As noted here and here earlier, Chronicle sports columnist Richard Justice comes uncorked at the darndest times.
Take Justice’s recent blog post on why the Stros should not make a play for disgruntled New York Yankees star, Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez is the same age as Stros slugger Lance Berkman and has substantially better career hitting statistics than Berkman, but Justice engages in vacuous blathering about how Rodriguez would not be a “good fit” for the Stros despite the fact that it is clear that the Stros’ main need is a hitter of Rodriguez’s quality.
Well, Justice’s subjective analysis would normally not even merit a comment, except that he ends it with the following salvo:

A-Rod may be the kind of guy [Stros GM] Tim Purpura would want, but I’m guessing the best GMs–Billy Beane, Gerry Hunsicker, Pat Gillick, etc.–wouldn’t touch him.

What a cheap shot at Purpura. Although it’s fine to think that Rodriguez would not be welcome in the Stros clubhouse, it’s silly to suggest that exploring a trade for a hitter of his caliber reflects poor judgment by the Stros GM. And though Justice apparently doesn’t want to admit it, his old buddy Hunsicker is such a good general manager that he couldn’t even land a GM job at all after leaving the Stros last year and ended up working this past season as an aide to the GM at Tampa Bay, not exactly on the upper-crust of Major League Baseball.
Richard Justice needs to remove his nose from Gerry Hunsicker’s rear end.