Off the Couch
“That was plain wrong the way people booed and jeered and turned ugly Tuesday on Johnny Damon. He doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t deserve all this city’s anger, all this city’s abuse. He doesn’t deserve drunken jerks in left field yelling stuff about his mother. He doesn’t deserve to have sweaty guys throwing fake dollar bills at him. He doesn’t deserve to have a swear word chanted at him over and over and over, all in front of his kids and a whole bunch of other kids.”
— Joe Posnanski, The Kansas City Star
“Well, I didn’t have the left-field fans in mind when I wrote that.”
— Posnanski, when rabble-rouser Kevin Kietzman read the “drunken jerks in left field” comment from Posnanski’s column, WHB 810
GH: In the morning paper, Posnanski blasted the fallout from Kietzman’s Damon-Hater promotion but melted like a Hershey’s Kiss in the bleachers when confronted on the air by Kietzman that afternoon. Read on.
“Absolutely not, and I want to make that point clear. I don’t think a lot of what I heard had anything to do with the radio station…. I do think that the intention was kind of fun.”
— Posnanski, when Kietzman asked JoPo if his column was pointed toward the radio station’s effort to jeer Damon, 810
GH: Posnanski is clearly uncomfortable with controversy, and his decision to go St. Peter on his column when confronted by KK was one of the more embarrassing things I’ve heard on radio this year.
“So far it’s just getting worse. Maybe today’s athletes don’t respond to old-fashioned warriors like Uncle Tony. Maybe players just can’t play relaxed baseball around him. Maybe Tony Muser can take this team only so far…. And that’s why it breaks my heart to write this. Because I want to believe. But I don’t believe anymore. I think this team has stopped responding to Tony Muser.”
— Posnanski, in his recent column calling for Muser’s job, The Kansas City Star
“I agree with David Glass; these guys have not quit on Tony.”
— Posnanski, talking to Don Fortune and Jim Rose, the same day his “fire Muser” column ran, KMBZ 980
GH: JoPo seems to have a problem remembering (or standing behind) what he wrote the night before.
