I must say, if you have the time, watch this interview Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer has with Mark Shapiro. He definitely doesn’t back down - and Shapiro presents an interesting portrait of the front office perspective for a mid-market MLB team like the Indians, a lot of the issues we’ve been discussing here come up.
Notable is the fact that Shapiro seems convinced that Cleveland is a small market…I’m not so sure.
In 2004, for example, the Plain Dealer was the 17th highest circulated paper in the country and Nielsen lists the 17 county Cleveland-Akron area as the 17th biggest TV market in America.
My least favorite part of the interview is part four - fan questions - where Shapiro, after saying he wants and needs to be critical of the decisions he’s made in the past, defends the Kerry Wood signing by proclaiming, “it’s not fair to look back and say…”
Yeah, actually it is - that’s how you analyze what you did and learn from it.
I also enjoy Shapiro’s affinity for supporting decisions by stating that the rest of the industry agreed with him. Okay…I get what he’s driving at but group-think doesn’t really determine right and wrong. A bunch of people thought invading Iraq was smart, same thing for Vietnam…you get my point.
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