Ever wanted to crawl inside Milton Bradley’s head and have a look around? Be careful, it probably is a dark and scary place.
The great experiment that was Milton Bradley’s career with the Chicago Cubs could be over. The Cubs suspended Bradley last month for “conduct detrimental to the team” for the remainder of the season. For the Cubs, it will be a costly move. They signed Bradley last winter for three years and $30 million because they needed a left-handed bat to balance their lineup. The thought was that Bradley could put up similar numbers to what he did in Texas the year before (.321 average, .436 on-base percentage, .563 slugging) and protect the rest of the Cubs’ right-handed power hitters who were exploited by the Dodgers in the National League Division Series last October. Bradley did not do nearly so well on the North Side of Chicago, hitting .257 with a .378 OBP and .397 SP in 124 games for the Cubs.
Cubs general manager Jim Hendry explained his reasoning for suspending Bradley.
“Recently, it’s become intolerable to hear Milton talk about our great fans the way he has,” Hendry said. “We pride ourselves on having the greatest fans in baseball, so at this time we felt it was best to send him home for the rest of the season,” Hendry told reporters.
The thought was more like a dream from the very beginning. Now it’s a nightmare. The rationale behind signing Bradley was flawed in the first place. Bring in a blowhard whose only real talent is with the bat and put him in right field in one of the hardest places to play in the league with a manager known as a hothead on a team full of hotheads. Not to mention he had not played 100 full games in the outfield since 2004 and had done it only six times in the nine previous years.
It was a pipe dream. With a short fuse.
And now it has exploded.
It was bound to happen given Bradley’s volatile history. Buster Olney from ESPN breaks down the Bradley’s history of blow ups here. Here is Olney’s summary:
Spring 2004: The Indians trade Bradley after a series of disagreements with manager Eric Wedge.
June 2004: Bradley is ejected by an umpire, has to be restrained by Dodgers manager Jim Tracy and then throws a bunch of baseballs on the field on his way to the clubhouse.
September 2004: Bradley picks up an empty bottle that was thrown by a fan, approaches the stands and has to be calmed by teammates; he rips off his jersey on his way back to the dugout and is pulled off the field by coach Jim Riggleman. The Dodgers suspend him for the final five games of the season.
June 2007: After a series of internal incidents, the Athletics finally get fed up with Bradley and designate him for assignment.
September 2007: Bradley performs well for the Padres, but in a game on Sept. 23, umpire Mike Winters speaks words that are later deemed inappropriate by Major League Baseball ‘ words for which Winters is suspended ‘ and Bradley reacts angrily. As that confrontation plays out, Bradley suffers a season-ending knee injury as he is restrained by manager Bud Black.
Pretty impressive list, huh? I thought this was pretty good, too:
Have you ever tried to break a baseball bat over your knee? Not so easy.
To be fair to Bradley, apparently there has been some extenuating circumstances regarding his unhappiness in Chicago. The problem about this particular piece of information, though, is that neither the media nor the Cubs knew anything about it. It took Bradley’s mother, Charlena Rector, to explain the actions of her son. Bradley is a 31-year-old man, does he really need his mother to explain his actions? Given his history as an iconoclast, would it really matter what the excuse was? If the reports about his kid are true then it is sad. However, most people learn early in their professional careers that if you cannot keep your personal life and your job separate then it will be difficult to ever function as proper employee should.
Bradley operates with a chip on his shoulder. Check out this video from “Best Damn Sports Show” after the run-in with umpire Mike Winters in 2007.
Seems like a surly guy, huh?
The MLBPA was considering filing a grievance on Bradley’s behalf, though it later came out that the outfielder would accept his suspension and fade into the shadows … for now. We’ll see.
The sports writers of the nation are alive with the Bradley issue. Rob Neyer of ESPN’s Sweet Spot has two blog posts on it here and here. Al Yellon from Bleed Cubby Blue dishes on it here. Nick Friedell is not surprised. Ed Nickow from ChicagoNow has a haiku.
For my own part, I created a slideshow of some of Bradley’s greatest moment in bombast history.
