For trying to teach the General Manager of the White Sox a lesson about jaywalking. As Kyle Koster tells the sordid tale of urban malfeasance:
An otherwise successful day for White Sox GM Ken Williams was marred by a Barney-Fife-in-Mayberry moment when he was cited for jaywalking outside of Safeco Field in Seattle on Monday.
Just a short while after claiming outfielder Alex Rios off of waivers, Willams hopped out of a cab while taking on his cell phone and made a beeline across the street outside of the stadium. Not doing this maneuver at a Seattle-approved crosswalk landed him a $56 ticket.
This of course was not the most expensive decision of the day in light of the $61.6 million contract attached to Rios, but perhaps the most embarrassing and, arguably, head-scratching one.
Williams apparently attempted to explain how we do things here in the Windy City, but had no luck.
Williams tried to tell the officer people in Chicago cross streets anywhere [. . .] .
He said the officer told him, “not in Seattle.”
- How Chicago sees Seattle law enforcement
What if he’d crossed into the path of Critical Mass? Oh, the humanity!
And the sad thing is that he was probably jaywalking properly, too.
Seattle Police would be wise to take a lesson from Chicago and extract less money from jaywalking and get their funding the old fashioned way, i.e. through extortion.
In Chicago, we don’t even wait for the cars to pass.
If he wants to jaywalk in Seattle, he should have known the only place you can do that is in the U Dist.
I mean, seriously …
I am bringing intelligent jaywalking to seattle, anyone with me? I also live in the U-dist. so I must have picked the perfect neighborhood for the revolution to be birthed.
In case you haven’t heard of intelligent jaywalking its based upon a very simple principal taught to us all as children. Look both ways, approximate distance and rates of speed of nearby cars, cross appropriately while respecting all cars in the vicinity. Its basically fucking rocket science….most of you wouldn’t understand, so don’t try……
I always kinda thought Barney Fife must be a racist! Now we know…
The Rios signing is going to hurt way worse in the long run.
Fnarf,
Why do you say that? From every metric I’ve seen Alex Rios will probably provide $60 million worth of value over the life of his contract. (http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.ph…) That means it’s a fair contract. You could argue that a good GM could probably find an undervalued asset to fill the void they have, but it’s not like Rios has an albatross of a contract (that would be Vernon Wells).
The real question is, would the officer have given Jack Zduriencik a ticket.
Probably, yes.
They over paid for Rios but no more than the M’s over paid for Bedard. They got 30 starts out of that chump and now he’s done. Bavasi’s final cumshot all over the M’s. Not that I care.
That said, I jaywalk all the time. Never had a problem with cops. I don’t get it.
Heywhatsit,
You can’t even begin to compare Bedard and Rios. The White Sox are giving up nothing for Rios besides paying his salary. We gave up a starting pitcher (now in the majors), a relief pitcher (who closed for the Orioles for nearly 2 years), a starting center fielder, another bullpen arm, and another starting pitching prospect for Bedard. Even under the best case scenario Bedard wasn’t worth that much.
Rios will probably be worth almost exactly $60 million. There is a chance he is worth more. His offense has been down this year due to bad luck, so he’s likely to rebound there. And if his defense is good in CF (it’s too small a sample to guess what it’s like) then he could be worth more than $60 million.
My Seattle jaywalking ticket was issued in the U-district.
@12 Then you were doing it wrong, obvs.
Arbeck, you may be right, you may be wrong. I just like dumping on the Bedard deal and will bring it up whenever I can. Besides, I’m a Cubs fan and don’t much care what the south siders do with their cash.
I’m wondering which street Kenny Williams was crossing. If it was Royal Brougham, between the two stadia, then this is a bogus ticket. That’s a huge pedestrian area, especially on game days. You cross when you can. If it was on 1st Ave, then that is a little more dangerous.
It has to be said, however: a white MLB GM would be far less likely to be ticketed for the same offense.
And if Seattle would actually provide safe crosswalks & sidewalks where they are needed, then this type of ticket is warranted. The reality is…. far from it.
hey we have the lowest rate of pedestrians striking cars in the world.
so don’t knock our nanny laws.
they make us world class
nannies.
JWB.
I posted some good advice for jaywalking on the Seattle Times thread RE this incident, under the name Basebrawl.
@16 – part of that is I stopped carrying a small sledge hammer with me when I walked in crosswalks and a car was plopped across it. bygones. sorry for that spike in ped-on-car activitiy …
@15 Absolutely right. His crime was not jaywalking, but walking while black.
@15: i see black men jaywalking everywhere, and getting away with it. especially on Jackson.
TOURISTS get jaywalking tickets, and 1st avenue is where they are most likely to do so.
I don’t know what you all do in Chicago, but I usually look for cops before I jaywalk. What should the cop have done, run out in the street and pushed him down for his atrocious, self-centered act? I don’t live in Chicago, and I don’t hang out on Chicago blogs making pointless postings that continually reference Critical Mass. Maybe these guys would let you post on their site: http://chicagocriticalmass.org/
I’m in Chicago, and cars don’t respect the crosswalks here. Yesterday I saw about 4 cars screech to a stop and honk angrily at a woman crossing in the crosswalk. Perhaps she was from Seattle.
Why would we cross at the designated locations?
Don’t jaywalk in the U-District…cops all over the place. And in Seattle, if a cop sees you doing it, you will get a ticket.
I was in Chicago last week, and the only times I saw people jaywalking was when there were clearly no cars approaching at intersections; and I never saw a single person jaywalk in the middle of a block.
Also, I never saw any cops around when people jaywalked, either, just sayin’…
He was crossing Edgar Martinez Drive, right underneath the giant ped bridge that would’ve taken him right to his suite. Apparently the cop told him to stop and he ignored him because he was on his cell phone and didn’t hear him.