Facebook Reactions Part I: Wedge Fired

Facebook is a wonderful thing in some instances.

It's also the root of all evil, along with myspace, twitter, and anything else of the sort.

Yet I'm on two of the three.

Of course I'm a fan of the Cleveland Indians on facebook, so I get the status updates or whatever the hell they do when they post a link.

And of course, so are a billion other people, and all of them have to comment.

I was intrigued to read some of the reaction, because these are all casual fans. Most of them at least. So the reaction is going to be ridiculous and over done and highly critical and crazy.

Oh that's entertainment though at it's finest.

So I copied a bunch of status updates from two particular posts by Cleveland Indians on Facebook. I removed the names, but kept the comments verbatim (unless someone used the firetruck word and the quote was too good to not post). Some of them are generic and some of them are deep thought comments with some particular sense. Others just suck.

I've responded to comments with my own. This was amusing to me, but may not be to you. If you happened to make one of these comments and I make fun of you, well sorry.

Why am I posting this here? Why the hell would I not post it here?

For the record, I was surprised how many people took Wedge's side or completely blind-sided Shapiro and said it was his fault. I thought a lot more would be against Wedge and there were quite a few, but there were a lot of Anti-Shapiro comments as well.

There were a lot of comments and this got kind of long. I'll post Part II tomorrow and Part III on Saturday... But here is part one..

My response is bold

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Hey don't blame Wedge it's all on Shapiro! That's what happens when you trade the entire team away.

The entire team? I didn’t realize the entire team was traded. I could have sworn they were still fielding a 25 man roster.

Finally! There is a God!!! Now all we need to do is get rid of Shapiro.

God didn’t fire Eric Wedge, then again he didn’t hire him either.

Blame Wedgie?! What about Shapiro?!

What about him? Blame everyone… But that doesn’t mean you fire Shapiro.

Take Dolan and Shapiro with him....

Shapiro and Dolan aren’t going to fire themselves. Where is he taking them? The Bahamas?

Good riddance. But, we still have the REAL problems aka the ownership and the GM still there.

Yeah that’s an incredibly big problem.

They need to sell the team to someone that actually wants to WIN.

The Dolan’s own the team and are losing money because they don’t want to win… Yeah that sounds right.

Eric Wedge is a great coach....hes probably going to get on another team and win a chapionship......shipiro and dolan are the real idiots

I don’t know what a chapionship is or who shipiro is, but I agree, he’s an idiot. That Shipiro is a real dummie. And Eric Wedge was a great coach!

I hope whoever is next in line doesn't have the word "PLATOON" in his vocabulary.....pick a starting 9 and play them - just like Hargrove did in the 90's!!

Hargrove had Albert Belle, Omar Vizquel, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez... He didn’t have too much to do to fill out the lineup card. The next in line better have platoon in their vocabulary, or else they aren’t very well versed.

Why couldn't they wait til the season was over? Shapiro needs to go!! Getting rid of a pitcher like Cliff Lee was totally crazy! And, what for?? I don't see any improvement in the pitching. Ball players know what their job is & they should do it. They get paid enough! Then they single outWedge! Sell the team & hope somebody buys it, that doesn't care to spend the money!! Let's just start all over again withe the Tribe & the Browns!!

What’s the difference if they wait five games? This was done right. Where does Shapiro need to go? Yeah getting rid of Cliff Lee was crazy, but it had to be done. Yeah you aren’t going to see any improvement in pitching this quick, impatience impatience impatience. Oh so the ball players are at fault now? I thought Shapiro was the problem. Oh wait now we need to sell the team because we don’t spend the money. Yeah you should probably start over with the Browns, that’s a lost cause.

It's a shame that Eric has to take the fall when it's the players who haven't performed. I wish him the best and hope the kids on the field start playing baseball instead of whatever they've been doing this season.

Holy crap, I actually don’t have an issue with this one.

BRING BACK THE GROVER!!!!

That’s the worst idea I ever heard.

lets get John Hart back

Never mind… That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

Would rather have seen this happen earlier, instead of the fire sale !!! What's the point now?

Firing or not, the fire sale still happens. The point now is, time for a change sir.

BRING BACK HARGROVE!!!

Again? Seriously? Why, what the hell is he going to do? This team has no super egos to separate, his skills are not suited for this team.

It's all Dolan, sell the team if you don't want to spend any money. Same thing would have happened to any other Mgr. Traded 2 Cy Young award winners in 2 years, and one of the best hitters in baseball, because you didn't want to pay them!!!!! How many wins did you think you were going to get??????

Hey Dolan has spent the ninth most money in baseball over the past few years. I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. It’s not about not wanting to pay them, it’s about can’t, unless of course you want to surround them with a bunch of scrubs and have a guaranteed sucky team with 2-3 good players.

Wedge...eh, mixed feelings on this one. When your GM has it in his mind that you need to trade away quality players for prospects you don't have much to work with. Perhaps Dolan needs to look at ridding the organization of Shapiro...he's a smart guy, but has made seriously questionable moves, esp. this past year. And Dolan needs to take some money and invest in keeping allstar players (And for those who've thrown comments in about the Cavs, you best hope Lebron stays in Cleveland after this season. If he leaves so do a lot of fans and current Cavs players that don't want to be on a team that blows.)

Do you think Mark Shapiro is actually looking to trade players for prospects all the time? If Shapiro had it his way, he’d keep the players he gets, but that’s not the way things work. I don’t disagree that he’s made some questionable moves, but all GMs do that. Again, this isn’t the climate to be shelling out big bucks to keep All-Stars at prices they cannot afford if they want to field a solid team all-around. I could care less about the Cavs.

Wedge was a good manager but not good enough but on the other hand who will replace him. Also the entire coaching staff is gone too. Buster Olney of ESPN "the new manager will come from an internal source or the Boston Red Sox pitching coach."

Thanks for that… Whatever that was.

What's sad is that NOW is when they should keep him. He's a lousy manager when you have a championship-material team like we did two years ago. But with such a young team, I think you need a player-friendly guy... I don't know if you are going to be able to do any better right now.

Hey I actually agree with you, but I think we all know, judging by a lot of these comments, that wouldn’t be a popular decision.

Not happy about this at all. Blah! :(

Wow, someone flat out not happy. I’ve seen a lot of “It’s not Wedge” but this is refreshing.

It's about damn time! Shapiro should be next!

I didn’t know there was such a time as “damn time.” Next for what? Doctors office?

that really stinks...~

Another upset person! Cool.

This should have been announced on Monday... or last May.

Monday? Why Monday? May? Why May?

This is the start of something beautiful.

No actually it’s the end of something ugly.

Omar Vizquel for GM 2010 !!!!!
;)

This is a horrible idea. Why? Five exclamation marks doesn’t make it any more brighter.

Take Shapiro and his Brother-in-law

Again, take them where? Out to picnic? Mangini already eats enough.

whats this gonna do nothing we traded all of our talent away so it dont matter if we bring in jesus to manage this mess

I’d like to see Jesus teach Fausto Carmona a curveball.

I'll miss you Wedge and Datz

Hey Datzy gets a shout out!

Finally! He won games purely based on talent and not for his decision making skills. I don't think we had the same lineup from week to week. For all of you Wedge defenders, if another MLB manager job comes open do you really think Wedge will be at the top of their short list?

I don’t know what this means. By that logic, all managers win based off their talent and lose based off their lack of talent. What does defending Wedge have to do with him being at the top of a list for another job? Dumb.

They should fire the whole team except for Grady.

Grady can’t play all nine positions, even if he’s healthy.

Shapiro should be next. I feel sorry for Wedge. You can't put together a winning team when management keeps selling all the better players. Coco Crisp, Milton Bradley, Jim Thome, CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, and many others too numerous to mention. It's about the owners putting a bunch of $$ in their pocket, as opposed to putting together a team the fans can be proud of.

I lost all respect for this statement the minute Milton Bradley’s name was brought up. The Dolan’s lost money this year, what money did they put in their pocket?

What would they do if the seats were empty for a few games??

Ask them what they did these past few weeks. I think they played baseball.