Blake

Blake is a reader who recently stumbled across an old article I wrote about Lou Brock. Allow me to let Blake express himself. Here is the entire text of his email to me. The lack of punctuation and liberal use of all-caps are Blake's:

"You're a friggin IDIOT I don't know how MORONS like you think that anything you have to say is relevant why don't you sit around another 10 years or so ( or however long it took you to come up with this crap ) and waste more time in your worthless life, because all of you writers spout the most worthless crap that really has absolutely nothing to do with anything LOU BROCK is in the HALL OF FAME live with it you moron . Why don't you spend your time doing something worthwhile and constructive"

I love getting email from my fans, particularly those who call me worthless. All of those missives are precious to me. But when the reader goes above and beyond and re-defines irony by lecturing me on "worthwhile and constructive" pursuits (like sending belligerent, seemingly drunken emails about Lou Brock, from his work email address), that reader deserves my Damn Fool Award.

Well done, Blake. Well done.

Ugueth Urbina

Urbina apparently was involved in a nasty incident in Venezuela that involved herding together a group of workers on his family ranch, hacking at them with machetes, dumping gasoline on them and lighting them on fire, all because he misplaced a firearm and thought one of the workers took it.

Damn fools don't come much bigger than that. No wonder someone kidnapped his mother last year, this guy is a jerk.

Ken Macha

Let me get this straight; Macha was the manager of an up and coming Oakland team that should be good for years. That team offered to keep him around at the rate of about $850,000 per year for the next three years, plus a chance to make $1.2 million in a fourth option year. Despite having no real negotiating leverage because the GM basically thinks the manager is dead weight, a stance that taints Macha's reputation around baseball as well, Macha refused the deal, wanting more money that Billy Beane was almost certain to reject. That scenario panned out, leaving Macha unemployed at a time when the only other managerial job openings are with teams far worse than Oakland's good young core and, in most cases, have even less financial ability to meet his salary demands.

That, my friends, is a damn fool.

(UPDATE - October 19, 2005: Apparently Macha realized his foolishness and crawled back to Billy Beane to accept the offer. Savvy move since it was clear he couldn't get that kind of deal anywhere else, but not enough to remove him from the Honor Roll of Damn Foolery.)