FROM JOEL SHERMAN

Joe Girardi gets to answer one of my favorite questions today: Are you a liar or are you an idiot? It is not a very polite question, I realize, but I actually think it is a question that should be asked more by journalists of all stripes. When a politician conveniently doesn’t “recall” some major point in his life, that’s a good time for the liar/idiot question. On a smaller scale I will show you how it works: When a player tells me “I haven’t thought about free agency at all,” I will generally ask, “would you like me to refer to you as a liar or an idiot in the paper tomorrow?” Then I have to explain to the stunned player that if, indeed, he has thought about his impending free agency then the response he gave would make him a liar. But if he hasn’t thought about the millions and millions of dollars that he is about to have negotiated in his behalf then he is an idiot. I am OK with either storyline, which would you like?

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