In his Houston Press post, John Royal comes to the defense of one Mr. Royland Oswalt (I made that up - his name isn't Royland. It's Roygess.):
As usual, the Houston sports fan appears to be jumping on the blame-the-player bandwagon. Then again, if most Houston sports fans had a full no-trade clause in their contract, had option years on their contracts, and had offered up a set of employers to which they would be willing to relocate, that they would all willingly waive those rights just because their idiot general manager is only able to pick up the phone and deal with one competing company...
...But perhaps it's not all on Oswalt. The word coming out of places like Los Angeles and New York, where the Dodgers and Yankees are supposedly interested, is that it's Astros management who is screwing up trade talk with unrealistic demands, demands that the likes of Cleveland (last year) and Seattle (this year) didn't even appear to try for the more desirable Cliff Lee...
...Perhaps, instead, it's Drayton McLane and Ed Wade who are doing the screwing up. They're just the incompetent duo, displaying their incompetence for the whole world to see yet again.
We've gone back-and-forth on who's at fault, who's on the hook, and who's to blame for the handling of this drama. Roy's been a douche, but there are a lot of indications that he's letting his agent - Bob Garber - handle the business side, and Garber's douchiness has rubbed off on Roy. There are still six days before the trading deadline, is Easy Eddie about to start meeting teams in the middle, starting with the unrealistic demands and coming down from there? What happens if Roy doesn't get traded at all? What happens if the Astros don't trade anybody? This is a busy week for the Astros, and we are all watching...
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
