After reading Chad Finn’s article on Dennis Eckersley I felt good, dare I say, uplifted. Eck’s story is a great one, featuring highs and lows, successes, failures, redemption, glory and the ongoing battles of life’s journey. His is a story of real human interest, inspiration and endless intrigue. When it comes to Eck, I’m riveted. The piece on him would have been more than enough to carry the day for me, but no, it couldn’t end there. David Price had to mouth off and inject himself into the story again.
Great. Here we go, another horse to beat from the always reliable, dead horse Rolodex.
Go figure. I was starting to feel good after a couple of weeks of vacation and the not-soon-enough departure of deadbeat, doom-and-gloomer Kyrie Irving. Irving, I recently thought had replaced Price as the most unlikeable and miserable athlete in the city. He had a good run at it, but you have to give Price credit, he must really want that distinction. Irving was barely gone three weeks before Price stepped right back up to that mantle of miserableness and nauseating commentary he so obviously needs. Way to go Price. Great job using that supposed trump card of yours.
If you read Finn’s article on Eckersley two points are very clear:
1. Eck’s brief commentary on the 2017 incident with Price was clearly in response to a direct question from Finn. It’s not like Eckersley is keeping this story alive by promoting it at every turn, he simply responded to a direct question that has unfortunately become part of his recent history. A historical note in his life that was fully provoked and caused by Price himself I might add. I’m quite sure Eckersley himself would rather that footnote not be there.
2. It’s Finn’s job to ask that question. The article and interview would have been journalistically lacking without it.
Price’s overreaction and the fact he felt compelled to react publically at all says far more about him and his thin skin then this whole saga says about Eckersley. Looking at things objectively here’s what you learn.
When you ask Eckersley a difficult question he answers it.
When Price hears about something, whether he read or heard it directly or not, he’s quick to let out an emotionally charged reaction. In this case, those emotions are fueled in half-truths, certainly not facts. Bad show.
That said, I can cut professional athletes some slack in situations like this sometimes. More often than not, they get information second or third hand from teammates or people in their circles. Those misunderstandings are commonplace. However, if you’re going to take the time to have a press conference about something you better have your facts right and Price’s comments on Eckersley clearly show he didn’t even read the article, or worse, comprehend the context of it. What a joke.
In Price’s little press conference on Wednesday afternoon, he essentially accused Eckersley of not being able to move on from their 2017 incident, yet that is exactly what Price is doing by drumming up the drama that is clearly still living in his own head. Now that drama has been surfaced publically again for everyone to chew on. Again, way to play that trump card. Price just turned the tables on himself when the smart thing to do, would simply have been to do nothing.
Thin-skinned? Lazy? Convenient? Yes to all three and I would also add another, revealing.
I’ve been hard on Price in this space before given his struggles versus the Yankees and his long history of postseason woe, but I’ve also been fair and quick to praise him when his performance has merited it. So I too will revisit the dead horse Rolodex. When I say this recent Price incident is ‘revealing’ here’s what I mean. His previous failures in big moments were never of the physical variety, it was all mental with Price. When you see a quick, emotionally charged reaction, based on inaccuracies and half-truths like the one we heard out of his own mouth on Wednesday, it’s easy to see that emotional fragility that plagued him for so long in the biggest moments of his pitching career before last October. Just saying.
For the Red Sox sake, they better hope that their best pitcher in 2019 has a better trump card up his sleeve than what he showed on Wednesday because he most certainly lost that hand. Welcome back David. Welcome back.