Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Who is Josh Towers?

Far be it from me to pretend that Casey Blake and Aaron Boone don't deserve their fair share of criticism for their lackluster performance at the plate much of this year. Only recently has either one been able to rescue their offensive statistics from the gutter.
Blake and Boone are now both batting .248. Boone needed a smoldering August just to get that high.
But Blake and Boone have every right to be upset at Toronto pitcher Josh Towers, who apparently had a hissy fit after giving up homers to both guys during the Indians' 4-1 win Sunday.
"Those (pitches) just happened to be perfect mistakes for those two hitters," Towers reportedly said after the game. "Those two home runs, they aren't very good hitters. Nothing for nothing, but they are hitting .240 for a reason."
Now, if Roger Clemens said something like that, I'd gnash my teeth a bit and think it was a classless thing to say. But Josh Towers? That's like Donald Trump accusing Bill Gates of being too rich.
Towers, like Blake and Boone, is thoroughly mediocre. He's 10-10 with a 4.04 ERA. The 10 wins are a career high in four seasons.
For Towers to think he's too good to give up home runs to Blake and Boone is absurd. For him to make a public statement to that effect is downright stupid.
Tuesday, Indians players fired some volleys back at Towers.
"On the record? I think he's a clown," Boone reportedly said. Boone said teammate Travis Hafner gave him a copy of Towers' stats so he could keep track of his "mediocre career."
Blake took the high road, telling reporters there were a lot of things he wanted to say, but "I'm not going to go to that level. It doesn't do any good."
Perhaps the most stinging retort came from Kevin Millwood, who said, dead serious, that he had never heard of Josh Towers before this season. He told reporters he needed to type Towers' name into an Internet search to find out who he is.
Granted, Millwood played his entire career in the National League prior to this season, but he also played in the NL East. His Braves and Phillies teams must have played Toronto in interleague play, giving Towers ample time to make his presence known to Millwood, which he didn't.
Millwood told reporters he would lecture Towers if they were teammates.
"This is a very humbling game," he said. "You start saying stuff like that, it's going to come back and bite you."
Millwood, it should be noted, is enduring a humbling season of his own, one filled with an atrocious lack of run support that has caused him to have a sub-.500 record with one of the best ERAs in baseball. He has handled it with outward professionalism, never publicly pointing fingers and always speaking up in support of his teammates, as he did with Blake and Boone Tuesday.
The moral to Josh Towers: shut up and pitch before you're mopping floors for a living. Millwood would lecture him. I'd probably smack him upside the head for being a disrespectful, ungrateful spoiled brat.

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