I Love This Guy

The Loose Cannon of the Phillies organization was unleashed the other day and boy, he did not disappoint. For those of you that missed today's Inquirer, Dallas Green had the following to say about everyone's favorite playboy/eternally slumping left fielder, Pat Burrell:

"It's time for Pat to look in the mirror," Green, an adviser to general manager Pat Gillick, said in the lobby of Disney's Swan and Dolphin Resort yesterday. "His career is really at a crossroads.

"He's got to focus and get a priority. That's No. 1 on the list. He's got to become a baseball player and want to be a contributor and want to be the Pat Burrell that we all anticipated he was going to be when we signed him as a kid. He's 30 years old. Damn, time is slipping by here."

"I think Pat's going to have a hell of a year [in 2007]," Green said. "But it's up to him. He has to recognize where his career is. I like the kid an awful lot. I always have. I talk to him all the time. I tell him, 'You've got to get your act together and know what your priorities are.' "

"I've been out with him a couple times in Florida. We have a secret [watering] hole every now and then.

"There's nothing wrong with that. There are tons of guys in the Hall of Fame that were like that.

"It's neat to have money, it's neat to have good looks, and it's neat to have broads all over you. Every place I've managed, I've talked to kids about the same thing. It's a hell of a life. But there comes a time in every player's life when he needs to get his act together."

As I've said previously, I can't fault a guy for going out to a downtown bar, having a few drinks, bringing a couple of broads home, banging them and then sending them home without cab fare or even free tickets to the next home stand, but I draw the line when said activities begin to interfere with the fortunes of my team. I applaud Dallas Green for calling Pat "the Bat" out on his lifestyle. However, if the Phils did have any chance of trading Burrell to a team that didn't know about his lifestyle, those chances just flew out the window thanks to Dallas' rant.

In any event, I love Dallas Green for giving it to us straight. It's about time someone did! He's one of the few people in this entire city that does and the Phils sure do their best to keep him away from the microphones. We need to hear more from this guy. He needs his own talk show.

I just wish we had someone in the Eagles organization that ran his mouth like this. It would make this whacky season even more interesting. Although, I think Joe Banner would use the Force to crush offending speaker's larnyx before he could get out anything which could construed as being critical of the family.