your numbers to suck…”

But see, this quote was made in context to him playing with the Cubs now, so let’s see the rest of it:

“…So, if you’re in a situation like I am now, if they want me to go out there when I’m feeling a little banged up, I’ve got no problem doing that because they’ve made the commitment to me.”

Understanding how utterly incompetent Chicago’s mass media is by and large, I can understand how ‘I can’t afford to play like crap on one year deals so I won’t play when I’m not at 100%’ can easily be misconstrued as ‘I didn’t play when I didn’t want to so I could pad my stats for free agency.’ I mean, The Tribune corp spent the last 28 years trying to run the Cubs into the ground, only to be saved by the sweet release of bankruptcy.

And now we come full circle to your quotes from former Cub teammates, where I readily admit them to be the exception to the rule, oh, except for the part where Lou Piniella expects all his players to gnash sand in their teeth, rub dirt in their cuts and shit rocks, since that’s how he’s acted since he was coach of the Reds. Piniella has had trouble with players and management at almost every stop during his career; George Steinbrenner with the Yankees, Rob Dibble with the Reds, Vince Namoli with the Devil Rays and now Milton Bradley with the Cubs. The only place he didn’t have trouble was in Seattle, and he asked to be traded to the Devil Rays because he thought that Seattle couldn’t win and wanted to be closer to home instead of coaching a losing team on the other side of the nation. Now that’s some team chemistry.

Maybe Cubs fans should actually start looking to management for answers to their teams problems, instead of bestowing blame on jettisoned players and management, and start acting like their team needs better talent to win, instead of acting like World Series Championships are given away like prizes, and that a team needs to deserve, be entitled, or otherwise anointed a championship like BCB did last year in saying those things about the Phillies vs. the Rays.