Dickheads in the clubhouse

I had a hard time reading Ron Cook's piece on Jack Wilson because the thought of Pat Meares and Kevin Young makes my skin crawl.

It's hard not to like a confident kid with bad teeth and a wife who works as a waitress. Cook's description of the hazing Wilson endured in his rookie season makes me sick. Hopefully the team is not repeating this behavior with the new guys. If there's one thing a manager ought to be able to do, it's crack down on that kind of nonsense.

We can't forget that the players are competitors. They form cliques and haze rookies because they exhaust themselves competing with one another. Competition within members of a team can be healthy if the terms of promotion are transparent and related only to performance that translates into winning. Competition between members of the same team can also be stupid and self-destructive. Ridiculing Jack Wilson because his wife is a waitress would seem to fall into that category.