Defensive Indifference

Keith Law reveals quite brazenly in his chat today on ESPN.com that Rangers pitcher Vicente Padilla is a drunk.

Padilla’s got the stuff to be a #3, but his command isn’t good and he has a drinking problem.

I’m a bit surprised Klaw was so forthcoming with this information considering libel laws and all. On the other hand, if I had to pick an ESPN writer to divulge this information, I’d go with Law.

Tangentially (or maybe directly) related, last summer I wondered who Peter Gammons was talking about when he mentioned in a column that “the reason the 2002 All-Star Game ended up tied was that a pitcher on one of the two teams was imbibing in the clubhouse and was not in condition to pitch, hence the game ended.”

My theory was Barry Zito, who pitched a rather suspicious 1/3 of an inning in the game, but I think it’s pretty clear now the culprit was Padilla. The righty pitched the final two innings of the game for the NL. So you can blame thank Vicente for the Midsummer Classic “counting!!!!!!” [/cue FOX music]

UPDATE: Keith Law picks up on us over at The Dish and sheds some more light on his comment yesterday. I found this part in the comments section most revealing: “I meant that Padilla’s abuse of alcohol is severe enough to diminish his baseball value. He is not the only alcoholic in the game, but he is (to me) the one whose value is hurt the most by it.” And I just want to clarify, I didn’t think what Keith said was “unsubstantiated,” but I was very surprised he mentioned it, because most writers these days don’t seem to have the guts to mention that sort of thing. Maybe in the wake of Josh Hancock’s death more of them should reveal stuff like this. Surely Padilla isn’t the only drunk in the game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm and is filed under All-Star Game, Rangers, Booze. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.