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In Regards to Couch Surfers

By on May 19, 2010
This morning one of our favorite writers Paul Daugherty had a take on something I want to address:

Many props to the GM, who said in his first meeting w/the media that Job One was “changing the clubhouse culture.” I’ve been ridiculed on occasion for a column a few years back that urged Baker to get rid of the giant sectional couch in the clubhouse. Metaphorically, the couch represented some of what ailed the Reds. Too many players with too much influence spent too much pre-game time lounging there, reading expensive-car catalogs and hunting magazines. When I started seeing Jay Bruce do the same, I knew something had to change. I might have mentioned that to Jocketty and The Big Man. Whether that mattered at all, I had no idea. A few months later, the two prime Couch Surfers were history.

Uh, wow. That right arm get tired Paul from patting yourself on the back or no?

And this is the guy I defend to my Uncle who says that no one in Cincinnati can write. You’re making me look bad Doc.

After I’m done bowing down and giving you credit for helping rid us of a future first ballot HOF guy in Ken Griffey Jr. and another guy who plays 160 games a year and posts one .900 OPS season after another; why don’t you try some new thought on for size?


Dunn, for instance, has been applauded for his work ethic in Arizona and Washington since he left Cincinnati. I’d also like to ask you Doc, to name another Major Leaguer who has torn his hamstring completely off the bone and followed up that season with a 35 homer season? That might have been one of the finest of Junior’s career.

You think the couch being gone has changed the culture? See, I don’t. I’ve watched as much Reds baseball for the last 15 years as anyone, and I see something different. I see pitching. I see a bunch of grinders who don’t care about stats. But more then anything, you’re missing the point of why the Reds lost in that era. It wasn’t because Griffey and Dunn liked to sit on the couch and read magazines. It was because we were trotting out pitching staffs that included the likes of Tom Shearn, Elmer Dessens, Paul Wilson, Jimmy Haynes, and I could go on but you get the point.

To cast Dunn as a scapegoat–let alone take credit for getting him out of here–is so weak at this point. You get me a guy in here who puts up the numbers that Adam Dunn did and continues to year in and year out and they can come in and lounge around the clubhouse all they want. Hell, they can crap in the middle of the clubhouse postgame spread. You ask Dunn’s teammates and the reason they loved him was because he brought it every day, hurting or not. The guy is a ballplayer. I don’t even need media credentials to know that’s how it is.

Like I said, I usually like your takes Doc. This one was brutal.
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