Who amongst us can claim that pitching coach Bryan Price and Team President Derrick Hall have stood side by side, in the SAME room….at the SAME time??????

Coincidental resemblance?

Or yet another brazen attempt by this FO to cut payroll? 

YOU, THE FANS, DECIDE!!!

As if irritated by some red rash, fans of the Sedona Scarlets are itching to look back on Tony Clark’s grand slam Saturday as this season’s turning point. Daron Sutton has framed the significance of this event for us, no less than half a dozen times. Just as Clark crossed the Pittsburgh plate, however, another defining moment occured, as the on deck hitter, recently reinstated Alberto Callaspo, congratulated our towering team sage.

Callaspo, a versatile fielder who rarely hits outside his apartment, was briefly placed on an unpaid restricted list following his arrest, yet returned to action disturbingly soon after allegations he threw his 17 month old into a headboard and cut his wife’s face with a knife.

To date, we’ve been spared a team press release claiming this accidently happened as the amorous couple carved their initials into the trunk of a palo verde tree, but it’s still a curious move by a club eager to talk up family and community values while struggling to capture that very community’s support.

Contrast their understated, almost blase approach with prior ownership’s response in similar situations. In 1999, Bobby Chouinard was released after an off season domestic dispute involving a gun and later served jail time.  In 2001, Mike DiFelice was released a couple weeks after assaulting three people at a Pittsburgh bar. And with Colangelo, it wasnt just the scrubs who were sent packing – he dealt the Suns’ popular franchise player – and the NBA’s best point guard at the time – after Joumanna Kidd got a bloody lip.

Colangelo exercised manifestly different business priorities, likely the result of values apart from those held by his successors. When Kendrick and Moorad crow about responsibility, it means financial responsibility and protecting their own investments. Other duties in a quasi public enterprise, like reflecting community standards, are relegated to double talking spokesmen like Derrick Hall for massage therapy when they are perceived to be in conflict with the bottom line.

The company spiel is that the D*Backs are "surprised" about Alberto Callaspo’s history of violence. Sound familiar?  Remember how Kendrick was "surprised" when Wally Backman’s personal troubles were magically exposed by the indolent Phoenix press in half an hour? The truth was Kendrick always knew Backman carried more baggage than a Pullman porter but was willing to ride the ups and downs because Backman was such a dynamic manager. Kendrick badly miscalculated public reaction, however, which, given his lack of expertise in professional sports management, is excusable. The inexcusable part was casting aspersions about Backman and former owner Colangelo, rather than publicly acknowledging his own culpability in the controversy.

Without knowing all the details here, Callaspo’s enrollment in anger management classes makes it clear that his wife’s fearful pleas to police arent the product of a kooky Venezuelan imagination any more than a knife mark or "minor abrasions" on her face. Judging from press reports, our own wild stab is that Alberto has corporate lawyers galore and his 22 year old wife, who only recently learned of the 911 emergency system at her disposal, lacks representation of any kind.

Predictably, the Diamondbacks’ designated crisis communicator is entirely silent about the issue of the day – his organization’s feelings about Callaspo – yet is all too eager to advertise how "proud" he is of the entire organization handling this sensitive situation. Why, the more you think about it, this whole incident is almost cause for celebration, really. Fans of Hall’s verbal gymnastics may recall his similar language while eliminating the $1 seats. In Hall’s lexicon, "extremely proud" means "Our policies screw people with little or no voice, but true Diamondback fans should feel warm about it inside."

Any lawyer would be "proud" of the way Hall expresses obligatory concern for generic domestic violence while distancing Callaspo from any wrongdoing – all to setup the nauseating bromide about his belief in second chances.  Well, it’s not Callaspo’s second chance.   According to the police report, Alberto’s been flinging his young, vulnerable family around at least since they arrived in the States. Perhaps Hall overlooked that in the rigorous, fact finding phase of his internal investigation. Aren’t young, impressionable, highly paid professional athletes routinely counseled about unacceptable behavior before problems arise, just as a matter of course?  So, now, the Diamondbacks and the union have gotten together and decided that the solution here is more counseling.

I wonder if Hall took time from his busy schedule to pitch the upside of second chances to Marianny Paola, who’s been kicked – and apparently knifed in the face – by the D*Backs slashing utility man. Or if he had the opportunity to explain the inherent "win-win" here to the toddler whose cranium’s been slammed into the headboard at least once by Callaspo?

What does it matter whether this is the second or third or fourteenth chance for the child abuser starting today in left field, when today’s talking point is that we’re all extremely proud of the organization in times like these?

(images courtesy of larryscards.com and Norman Rockwell)