I missed this yesterday, but Todd Zolecki wrote about the Manny Machado/Padres deal and what it means for the Phillies.

He shared the quote Bob talked about yesterday, this one:

“If the reports are true, then this contract will exceed our valuation and sometimes you have to be willing to walk away,” Phillies general manager Matt Klentak said at Spectrum Field. “We made our bid, put our best foot forward and he ended up signing with the Padres.”

I don’t have a problem with that quote, because it doesn’t necessarily mean the Phillies have the same valuation of  both Machado and Bryce Harper. Maybe they’re willing to go $300 million and beyond for Harper’s services.

But one Zolecki passage that jumped out to me is this one, which is infuriating:

The Phillies were not completely crushed by Tuesday’s development. They had some misgivings about signing Machado, following his “Johnny Hustle” comments last fall in the National League Championship Series. If the club was going to give somebody $300 million, they wanted to feel confident that he would not be booed on Opening Day.

Wow.

What. the. fuck. is. that?

First things first, any Philadelphia sports fan with a modicum of self-respect should be offended by the notion that we would boo a superstar of Machado’s stature in his first game. That’s absurd. The only people who would even consider booing Machado at Citizens Bank Park would be Angelo Cataldi and whatever other washed-up carnival barkers are pushing the “he’s lazy” narrative, a narrative insulting to anybody with a half-capacity for critical thinking and/or measured reaction.

Second, if the Phillies front office is concerned about booing, they need to stop listening to WIP or reading Twitter or whatever they’re doing. Go out and get your guy, the four-time All Star who finished 2018 with a .905 OPS, 37 home runs, and 107 RBI. 

Listen, it’s true that Manny Machado’s past comments would make fans more likely to turn on him than someone else. I think that’s obvious, but if Harper goes out and strikes out 10 times in a row, people would turn on him just the same. Still, it’s insulting to even think that Philly sports fans are gonna be dumb enough to boo a $300 million dollar free agent in his very first game with the team. 99.9999% of us are not that stupid.

Horrific.

We need to stop the spread of these ridiculous notions and set up the quarantine. Every banal “blue collar Philly hustle” narrative gets cordoned off and ultimately disposed of, tossed in the garbage compactor, pulverized into dust, and sent to the landfill where it belongs.