Two More Funny Quotes On The Dodgers' Pool Party

With the exception of John McCain's ill-timed tweet, I actually found the brouhaha over "Poolgate" naturally subsiding pretty quickly. I did like these two quotes the best, however, (both of which are in this same article).

First, Arizona Diamondbacks' president Derrick Hall, with a comment to the local paper:

Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall offered a statement Thursday to the Arizona Republic in which he said, "I could call it disrespectful and classless, but they don't have a beautiful pool at their old park and must have really wanted to see what one was like."

See, that's pretty funny. Critical of the Dodgers as one would expect a rival team's president to be, but aware enough to flip it back with a veiled insult (which is totally legitimate, by the way; Dodger Stadium is indeed old, and I also think the Chase Field pool is a cool stadium feature).

Also extending the argument in a funny way was Dodgers manager Don Mattingly:

"These are like little baby boys; it's like Little League when these guys win. It's exciting and stuff is spontaneous. I don't think there was a plan to embarrass anybody. And to be honest with you, I bet there weren't 100 fans out there in those seats. Everybody was gone. So it's not like they were doing anything to rub it in anybody's face. There wasn't anybody there. If we tore anything up I would feel bad about that but we didn't hurt the pool. It can't be that bad." [...]

I don't think it's that big of a deal. I don't think it hurt anybody and I don't think it was done on purpose to embarrass anybody. If we won it here, would the Padres be mad if we jumped the fence and made sand castles in the sand box out there. Seriously, would anyone care?"

Football players have been told to "act like they've been there before" when scoring a touchdown. We've never clinched at Chase Field, and that pool is damn inviting, particularly for a team that was in last place and 9.5 games out of first midway through the season. Next time, maybe we won't take the plunge. But this time, it was a pretty cool spectacle and spotaneous celebration. Let it be.

Dodgers tickets

photo: Norm Hall / Getty Images