Stephen A. Smith talks a lot. Too much sometimes.
He’s smart. No doubt. The sad thing is that for all those brains in his head, Stephen A. Smith isn’t talking about anything that matters.
I heard him jibber jabbing Monday about Dallas’ rookie quarterback, and whether he’s got what it takes to keep the starter’s job when Tony Romo returns to the lineup later this season. I heard Smith talking about Richard Sherman and whether or not the bombastic cornerback was justified when he had a meltdown on the sidelines Sunday.
It got me thinking about how great Stephen A. Smith would be if he was on television talking about something that mattered — like the upcoming presidential election for example. Can you imagine if Smith applied his encyclopedic knowledge and obnoxious bluster to a political discussion? I’d pay to see that.
I can’t see how that would happen though, because Smith and his crew of sycophants (now that Skip Bayless is gone) missed the opportunity to talk about Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and his political stance against Donald Trump.
In case you missed it, Gonzalez refused to stay at Trump Tower in Chicago during the two days the Dodgers team was in town to battle to historically cursed Chicago Cubs for the right to go to the World Series.
Gonzalez declined to elaborate on why he refused the accommodation.
“I didn’t stay there,” Gonzalez said. “I had my reasons.”
Perhaps it was a scathing Yelp! review posted in February by Chaz A, which noted:
“Rudest customer service.
Disgusting floor.
Weakest water pressure in the shower that I’ve ever experienced.
I couldn’t even take a second bite of any of the disgusting waffles they had.”
Bad reviews aside. It’s safe to assume that Gonzalez, who posted on Twitter last week that Dodgers’ win over the Washington Nationals was a “victoria para Mexico” doesn’t care much for Donald Trump.
Who can blame him? While Trump’s toothless legions of “Deliverance” extras proclaim their status as “deplorables”, folks like Gonzales remember that Trump fired the first shot when he defined Mexicans as rapists, murderers and thugs.
Although born in San Diego, Adrian Gonzalez has deep ties to Tijuana and even paid to refurbish a field in that border city where he played baseball as a child. And, Gonzalez has class. When asked to elaborate on his position, Gonzalez said simply: “We’re here to play baseball not talk politics.”
The answer itself makes clear that Gonzalez didn’t need to talk politics, he let his boycott speak for itself. It’s too bad that during the First Take segment that I saw, Stephen A. Smith and company chose not to elaborate.
There will be more opportunities no doubt.
With the NBA season just around the corner, it is conceivable we will see more politics in the arena. Athletes like A-Gon and Colin Kaepernick are models for a new generation of sports hero, a gladiator who participates in the circus, but performs the free bread in the form of a public service that keeps us plebeians engaged in the things that really matter.
As for the curse? Let’s hope another of Chicago’s funky, smelly and deplorable billy goats finds its way into the lobby of Trump Tower.
Girardot is an award-winning former editor and columnist with the Los Angeles News Group. He is co-author of true crime tales “A Taste For Murder” and the soon-to-be released “Betrayal in Blue: The Shocking Memoir of the Scandal that Rocked the NYPD” Follow him on Twitter @frankgirardot.
The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.