The Week in Quotes: October 31-November 7

RESURRECTED

“I get to make all the baseball decisions, within the budget…. To be the first GM to carry the baseball torch back to Washington is very exciting.”

—Jim Bowden, former Reds general manager and new GM of the Unnamed Washington Baseball Franchise (Cincinnati Inquirer)

“I’ve had trade discussions with several teams already.”

–Bowden

“[Getting fired] was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’d have died in that chair and never left. Getting fired allowed me time to look at the whole picture. I believe I’ll do a better job this time around.”

–Bowden

“I’ll have better self-discipline. Sometimes, a position of power can affect how you treat people. And not in a good way.”

–Bowden

“It got to be too much…. In L.A., nobody even knows who the general managers of the teams are. In Cincinnati, everyone knows. The people were great to me, but it’s hard hearing every day, ‘You shouldn’t have gotten fired.'”

–Bowden

“There’s nothing like winning in Cincinnati…. No matter what restrictions I had, I tried. I was going to do what I could with what we had.”

–Bowden

DUE DILIGENCE

“It was obviously a mistake on our part, to have made a decision without having done the proper background work that could have been done, should have been done…I take full responsibility for that and I’m very sorry.”

—Ken Kendrick, Diamondbacks general partner, on the hiring and firing of manager Wally Backman (Arizona Republic)

“And I hope our fans will understand that we’re going to make mistakes. What I hope they also will learn from this, and hopefully we will learn from it, is that we make mistakes, but we, for certain, will not repeat those same mistakes.”

–Kendrick

“In every good organization, in any organization, there are cycles down and there are cycles up and sometimes, you have to take a step back to move forward…That’s where this organization is right now. That’s going to be the process here, to get back to our glory days and winning the way everybody is used to seeing the Diamondbacks win.”

—Bob Melvin, Diamondbacks manager (Arizona Republic)

THIRD AND LONG

“I think it was an unfortunate event…. But the fact that Lance was absolutely and totally forthright with us and has absolutely accepted responsibility shows the kind of person he is, the kind of character he has, and from that point of view, it’s an unfortunate incident.”

—Tim Purpura, Astros general manager, on Lance Berkman tearing his right anterior cruciate ligament while playing flag football

“I mean, players have lives outside of the game, and what they do with those lives, that’s really their decision. They bear some risks, is the way I look at it. The way Lance has handled this is absolutely first-class, and what you’d expect from Lance Berkman.”

–Purpura

“In all of our guaranteed contracts, there is a prohibition against [non-baseball athletic activities]. Now, the salary that he was paid for this year and the terms on his guaranteed contract essentially expired at the end of the season, so there’s really no prohibition, per se, at this point against it. But, obviously, it has the potential to impact his ability to play next year.”

–Purpura

“There’s a lot we don’t know yet and a lot we won’t know for a while, and that was the absolute last thing on my mind, and certainly on Lance’s mind, too.”

–Purpura

FEAR AND IGNORANCE

“I felt-and this probably sounds like a stupid statement-that in 2003 we had a team that could not only win the division but win in the playoffs and win the World Series…. That team was not afraid of anyone.”

—Kenny Williams, White Sox general manager (Chicago Tribune)

“Listen, if you want to play fantasy baseball, I could build a hell of a team. But we have to deal with the reality of the marketplace.”

–Williams

THE REST

“The Mets told me I’m not in their plans on the field, and that’s fine…. Sometimes you have to move on…it’s been 15 years, and who knows, maybe later on I’ll come back again.”

—John Franco, Mets reliever (N.Y. Daily News)