Well, the season is over, and we all know that the topic of conversation for the next month in Redsland is going to be Adam Dunn — at least, until his contract option is exercised (or not).
Yesterday, somewhat surprisingly, the Enquirer had an entire series of articles that seemed to be advocating Dunn’s return. I say that it was somewhat surprising, given that Dunn has taken way more than his fair share of criticism from the Cincinnati media, so it’s nice to see some coverage that was fairly positive toward the slugging left fielder.
Now, all of these articles were written by John Erardi, who is one of the bright lights of Cincinnati’s sports media, but the Enquirer printed them, so kudos to the paper.
I started to link these yesterday, but I decided to wait until today since it might be a good time to really delve into whether Dunn should return (the official position of Redleg Nation, of course, is that Dunn should definitely return next season). So here goes…
The first article talks about the controversy surrounding Dunn, and there is actually some praise of Dunn by radio announcers Marty Brennaman and Jeff Brantley. That’s noteworthy, as the second in this series of articles on Dunn is about those radio announcers, and how they’ve influenced the fans’ perception of the big guy.
Erardi also talks to a few folks about Dunn: our buddy Justin, from one of our favorite blogs, Greg Gajus, and former Mets GM Steve Phillips. All are interesting, but be sure to check out Gajus’ interview, in particular. It reads like I could have written it myself, as he makes many points we’ve been discussing here for a long time. I like the way Gajus thinks.
There is more stuff worth discussing here than I can quote, so I just encourage you to read all these articles and return to talk about it. Great job by Erardi and the Enquirer.