SPIN-DOCTORING THE THOMAS DEAL

Frank Thomas is officially a Blue Jay, signing for two years and $18 million.

Now Jays fans eagerly await to see Toronto Star baseball columnist Richard Griffin plot his next opus to explain why it's so terrible that the Jays are signing a future Hall of Famer coming off a comeback season where he hit 39 dingers in a poor home run park in Oakland.

Fire Joe Morgan, which chronicles the stupidities of the overly chummy writers and broadcasters whom Moneyball author Michael Lewis called baseball's "ladies' auxiliary," is all over Tricky Dick for his Wednesday column.

Short synopsis: Griffin said Jays fans should hope Thomas fails his physical, thus voiding the signing. He followed that up with the leap of logic that Thomas is a divisive clubhouse presence, among other things, and the Jays should consider someone else as their DH, perhaps, wait for it, Shea Hillenbrand.

Would that be the same Shea Hillenbrand who the Jays fired last summer for insubordination? No, the other Shea Hillenbrand.

Now, I let it slide. Ragging on beat writers, columnists and even TV guys gets old fast and it's better to develop your own takes. Also, you have to realize they're writing or talking at a different, broader audience than the ones bloggers write to.

(Full disclosure: Griffin's Star colleague Chris Young has often linked to this blog, so there is a halo effect.)

If you wanna do the baseball-as-church analogy, Richard Griffin is kind of the Ned Flanders of baseball writers: Perfectly nice and normal, but full of some screwy, backwards ideas. You don't want to ever get in a philosophical discussion with him, since he's so convinced he's right, and no empirical evidence can convince him otherwise. It's like arguing with someone who believes in Creationism.

Same time, you don't want to push him away, though, since he does love the game, in his way, and besides, who else can you count on to organize the church bake sale or clothing drive?

On Thursday, Griffin tried to make hay from the Chicago White Sox invoking a "diminishing skills clause" to cut Thomas' salary a few years back. Right, like it's Frank's fault that White Sox are run by a bunch of A-holes. (Remember the Mike Sirotka trade?)

Then he tried to say Thomas had "fringy Hall of Fame numbers." Thomas' numbers — .305 batting average, 487 homers, 1,579 runs batted in (fourth among active players) would merit Cooperstown even before you add the "nerd stats" of on-base percentage and slugging percentage, where Thomas ranks among the top 20 players all time.

To Richard Griffin, though, that doesn't matter. To borrow Lewis' line, he needs to let it be known that he just "gets" baseball in a way that you, weak-chinned outsider, do not. If the former Expos PR flack and National League propogandist — remember him taking the Cardinals in the '04 World Series over the Red Sox (who swept, by the way) pretty much solely on the basis of David Ortiz having to play the field for a couple games? — then it be so.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.