Early deadlines for Zellco tonight. This article was posted before the new episode Real Houswives hit air. Seems like we've got ourselves a new built-in excuse when the bats go silent, though it probably won't be used for Juan Uribe; brains get in the way. Just ask Greg Walker, on Carlos Quentin:
"He has big-time power," hitting coach Greg Walker said. "Physically, this guy is talented. This is a guy who will have to keep his brain from getting in the way, but he showed [his ability] at the end of spring.
"At the end of spring he became low maintenance for me. … Even though at times he thinks too much, you can tell he's talented and he battles."
He went to Stanford!
The article had the encouraging headline of "Sox's Quentin will get his chances" though it was lacking in hard details about how Quentin would find his way onto the field.
[Update by The Cheat, 04/02/08 12:10 AM CDT]: Joe Cowley has some more substantive Walker quotes. Nothing on Quentin but on the larger issue of this site being labeled Fire Greg Walker for the last 5 months of the '07 season.
"I'm going to attempt to make that a non-story. It did become [a distraction] last year. I was always taught that you never want to run from a question, but it kept getting asked so much.
"I really do hope it's not an issue,'' Walker said. ''Not for me, but for the players that then have to answer it. I'm close to a lot of those guys, all of them. I love them. I don't want them worrying about me. I want them worrying about playing baseball. I just want it to be a non-story, and the best way to do that is to win games.
"And you know what? One year later, I'm still a non-story. I'm just a small piece of the puzzle. We're here to help the guys. We do great, I'm a non-story; we do terrible, I'm a non-story. That's the way I'm looking at it, and that's how it's going to be dealt with this year."