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Are Keith Hernandez, Ken Griffey Jr., and Billy Beane Bored With ...

MLB umpire Joe West got some attention a few weeks back when he called the length of Yankees-Red Sox games “pathetic and embarrassing” and “a disgrace to baseball.” But at least all those players are able to actually stay awake during the games, no matter how long the games are. Wonder if West will now weigh in on how Billy Beane, Keith Hernandez, and Ken Griffey Jr. were each recently discovered to be snoozing on the job – literally in two cases,  figuratively in one.

Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane didn’t  actually fall asleep during Sunday’s A’s-Rays game, but he was paying so little attention to what his team was doing, that he didn’t know  for sure that Dallas Braden was pitching a perfect game until there was one out to go.  Here’s the story , from FoxSports writer Ken Rosenthal:

Beane, the A’s general manager, always works out at McAfee Coliseum during home games. He watches the game on the in-house television feed but does not listen to the announcers, distracting himself with soccer podcasts on his headphones instead.

“When I divert my attention, it takes the edge off me,” Beane says. “I do it to govern my emotions during games.”

Until the ninth inning, he had no idea that left-hander Dallas Braden was pitching a perfect game.

The in-house feed does not display graphics with runs, hits and errors. In an age of information overload, the GM was somewhat in the dark.

“I kept thinking, ‘He didn’t walk a guy,’” Beane recalls. “I was trying to remember if they had gotten a hit.

“In the eighth inning, I saw them show Catfish Hunter’s number (on the screen). I thought, ‘Wait a second, he might have a perfect game.’”

In the ninth, Beane says, he was doing some weight work. Farhan Zaidi, the team’s director of baseball operations, was on a treadmill.

With two outs, Beane popped the question to Zaidi. Yes, Zaidi replied. It was indeed a perfect game.

And then it was over.

Let me make sure I have this correct – Billy Beane, the so-called smartest man in baseball, the star of “Moneyball” (the book) who will be played by Brad Pitt if “Moneyball” (the movie) ever gets made, didn’t know that Dallas Braden was pitching a perfect game until the game was nearly over?  Because he was listening to soccer podcasts and working out instead of paying attention to the game? Change his name to Mets GM Omar Minaya or, some other maligned GM, and tell me how this story would have read.

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