NEWSLETTER
Each time I post a story on Milton Bradley, I sincerely believe that it will be the last one – at least for a long while.
But then newsworthy tidbits keep popping up.
Milton Bradley wasn’t in the Mariners’ lineup for Sunday’s game against the Cubs and when approached by Chicago reporters, the outfielder declined to talk.
“No chance,” Bradley said. “You guys ran me out of town.”
Bradley and Marlon Byrd were teammates in Texas, and when Byrd signed with the Cubs, Bradley called to tell him to “do what I couldn’t do there.” …
What drives Bradley?
“Being great,” Byrd said. “He’s a perfectionist. Sometimes when he doesn’t reach that, he’s very tough on himself. I think a lot of guys in baseball are like that.”
And Bradley has a different personality with his teammates.
“He’s a great teammate,” Byrd said. “I had one year with him. Everybody knows how he was in Texas. We had a great time and no run-ins, no nothing. It can happen with him. With [Ken] Griffey and Chone Figgins and those guys over there in Seattle, he’ll be fine.”
Obviously, there aren’t many media people on Bradley’s holiday card list.
“You have to approach Milton,” Byrd said. “You have to make sure every single day you talk to him and ask him how he’s doing. My locker was right next to him. Every game on the road, we were eating lunch. My relationship was a little different than everybody else’s. As a teammate, as a guy, you have to go up to him every day, ‘Hey, Milton, how are you doing?'” Muskat Ramblings.
Nothing quite like having to coddle a guy that probably wants to tear your face off (and eat/wear it). On the plus side, Marlon Byrd sounds like a hell of a nice guy and teammate.
On a related note, the Mariners recently announced that Bradley would be their cleanup hitter this year. That’s right. Bradley will be expected to be a run-producing, power hitter in the Mariner lineup – the very thing that he recently railed against the Chicago Cubs for doing to him. I sure hope he can survive under the weight of such unreasonable expectations – lest the good people of Seattle run him out of town.
