Nick Piccone
Before last night’s Nationals-Phillies game, which according to the team 15,000+ people attended [not even close, by the way], Jonathan Papelbon discussed some things with the Phillies media because he thought that would be a good idea. And it was… for us. Papelbon didn’t pull any punches, much like his history with the media and fans in Philly when he was a member of our city’s baseball team. Ryan Lawrence gives us the goods.
“I don’t know if I got a bad rap here or whatever, but I can promise you I was, by far, [from being] the bad guy on this team,” Papelbon said. “I was one of the few that wanted to actually win, and I was one of the few that competed and posted up every day.”
“I say it as a team,” Papelbon said, in his first of several failed attempts to clarify. “If you don’t have a team atmosphere that’s put together that coincides with winning, you know?”
In his last attempt to explain himself, before the nine-minute interview was cut off by a Nationals media relations representative, Papelbon said you could blame everyone at Citizens Bank Park. Even the bat boy.
“I think the blame goes all the way from the front office all the way down to the bat boy,” Papelbon said. “When you don’t have an organization that wants to win, it’s pretty evident, and they go out and publicly say, we’re not going to win. So what more, you know what I mean?”
I’m not sure Papelbon is entirely right here, because ownership did want to win. His contract was the last fat contract given under Ruben Amaro, Jr., so an argument could be made that the team decided to stop spending and assumed the fans would come to the ballpark anyway due to the team’s 2007-2011 run. That could be what Papelbon’s alluding to, but I don’t think ownership completely decided to abandon the sinking ship.
I love when Paps talks. He always makes some interesting points. He’d be a great politician.
Video below.