Once again, Milton Bradley is way off base, caught in a rundown between reason and his own hypocrisy.
Bradley expects black reporters to watch his back and cover his mistakes -- which are mounting like a Dodger late-inning rally -- when he can't even take an extra minute to help a black reporter do his job.
You're out, Milton. Don't try to play the brother card now with The Times' Jason Reid, not after I saw you deal a joker to Art Thompson III of the Orange County Register.
On Aug. 16, Thompson was interviewing another player while Bradley updated a group of reporters about his injured hamstring. When Thompson arrived at Bradley's locker and inquired about the hamstring, Bradley went off on him, told him he had just answered those questions and was sick of people asking the same things over and over.
Thompson went away, then returned, reminding Bradley that Bradley had blown him off when Thompson had introduced himself several weeks earlier, telling Bradley he didn't appreciate the treatment.
Bradley responded, "If I treated you like that the first time, then why the ... did you come back the second time?"
As if it were Thompson's fault Bradley was a jerk.
So that's the way Bradley treats a fellow black man.
But on Wednesday in St. Louis, when Reid asked if any Cardinal fans had heckled Bradley in whis first playoff game after a five-game suspension for throwing a plastic beer bottle back into the stands, Bradley accused Reid of trying to make him look bad in his stories and with his questions.
"You're an Uncle Tom," Bradley said. "You're a sellout."
That's as bad an insult as one black man can hear, coming from another black man. It's an implication that you'd turn your back on your own people.
The argument became heated, and Reid was pulled away by Dodger players.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, I'm not saying Reid should have gone there ... but I understand.
Bradley questioned the core of his character in the middle of the clubhouse.
Bradley, as he said in his tearful apology after the suspension, has some issues. If those issues prevent him from going about the daily business of his job -- and yes, answering reporters' questions is part of the deal -- he shouldn't be on the playoff roster.
There are more issues on the table for the rest of us involved however remotely in this story.
Should there be a different set of rules for black reporters covering black athletes?
