I was actually going to name this post “Add Miguel Cabrera To The Trading Block”, but then I thought, why not add everybody else too?
That’s right, everybody is on the trading block, and that includes young and affordable stars like Felix Hernandez, and Evan Longoria, as well as the cream of the crop players like Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera.
According to all of my sources, and I have just as many as everyone else, everybody is on the trading block unless we hear otherwise from their agents or GM’s.
Until we hear an absolute and specific denial in the form of a press release from the team, sports journalists and bloggers everywhere will use their Constitutionally protected rights to proclaim that everyone is on the trading block.
They will use their rights to report this groundbreaking information one player at a time. Yesterday it was Josh Johnson, today it’s Miguel Cabrera, tomorrow it will be Prince Fielder. Oh wait a second… we already did Prince Fielder… Umm, make that Hanley Ramirez.
We will be able to use our real sources (named or unnamed), our fictional sources (definitely unnamed), and even my next door neighbor Sam’s dog, who barks and speaks to me at night about a variety of baseball topics.
Okay, enough with the bad sarcasm, I think you all catch my drift…
Seriously though, the hot stove rumor mill is really starting to get way out of hand. All of a sudden everybody has sources, and attributing rumors to these sources has become more important than the rumors themselves. It’s all about the sources now. It’s become the fashionable thing to do in sports blogging.
And then of course there is the battle to proclaim superiority, in those extremely rare instances when a deal actually gets done. Nobody analyzes the deal anymore, instead it’s a rush to say I reported this two weeks ago, or two months ago, or two years ago, click this link to read it. Most of them almost sound so paranoid that you have to wonder if they should be profiled by the FBI. I now refer to this phenomenon as the “Superiority Complex”.
When the rumors are debunked, as most of them usually are, a new series of blog posts follows that are filled with excuses as to why they were not “technically” debunked in the true sense of the word. Huh? What was that you said?
These new blog posts are then coordinated with a barrage of updates on their Twitter accounts, in an all out attempt to save their dwindling reputation.
If that fails, then the search is on for any tantalizing bit of information they can get that would seem like a prelude to an imminent deal.
This info is then posted (in warp speed) with the hope that when the imminent deal is eventually announced (usually hours later), readers will forget the false rumor that nearly demolished their reputation, and remember the new rumor that was never their rumor to claim in the first place, but who cares?
All is fair in love and war… and on the internet.
