Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon inadvertently achieved folk-hero status in Philadelphia this week when, during a verbal altercation with Houston GM Ed Wade over his pending demotion to the bullpen, he grabbed Wade by the neck and threw him to the ground. Wade (pictured at right, using The Force to crush the proverbial windpipe of Philadelphia baseball) was the Phillies' general manager from 1998 to 2005, during which time he presided over the following atrocities:1. Trading Curt Schilling to Arizona for a four-player package headlined by Travis Lee.
2. Committing $17 million over four years to David Bell.
3. Granting full no-trade clauses to Bobby Abreu and Pat Burrell, thereby ensuring that they could be dealt only for lousy terms (Abreu) or not at all (Burrell).
4. Jose Mesa.
I could go on. Wade has continued to work his magic in Houston, trading for Miguel Tejada one day before he was implicated in the Mitchell Report and getting his pocket picked by (of all people) new Phillies GM Pat Gillick in the Brad Lidge deal. As for Chacon, it remains to be seen whether this is the end for him, or whether he will rise, Sprewell-like, from the ashes of management-choking infamy. In the meantime, his agent should really give WIP a call: Philadelphia sports radio is nothing if not ready to embrace a daily call-in show about choking Ed Wade.
2 comments:
Besides stealing my photo, you also forgot Polanco. (A subset of Bell, David, but still.)
I'll let the photo-stealing comment slide, and applaud you for finding a rare image of Bell's unorthodox batting stance (maybe that had something to do with his chronic back problems?). As for the Polanco/Urbina deal, are there any other recent trades in which the player on one side is still a starter for his team, while the other is languishing in a Latin American prison? Nice going, Ed.
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