Darth Bernazard

Tony Bernazard may or may not be the Antichrist, but if you're going to claim he is -- like Newsday's Ken Davidoff does this morning -- it seems that you have to do better than anonymous hearsay from admittedly ignorant people:

The truth, however, is that Bernazard's reputation has taken a pummeling. Take this for what it's worth, but Wednesday, I received two phone calls from industry contacts -- the first, a longtime friend of many Hispanic players, and the second, a scout from an American League team. Both, unsolicited, brought up Bernazard, both professed to not know him and both offered the same sentiment: "I hear he's a really bad guy."

Further evidence cited by Davidoff for Bernazard's evil: he hangs around the clubhouse a lot and is friends with Manny Acta. While it's possible that those things could mean that Mets' players and well-respected managers actually like Bernazard, Davidoff chooses to spin it as Bernazard "creating the perception that he served as a sympathetic ear to players who didn't like Randolph," and "creating the perception that Bernazard wished that Acta was managing the Mets." Question to Davidoff: who's really doing the creating here?

Maybe Bernazard is evil. Maybe he worked tirelessly to undermine Willie Randolph and foment disharmony on the Mets. Maybe he's responsible for high gas prices, those bad tomatoes, and the turgid, lazy, and disappointing storyline of the new Indiana Jones movie. Unfortunately, we can't tell any of those things from Davidoff's peice because he can't point to a single thing that Bernazard did, said, or put in motion that justifies the title of "bad, bad, guy."

And they say bloggers are irresponsible bomb-throwers.