Liar

The touble with trying to write anything cogent about the Rangers during the winter is that I have come to realize that nobody - and I mean nobody - outside of the family knows what Jon Daniels is really thinking. I have significant doubts that anyone inside the family knows what Daneils is thinking either, until he is damn good and ready to let them know.  And that is usually at a press conference announcing a move that he made two days ago.

Any time I read a quote or a tidbit of any kind from "a Rangers source" I assume that it's at least 90% bullshit.  It's probably either deliberate, strategically-placed misinformation or someone talking out of his ass.  

I am glad that I am not among those who make a living by reporting on this team every day - or at all - during the hot stove season. It must be miserable.

Having said that, I would appreciate it if those who are paid to write about this team didn't do this in chopping up what did and didn't happen at the Winter Meetings:

The Rangers appear foolish, but worse yet, they also have come across as absolutely clueless, with some arrogance thrown in. Idiots? Yes, that, too....  What happened? I don't know.

Exactly. You don't know. And you never will.

As you know.

And we know you know this because three days before the unnamed columnist wrote the preceding opinion, he wrote this:

Daniels is never one to play the media game when it comes to game-planning on decision-making.  Going into the winter meeting, there were no leaks, or at least none I heard, coming out of Arlington about that Rangers game plan. Plenty of speculation, but no leaks. Daniels is almost paranoid about that kind of stuff, and it's a good kind of paranoid.

Three days: You acknowledge that nobody knows what the Daniels plan is and then when the unknown plan fails to materialize, he is suddenly foolish, clueless, arrogant and an idiot (for, it should be noted, NOT trumping two deals that most thoughtful baseball people think were bad deals).

This is what is known as intellectual dishonesty.

 

It is also known as lying.

 

What you have here is not merely a journalist forced to fill column inches or air time with content in an environment where your subject makes it almost impossible to get your hands on reliable information. I understand that.

I listen to a fair amount of talk radio and catch plenty of Rangers segements an a number of shows.  I read just about everything written about this baseball organization. And in the era of Twitter and blogs that can and must be updated several times a day, there is no getting around the reality that speculation has managed to rise to the level of news.  A nice juicy bit of speculation is disseminated throughout the cyber community of those who follow the subject and brings traffic. 

But that's not what this "journalist" is doing.  This journalist does not tweet. He writes one or two columns a week for a major newspaper.  He is a general columnist. He doesn't have to write about the Rangers at all.  In fact, for years I don't recall him writing much about them at all even during the summers unless it was to gleefully celebrate their failures while resorting to one of the lowest forms of discourse: name calling. 

I have sat down to try and write about the Rangers on several occasions since the season ended and every time I start, I feel stupid. I always feel as though I am 24 hours away from having the truth revealed to me and that to have drawn any conclusions about the health of this organization based upon what didn't happen yesterday - which I have come to "expect" based on nothing but speculation floating in cyberspace which I know to be baseless - is a fool's errand.  

So I try not to be a fool while feeling some sympathy for those of my friends in the media who really have no choice but to look like fools by attempting to generate content based upon what they can only speculate is happening behind closed doors in the offices on Ballpark Way.  

And I refuse to be a liar, but then again, I'm not DFW's senior sports columnist.