By Christopher Heun
"He's very, very private," O's manager Dave Trembley says. "He's not a [bad] guy. He just doesn't like people asking him obvious, stupid questions."
Erik Bedard has been getting a lot of attention from the national media recently as talk of his Cy Young candidacy heats up despite trailing Josh Beckett, Johan Santana and others in wins, the all-important category.
One detail repeated in all of the profiles about Bedard: his disdain for the media.
Amy K. Nelson of ESPN.com describes Bedard’s interactions with the media as “horrible at best, and nonexistent at worst.”
A New York Times profile published before his start last Wednesday in the Bronx reported that “he loathes talking to the news media and has, on occasion, slipped out of the Orioles’ clubhouse without discussing his starts.” (You can access the story here until Aug. 22 without a subscription.)
Bedard told reporter David Picker: “I don’t want everybody knowing everything about me. I don’t want to be recognized everywhere I go. Who wants that?”
Imagine, in the Age of Celebrity, a guy would prefer to be left alone. Sounds like he’s got his head on straight.
The Sun’s own Roch Kubatko has complained many times in his blog that Bedard offers little help to the scrum of scribes gathering around him after a game, fishing for a good quote for tomorrow’s story.
Roch’s unofficial transcript from one of those sessions is amusing and proves that there really is such a thing as a stupid question:
Good for Bedard for refusing to cooperate. The only people who are hurt by this are the sports reporters who make a living watching games, trading opinions among themselves in the press box, and waiting for professional athletes to make public proclamations about the condition of a sore muscle or their confidence in their teammates.
What matters is Bedard’s performance on the field. If he does manage to win that Cy Young, whether this season or sometime in the future, his acceptance speech should be interesting. And short.
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