Bryan Price’s tirade shows startling lack of awareness

In a profanity-laced blowup that would likely have made even Lou Piniella or Tommy Lasorda blush in their heydays, Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price lashed out at the media on Monday in regard to its reporting of various team personnel and injury information. The vitriolic monologue, in which Price drops a certain well-known expletive 77 times in the span of about five and a half minutes, simply must be appreciated in all its full-length glory. A transcript can be found at Cincinnati.com, but Baseball America writer Ben Badler tweeted a choice excerpt:

Managers have plenty of legitimate gripes throughout the course a season, with journalists, umpires, players, league officials and a host of other figures. This simply isn’t one of them. Though Price’s frustration is understandable to an extent, bits of player and transaction news leaking to reporters is a daily occurrence in the fast-paced world of sports media and nowhere near worthy of the diatribe he delivered yesterday. More perplexing was Price’s implication, despite his claim to the contrary, that beat writers should somehow protect a team’s interests.

The media can be obnoxious. Underhanded. Invasive. Few would argue, however, that providing updates on the statuses of Devin Mesoraco and Billy Hamilton falls under those categories. Price and the Reds naturally would prefer to keep such information close to the vest to avoid giving opponents an edge, as he so eloquently pleaded. But as any sports fan with a Twitter account will tell you, expecting that level of ironclad privacy is fairly naive and unrealistic in today’s environment. For every piece of player availability info that Price didn’t want public, he could have quite possibly found a similar one pertaining to his opponent’s roster. If he’s unsatisfied with how things have worked out so far, then perhaps he and his organization need to do some self-evaluating.

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This is just the start of Price’s second season managing at any level, but it’s certainly not his first rodeo in an MLB dugout either. From 2000-2013 he served as pitching coach to the Mariners, Diamondbacks and Reds. You would think he’d understand the team/media relationship by now. His anger was also likely fueled by his squad’s recent struggles. After winning its first four games, Cincinnati has gone 2-7 and currently sits in the middle of the National League Central. Even the most mild-mannered skipper has had his fuse shortened by a rough patch of games. But what Bryan Price experienced wasn’t a fuse-shortening, it was a full-blown explosion.

The fallout from this incident should be interesting to watch unfold. Price has since apologized for his outburst via the team’s official Twitter account:

Unfortunately, the content of his message is also the root of his problem. As he so passionately asserted to the reporters present, “Your job is not to sniff out every f****** thing is about the Reds and f****** put it out there for every other f****** guy to hear. It’s not your job.” Regrettably for him, that pretty much is their job. To the letter.

Another truth about sports media: it generally doesn’t like to be told what to do. And it tends to turn on those who try to do so, quickly and without hesitation. It’s difficult to see this situation getting any easier for Price going forward. If he thought the journalists covering his team were undermining him before, they are certainly not going to be doing him any favors now.