So it turns out that Donaldson is actually a real turd of a human being because he allegedly called Billy Beane, “Billy Boy.”
Wow, the hyperbole used to describe this is just fantastic. Scott Miller actually wrote that, according to a source inside the A’s, Donaldson and Beane were at “war” by the end of last season, and that the A’s would do anything they could to trade him because no one talks to Billy that way.
How sad. How pathetic. How… probable?
Not because I believe any of this. If it is true, it’s convenient that it’s coming out now, while Beane is getting second guessed for moving Donaldson. It’s only probable because such pathetic conflict resolution skills and the trades they generate are almost never second guessed in sports. This type of allegation gains traction because it seems to happen enough to be believable. Indeed, if you’re the team who lost the star, you want to believe it. You want to believe your team got better by moving a douche bag, even if the player isn’t a douche bag.
What does that say about baseball?
If you can dismiss these accusations as nonsense, do it, because the words “Billy Boy” are far and away not the worst thing a player could call a GM—especially after two seasons of putting up ridiculous numbers and earning the title as most underpaid performer in the game. Donaldson could have said a hell of a lot more than “Billy Boy”—if he even said that—and Beane should have found a way to over come. I say should have because Beane is an executive class businessman who should know how players can lose themselves, not just from experience, but from understanding the nature of the animal in which he trades.
Nobody talks to Billy that way? No, lots of people have, especially in the ego driven world of sports. Is Beane always under control and respectful? I doubt it, else he wouldn’t have, if this report is true, laid into Donaldson for needing a night off. Not having control over your emotions has an actual cost in the business world, and Billy, by virtue of title, has to be the bigger man. If this is true, it says more to me about Beane than Donaldson.
This would be a different thing if it was Donaldson telling the manager off, repeatedly, scathingly. Or if it was Donaldson fighting with his teammates. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, especially since some of his teammates were shocked that Donaldson got traded. He was the A’s best player at an incredible value! He embodied the Oakland philosophy! They’ve had bigger jerks on their team!
But that’s also why it’s so easy to think that this really is the reason, right? And if it is, God almighty does baseball need to consider having emotional intelligence and conflict resolution experts on hand in the locker room to work with athletes. If this kind of territory marking, show of dominance at the cost of crippling your team’s production, tantrum-trade is the only way grown men can communicate, then we’re paying cavemen millions to be our role models.
If Beane is getting rid of players that don’t fit a personality archetype, expect them to lose precipitously because the baseball world is not built to sustain unselfish, ego-free, self-sacrificing personas that lead ball clubs like Captian America would the GI Joes.
That’s not just because it’s a sports/fame atmosphere, it’s because the conflict resolution skills aren’t there, and it’s generally accepted that production trumps all. It’s far easier in the sports world to accuse someone you’re not getting along with of not being team player—which carries so much weight in our sports consuming culture, but says so little. What is the atmosphere of the team? What is the organization doing to standardize it? What tools are available to help players fit in to it? How are its changes tracked? How is it validated, only by winning? Where is the mission statement? And who will help you when you have a problem with a teammate or manager, your agent? Sure, he’s not bias…
Seriously, athletes know how to compete, but they don’t know how to mitigate head on collisions. And money and production validate their view point so they don’t feel the need to work out any conflict. This is so understood that the media takes it at face value, and we suck it down without a second thought. In fact, the ability to get along with teammates, a completely ambiguous and contextually sensitive issue, is “part of player’s makeup,” while not getting along is, “a liability.” Yet it’s certainly not a skill the industry is trying to teach, which is sad because teams buy, sell, and trade talent while claiming their maturity as a highly desirable intangible. Maturity measured how? And is there a way to teach that besides them just getting older? Does a player have to be mentored by a good guy to learn it? Talk about a market inefficiency.
In most situations, if a teammate has a beef with another teammate they just avoid each other. That’s hard to do when you work a job with community showers… It takes a hell of a lot of effort to block out another person’s existence. It’s actually easier to patch things up and get on the same page than it is to hate your teammates or managers and look for ways to avoid them.
I don’t put a lot of stock in this Donaldson offended Beane and that’s the only reason Beane got rid of him tale, but the fact that, in the world of baseball, it’s easier to accept such a story, even see it as a solution to a problem, is disconcerting. Hell, it always has been.
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