This award goes to the person or persons in the world of professional sports that make the biggest asses of themselves or whom they represent, by making mistakes, lying, cheating, stealing and just doing douchey things or being douchey in general.
This weeks award goes a group of guys, starting with Charlie and Dick Monfort owners of the Colorado Rockies and Dan O’Dowd who is the General Manager. The reasons are more clear cut for these guys than anyone else in sports right now. Easily the worst owners in baseball have once again proven why and how they’ve earned the title.
See, yesterday 11/10/08 the Rockies as an organization set themselves back a good 5-7 years….if not further. How you ask? By trading away All-Star and Homegrown boy Matt Holiday who, in many writers and experts opinions, is a top 3 left fielder who hits .320 year in and year out, will give you 30-35 HR’s on average and will add 120-125RBI’s every year. They, The Monfort Brothers, essentially traded the face of the franchise, and Rockies fans, it won’t stop with him. Look for Garrett Atkins, Brian Fuentes AND Willy Tavares to go sooner than later.
Matt Holiday was the catalyst that almost single handedly carried the Rockies to the World Series in 2007 and was the biggest reason that the fans finally came back to that beautiful field on the corner of 20th and Blake in Downtown Denver. I’ll be the first to admit, he has a jackass for an agent in Scott Boras, who as many people know, goes for “max deals” for all of his players (See Manny Ramirez). However, does the fact that Boras represents Holliday mean that the Rockies couldn’t have negotiated a little bit, I wouldn’t think that for the 7th most profitable baseball team in Major League Baseball (see Forbes magazine), it wouldn’t be a problem. You can read more about the Monforts and their frugality here, which is a great article from Colorado Business Magazine documenting their distorted view of the business of Baseball.
Matt Holliday was a homegrown player in the Rockies organization, and he’s a guy that cared about his team and his family stating numerous times that he “wanted to play in Colorado, where the schools are good and his kids could grow up”…..bottome line, he wanted to stay! He wanted to be a part of this team for the foreseeable future and wanted to be there when the Rockies returned to post-season play. He said in training camp last year to Rockies beat reporter Troy Rank (Denver Post) that he “would have taken less for a longer term” to stay in Colorado. The Monforts and Dan O’Dowd gave Matt an offer and sadly, it was a joke. They threw a laughable offer together of 4 years, $72mill as the end all point of the negotiations, knowing that Holliday wanted somewhere around 6 – 7 years and a No Trade Clause. Bottom line there, those numbers should have been the starting point for the negotiations, not the ending point. While this seems like phenomenal money and to you and I is, it’s really a lowball offer to a player the caliber of Matt Holliday where $18 – 20mill is par for the course. So, the big question here is, why make an offer that you know is going to be rejected? The answer there is simple and two fold. Firstly, the Monfort’s don’t want to pay anyone more than they have to because they want that profit to keep rolling in so they can continue to pad their Hedge Funds and Roth IRA’s. Secondly, they had to have ammunition for their smear campaign against Matt Holliday, and by making that offer they could say that he wasn’t really about the team, rather about himself and being paid. However, we’re all smart enough to know better than that, just think back to what they did and said in the local papers about Juan Uribe, Kaz Matsui and Neifi Perez upon their leaving. Afterall, they do have the title of 7th most profitable team in Major League Baseball to uphold, and in their eyes, a million more in their pocket is better than a million in Matt Holliday’s.
The Monforts operate in fear, because of the terrible deals they gave to and aging Denny Neagle, Todd Helton and Mike Hampton who had one respectable year under his belt at the time of his signing. Because of that they adopted the “no deals over 4 years” rule when a player is within a year of Free Agency, which is about as senseless as the electoral college…..but guess that’s for another post. Why would a team make a rule like that especially considering that there are going to be people who will break that mold (Matt Holliday). Essentially the standards by which they operate are making it nearly impossible for them to compete with the other teams in MLB. I will say that the deck is kind of stacked in favor of the larger teams…..the Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Cubs and others. However, no owner in MLB is losing money and no owner can’t afford someone it’s that they won’t. Between the subsidy that the lower level teams get and the fan support that the Colorado Rockies have (in top 20 in attendance since inception of the team), there’s no way that they couldn’t afford Matt Holiday. In preaching their ideals of fiscal responsibility, they forgot to include the equation of the fans, who as we all know, pay the bills. The fact that they let Holliday go in and of itself, is fiscally irresponsible because if you don’t have the supports of the fans, you don’t have anything. How many season ticket holders aren’t renewing? How many casual fans that went to the game to see Holliday won’t go this season? Considering that, how could the Monforts not afford to sign him? Really, the Monforts chose not to afford Matt Holliday, and that choice will probably come back to haunt them sooner than later and for my money, I’m betting on the former.
Bottom line here is, Matt Holliday wanted to stay and the ownership and management group essentially turned their backs on a Holliday. In doing that, they acquired 3 players that most of you have never heard of that will have no direct impact on that team for the next several years. They get a right handed closer who lost his gig midway through last year in Huston Street (who’s already on the block again), a 23 year old lefty that went 7-16 with a 4.61era in Greg Smith, and a guy who Billy Beane clearly thought was not going to be the superstar that many predicted him to be in Carlos Gonzalez. In my mind, if Billy Beane (Oakland A’s GM), who’s on the short list of top GM’s in the league, is willing to give up on a guy that he targeted and aggressively sought out and acquired, then there’s some issues there.
In my mind, the thing that is most concerning is the fact that in making this move, they have alienated a fan base in which they (the ownership) strived so hard to get back after many down years. They sold the “Generation R” theme to Rockies fans harder than a prostitute in the Red Light District of Amsterdam sells her goods to passers by, and sadly Rockies fans bought in only to be fooled again. They bought in because of Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, Jeff Francis, Aaron Cook and Troy Tulowitzki, but they bought mostly into Matt Holliday, who was the new face of the Colorado Rockies, and fans loved him. He replaced the “Blake Street Bombers” who are still steeped in lore in and around Denver, and Matt Holiday did this as one man. Now, unfortunatley, he is gone and will only return in the visitors dugout on the 3rd base side. Apparently, the full blow A-Holes that are Charlie and Dick (fitting name) Monfort and Dan O’Dowd, didn’t recognize that and they showed in making this deal that it’s much easier to be cheap than classy.
The Ultimate A-Holes themselves!
Savor the flavor Rockies Fans, it ain
If you’re a Rockies fan and you want the Brothers Monfort the hell out the offices on 20th and Blake, I encourage you to get over to www.monfortsmustsell.com and sign the petition!
