While MLB Trade Rumors has compiled most of the day’s reports claiming the Yankees are about to offer a $140 million pact to free agent P CC Sabathia (with Derek Lowe and A.J. Burnett proposals supposedly pending as well), Catfish Stew‘s Ken Arneson fails to see the logic in this week’s A’s/Rockies swap, opining “Matt Holliday is an overripe banana, because the A’s are building around a core of players who will mature in about 2012 or so, but Holliday, with only one year until free agency, needs to be consumed long before the maturity date of the other fruit in Billy Beane’s basket.”
I have decided, at long last, to stop trying to imagine myself as Billy Beane or Bob Geren or George Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to make all the great and important decisions of the world, and instead to just be Alfred E. Neuman. I shall no longer worry about being attacked by pomegranates or grapefruits or plums or lingonberries or mangoes in syrup. My life had become such a burden, what with all the guns and 16-ton weights and tigers I’ve been hauling around to protect myself from the outrages of mistaken decisions by those wielding the fruits of power. It is time to outsource those responsiblities.
In Billy Beane and Barack Obama, the A’s and the US of A’s leaders are seemingly both intelligent, pragmatic men who will avoid quick reactions from their guts, carefully consider all the empirical evidence, and make their decisions as rationally as they can. I may disagree with elements of their overall philosophy and with their individual decisions, but I believe I can finally say in both cases that I don’t think I could, on the whole, do a better job than they could.
Therefore, with relief, I hereby outsource my worries about the A’s and the USA, to Billy Beane and Barack Obama. The job is yours, guys, I’ll let you do it. Go ahead and trade for a slugger who won’t be sticking around to help the A’s win their next championship. Go ahead and send gazillions more dollars to General Motors and their incompetent management. Go ahead and overhaul the health care system using the advice of a man who sends scouts the world over and somehow can’t manage to find 25 healthy young men. I probably won’t understand any of those decisions in the slightest, but I’m fairly confident that you’ve thought it through, so I’ll trust your judgment. I’ll probably check in from time to time to make sure you’re not burning the toast, but mostly, you’re on your own from now on.