Dan Duquette continues his one-man crusade against Jose Bautista
Dan Duquette doesn’t like Jose Bautista, and he wants to make that point very clear.
Way back in December at the MLB Winter Meetings, Dan Duquette, Baltimore Orioles GM, offered a very interesting line of reasoning as to why his team would not be pursuing free agent Jose Bautista. Over the years Bautista and the Orioles have clashed on the field quite a few times, and he is one of the least-liked players by the Baltimore fanbase. That was the reasoning Duquette gave for passing on the braggadocios slugger.
It was a nice way to get in a dig at an enemy player who was out of the team’s price range in the first place. That should have been it, but Duquette has kept doubling down on his comments, seeming to enjoy his own little joke at the expense of Bautista. He had plenty to say earlier this week in an interview with Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.
"MLB.com: You expressed no interest in Jose Bautista this offseason, saying, “Jose is a villain in Baltimore and I’m not going to go tell our fans that we’re courting Jose Bautista for the Orioles because they’re not going to be happy.” How often do you consider something like fan reaction when considering potential acquisitions?Duquette: (Laughs) Well that was an easy one; our fans just don’t like Jose. We play those guys 25 times a year and he’s the face of the Blue Jays. He’s the villain in the play whenever we play the Blue Jays. I like our guys. Our guys are good. [Mark] Trumbo is like a working-class-type baseball player. If he was going to work every day on a construction site, you would understand that he brings that kind of work ethic every day. That’s the kind of player that our fans identify with. We try to get gritty players that work hard every day and give their best effort every day. Our fans seem to like that and respond to it."
Whoa, boy. There’s a lot to unpack in there.
While it may be true that most Orioles fans dislike Jose Bautista, what they do like is winning games. Bautista would have helped the team do that. At the end of the day, his asking price was just too high, and the Orioles would have had to lose a draft pick to sign him. Not worth it for all the headaches a temperamental and aging player like Bautista might bring to a clubhouse.
That’s fine; leave it at that. No one is disputing the fact that signing a player in the twilight of his career comes with more risks than the Orioles would have been comfortable with. Duquette ended the thought by citing Mark Trumbo as an example of the type of working-class (or white) players the working-class (or white) fans in Baltimore love.
Why Trumbo? He has played only 159 games in his career with the Orioles and is only back with the team because the free-agent market for sluggers this year was heavily depressed. Heck, many Baltimore fans were leery of bringing the one-dimensional, defensively-challenged Trumbo back in the first place. What’s more, Trumbo was born and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, not exactly a hotbed of working-class ethos.
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Perhaps it’s a stretch to take these comments as thinly-veiled racism. You want a player loved by the fans in Baltimore? Why not Adam Jones, one of the most outspoken players in the league on racial issues in the city and country? Jones has been a champion for the inner city of Baltimore and is beloved for helping resurrect the struggling franchise. Many fans the team should be trying to reach look like Jones.
Go with Manny Machado, the best third baseman in the game. Duquette probably didn’t mean to have his comments come off as racially motivated, but they do. Maybe he had Trumbo’s name on the tip of his tongue while discussing free agents, but it sure doesn’t seem that way. “Gritty,” “working class,” and “construction worker” are all easy euphemisms for old-school, white baseball players, something that some of the best players on the Orioles and Bautista clearly are not. Players can work hard, enjoy the game, and connect with fans without looking like the stereotypical baseball player of days gone by.