The Mariners continue their childish boycott of Larry LaRue

From today’s Tacoma News-Tribune Mariners-Orioles game story by Larry LaRue:

For the second day, none of the players would talk to The News Tribune in the wake of a players-only meeting that followed a report that Ken Griffey Jr. was napping in the clubhouse during a game last week.

Are there any grownups working for the Seattle Mariners, or do Mike Sweeney and Ken Griffey, Jr. run everything now?

I mean, fine, be as mad as you want about LaRue’s reporting, but the spectacle of 25 ballplayers shunning someone who’s job it is to cover the team is a pathetic one, especially in light of the fact that the team’s denials of his reporting were tepid and equivocal. Unless the Mariners are seriously accusing LaRue of making his story up out of whole cloth, two of those 25 people shunning him LaRue told him what he reported. If the Mariners have a problem with the substance of it, they should be looking within, not lashing out a beat guy from Tacoma.

Either Don Wakamatsu or Jack Zduriencik needs to tell the Mariners players to get over it and be the bigger men. Larry LaRue isn’t the first reporter to write something negative about this team, and he most certainly won’t be the last, especially given how poorly they’re playing. If the team can’t handle that, how on Earth can they be expected to handle the A’s, Rangers and Angels?