It may or may not be a surprise, but Shea Hillenbrand is a San Francisco Giant now. The Toronto Blue Jays pulled the proverbial trigger on a Friday night deal sending Hillenbrand and relief pitcher Vinnie Chulk for reliever Jeremy Accardo. And, according to Giants general manager Brian Sabean, the Giants were interested in Hillenbrand even before he did or didn't scrawl (he has since denied it) about sinking ships on the Blue Jays' clubhouse blackboard.
Hillenbrand was fool enough to define Theo Epstein in terms later deployed by Ozzie Guillen toward Jay Mariotti, while being fool enough concurrently to proclaim the Boston Red Sox didn't know what they had in him when signing Bill Mueller to hold down third base. Something about knowing what they have only when they got rid of him. "You've heard of Jeff Bagwell?"
Well, yes, we've heard of Jeff Bagwell. We'll be seeing him in the Hall of Fame in due course. What we won't be seeing is Shea Hillenbrand in a Toronto Blue Jays uniform as of weekend past. If I'm assembling the sequence correctly, from the shards and shreds I've picked up since Hillenbrand was designated for assignment, it came to this after:
■ Hillenbrand complained during the interleague play rounds that he wasn't getting enough playing time even as a designated hitter.
■ Hillenbrand either did or didn't become disgruntled enough to think the Blue Jays' clubhouse had become something short of a war zone and something beyond a family atmosphere, speaking of which...
■ Hillenbrand requested time off to secure the adoption of a baby for which he and his wife had planned, an adoption speeded when a pregnant woman whose consent was given and for whose match the Hillenbrands were made went into labor two Fridays ago. Except that he made the request through his agent — relations between himself, manager John Gibbons, and the Blue Jays' front office deteriorating that badly.
■ Hillenbrand's status went from bad to worse to don't even think about it, depending upon whom you asked, after he didn't return to the Blue Jays for three days. The cause, apparently, was a delay in the adoption papers requiring him to be with his wife in California as late as last Monday.
■ Hillenbrand's reportedly scribbling on the team blackboard where batting practice instructions are posted, "The ship is sinking," among other things rumored to have been written, things Hillenbrand and perhaps one or another teammate said were meant to be kidding around, all things considered.
■ Except that Gibbons was in no more mood for clowning around. To him, Hillenbrand had become a malcontent with no team concept. Especially after he broke into a team meeting before game time Wednesday last and, according to numerous reports, ripped Hillenbrand a new one in front of his teammates, even to the point (it came forth later) of challenging Hillenbrand to a fight.
■ Hillenbrand was humiliated enough, apparently, that he saw and raised his previous day's questioning of the team's attitude, if not style, for sending him not a word of congratulations upon the adoption of his new daughter. He refused to dress and sit in the dugout with the Blue Jays and answered a Toronto Star reporter's query during the game:
"I appreciate the Jays for giving me an opportunity, but this unfortunately is just something with Gibby. From the beginning of the season, there were times when I wasn't playing and there would be no justifiable excuse. He said that if I had a problem with the team or what was going on, I should come into the manager's office and talk to him. But then, he would get mad at me when I did that and accuse me of being a selfish player."
If Hillenbrand is right about that, then Gibbons can be questioned for mishandling a situation into a place from which Hillenbrand committed something inexcusable enough to provoke his manager to doing the likewise difficult to excuse. Sometimes the better part of valor is to discipline your charge behind closed doors. The better part of authority, too.
■ At first, general manager J.P. Ricciardi called it "irreconcilable differences" and Gibbons declined discussing the final dustup in detail. Only Thursday last did Gibbons admit that he had it out with his unhappy corner infielder/DH.
"That's a fact. That's how the whole thing got started. I told him he won't see the field as long as I'm here. He had a chance yesterday to defend himself in front of his coaches and his teammates. He chose not to. If the front office felt differently than he wins and I lose, and I would be one out of here. I mean it. It was either him or me."
And Ricciardi stood by his man. Gibbons, that is: "We are a better team without him. I would rather lose than sell myself out to have someone play here that says those type of things about organization. ... He made some pretty disparaging remarks when he left Boston. I don't think people forgot that."
Gibbons may or may not be lucky that Hillenbrand was hot enough to wire his own electric chair. "Him or Me — Who's It Gonna Be?" usually works for Pacific Northwestern rock and roll bands (Paul Revere and the Raiders, specifically), not baseball managers unless a player has gone beyond the edge and over the canyon river.
For every Blue Jay who seemed to like Hillenbrand — Vernon Wells, for one, said he thought it was simple enough to take much of Hillenbrand's commentary the wrong way — there was, apparently, another who seemed to think chemotherapy was simpler. "He was a cancer in this clubhouse," said one unnamed Blue Jay to the Sun. "Shea's day went the way the lineup card went. If he was in the lineup, everything was fine. If he wasn't he'd sulk. Sometimes he wouldn't even come out to hit."
What remains to be seen, though, is whether the Blue Jays really will settle down and continue their pennant race stand in the wake of the Hillenbrand putsch. Oh, they looked as if they'd flicked it off like the proverbial gnats on the beach against the New York Yankees, of all people, right off — and against The Mariano, of all people especially, Vernon Wells (who mostly stood by Hillenbrand, as it happens) unloading an extra-inning walk-off bomb against the Hall of Famer in waiting.
But let's remember, too, that whatever you think of Gibbons having to make his stand to secure his respect once and for all, he did all but smash his way into a players'-only pre-game meeting to ream Hillenbrand a new one. That kind of thing isn't usually forgotten once it vaporizes in the wind, not even among those who came to see Hillenbrand a clubhouse cancer.
And let's not dismiss the possibility that there might be some Blue Jays — whether pro or con Hillenbrand individually — who come to think that a) it wasn't exactly the brightest of ideas for Gibbons to play "Him or Me — Who's It Gonna Be?" by blasting it into a players'-only meeting; and, b) that if Gibbons could do that to Shea Hillenbrand, however profoundly Hillenbrand had wired his own electric chair through that point, he could, and might, do it to any one of them, whether or not the point of contention deserves to exist in the first place.
Gibbons could have waited until that meeting ended before ordering Hillenbrand into his office and delivering any message about not seeing the field so long as he, Gibbons, was the manager. All he did reaming his now-former man in front of his now-former teammates was make himself look the way Hillenbrand may have made himself look: insanity passing off as intensity.
That can be said about Ozzie Guillen, too, in some ways. Except that Ozzie Guillen is the incumbent World Series-winning manager, and John Gibbons has been no closer to the Promised Land than eight games with a runaway train named the 1986 Mets before injuries punched the ticket on his playing career.
At about the time Hillenbrand became disgruntled this season, if you take May as the line of demarcation, there was speculation enough that his next stop would be the Los Angeles Angels in exchange for Adam Kennedy. Hillenbrand is known now to have had concurrent interest from the Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins, not to mention the Phillies, before the Giants jumped right in.
That was then, this is now, and all three of those teams have managers different in comportment, but with one thing in common between them: they have reputations for rousting malcontents the hell out of town post haste. You can ask, for openers, Jose Guillen (rousted by Angels manager Mike Scioscia after an on-field fly act following a pinch-running move) and JC Romero (who had his rounds with Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and is now, apparently, a contented Scioscia Angel). Part of those reputations may well include doing their best to keep them from coming to town in the first place.
The Giants, very much in the National League West race, needed a first baseman (which Hillenbrand can play without being mistaken for a butcher) with power. Maybe the better way to phrase it is, they needed a bat who could play first base without impersonating Edward Scissorhands.
And at least one respected Giant — Steve Finley, outfielder and leader ("He was a gamer. He wanted to play every frickin' day.") — was quoted as saying Hillenbrand would be "a good fit" in the Giants' clubhouse. That could be a very left-handed compliment as if to say Hillenbrand's brand of actual or alleged boorish sulkiness is nothing compared to what they've had to put up with for a number of years, from a certain aging left fielder in particular.
Said one radio commentator (name escapes, I was dial-twiddling in the car), more or less: Hillenbrand's kind of fly act wouldn't even be a blip on the proverbial radar compared to a lot of what the Giants have learned how to live with since, oh, 1993. (Wink wink, nudge nudge...)
Hillenbrand has a reputation for giga-intensity as a player, but he doesn't exactly have a reputation as the kind of player who's going to remind you of Jeff Bagwell after you deal him away. He played well enough when he did play as a Blue Jay this season, carrying a .342 on-base percentage and a .480 slugging percentage to match his .301 batting average, his 79 runs produced, his 12 bombs, and his 39 RBI. But in his last 10 games with the Jays, he had four runs batted in for 10 hits in 41 at-bats, and his lifetime totals are 168 runs produced per 162 games, a .327 on-base percentage, and a .448 slugging percentage.
That ain't Bagwell.
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