Good for Dallas Braden.

Braden, the Oakland A’s pitcher who earlier this season had two big moments, one when he pitched a perfect game.  The other, when he yelled at Alex Rodriguez only weeks before for crossing over the pitchers mound to return to first base during a game.  Braden immediately became a big hit with the fans for both standing up to the Yankees star and for backing it up with the perfect pitching.

The Athletics then jumped on the band wagon.  They are currently selling a T-shirt that reads “Get off of My Mound”.  Its kind of a great mantra for a team to embrace, in other words take ownership of the field, in the vein of “this is our house”.  Apparently, though as the Yankees rolled back into town, the shirt struck a funny nerve in the clubhouse- as it should.  This Mark Feinsand piece tells of Robinson Cano rolling into the clubhouse sporting the tee.  And it sounds like the Yankees took it in the right spirit.

There are two points that make this noteworthy to me, though.  First, Feinsand went and spoke to Braden about the t-shirts and discovered that Braden was not a fan.  He thought it fanned the flames on a situation that had already gone out.  He also thought it put the players on the field in the line of fire in order to just sell shirts and make money.  And he is right.  According to the piece, the team wasn’t given approval to use Braden’s name or number from either MLB or the Player’s Association which both control the rights.  The team though decided it was worth making anyway.  Fans will buy them, and no reason not to.  It speaks to this moment in time for the A’s, be that good or bad.

But the thing to note about Dallas Braden is that his quotes and his attitude on this are working to dampen the fire not to fan the flames.  He tries to separate him from those words and from that moment, and lets the A’s take load for these shirts.  And the A’s do take the load.  Marketing is all well and good unless it gets in the way of baseball, and Braden made that very clear.  Nicely done on his part.

But I also want to say that Feinsand did a great job with this piece.  It would be very easy for the Daily News to write something about these shirts, and mock the A’s and Braden for highlighting that moment.  Instead, Feinsand went and spoke with the Braden and wrote a really good piece actually turning down the volume on the entire thing.  The game in Oakland last night was about baseball and not about Braden versus Rodriguez.  This is a non-story, but one that is interesting because all parties did what was best for the situation, not what was easiest for themselves.  I tip my cap to the Daily News because they could have printed only the part about the shirts and omitted the quotes from Braden.