Coco needed the cash to buy Derek Jeter's glove from Ruben Rivera.

Good riddance; I didn't like his pitching anyway, and this opens a spot on the 40-man roster.

Even if he had Jason Arnold's promise, I'd still say he had to go. Once you lose the basic, man-to-man trust of the guys in the clubhouse, it's gone for good. Pasqual is like a more pathetic, smaller-time version of Tim Johnson.

I wonder if he wore one of those mini-masks that only covers the area around your eyes, like the Hamburglar or Burt Ward's Robin.

Here's Elliott's take.

An important piece of news from the pre-game interview with Tosca:
- Jason Dubois was sent back to the Cubs today after the two teams were unable to work out a deal.

CoCo went Loco. Absolutely good riddance. They're going to need the roster spot within weeks anyway, so he was probably leaving town as is. Next up for the waiver wire in '03, Brian Bowles, come on down.

More from Coco. I really am interested to see what he says is justification.

What about the $6,050,000 Loaiza stole last year?

Which is the bigger tragedy?

Sportsnet is "reporting" -- it's hearsay -- that Coco told Kelvim Escobar he wanted to do something that would guarantee his release. It's a plausible explanation; he was devastated to learn he could (and would) be returned to AAA.

If that was indeed the reasoning it was fairly dumb to do something which would blacklist him in most baseball clubhouses. He obviously didn't get much in the way of advice from anyone on the team on his supposed distress over the matter or else they would have told him there are much better alternatives, not the least of which is refusing to report where he's assigned.

He has a good arm but it's not like he's such a good prospect that people are going to overlook what happened. Of course repeat drug offenders and assault convicts have been signed to major league contracts before so who knows?

And didn't the Rangers sign Rivera almost immediately after the Yankees let him go? Then the Giants signed him this year. These guys aren't someone I'd want in the clubhouse.

You know, what really amazes me most about this whole affair is that it went away so quickly. If this had been last spring's clubhouse, I could see something like this turning into a circus, with players going off the record to talk to the media and both manager and GM constantly being peppered with questions. But this year's clubhouse is solid enough that an incident like this, as unsettling and disturbing as it was, rapidly submerges with nary a ripple. Two days later came the five-year contracts, and now it's like Pasqual Coco was never even on the roster. The atmosphere around this organization is definitely changing.

I read on the "crawl" on Sportsnet last night that the Evil Empire might sign Coco.