There is a whole lot of rubber-necking going on in the baseball industry as the collision between the White Sox and Adam LaRoche is cleaned up, with baseball executives and officials from other teams watching from afar — with fascination and with their own questions and observations about what happened.
1. There is general surprise that the White Sox allowed a situation in which a player's son could be in the clubhouse every single day. "That's a lot," one American League official said. "The problem is the precedent. What do you say to the next player who asks for that? What happens if five players ask for that?"
AL executive: "You need limits and guidelines with that kind of stuff or else you could put other players in a tough situation when they're trying to get work done."
Asked another: "What kind of chaos do they have over there [with the White Sox]?"
2. LaRoche had a verbal agreement with GM Rick Hahn and manager Robin Ventura to have his son in the clubhouse daily. "What would've happened if [Ventura] had been fired after last season?" asked one evaluator. "Or both [Ventura and Hahn] had been fired? The next manager would've been obligated to have a policy to allow kids in the clubhouse all day, every day? Rules like that can change any time."
3. What is the state of the communication between Kenny Williams and two of the people who theoretically answer to him, Hahn and Ventura? Because if Hahn and Ventura made an agreement about LaRoche's son being in the clubhouse with Williams' knowledge, then Williams has to know that altering the agreement now runs the risk of angering the folks in the clubhouse. And if Hahn and Ventura made the agreement without an OK from Williams, then they did this without true authority.