Brian Cashman is a genius. Just ask the French.

 So Tots Bader, eh? 

What a name. It makes you think of a character out of Damon Runyon:

"So me an' Tots Bader was chasin' after these tomatoes down at his Hotsie Totsie Club, see..."

Or maybe a World War II documentary:

"The Wehrmacht realized that if they could hold the Red Army at the Totsbader Line, they might keep Ruthenia in the Ostreich until the spring..."

But what to make, really, of Brian Cashman's decision to trade a perfectly serviceable pitcher for an outfielder in a walking boot? Obviously, the man is a genius

The French understood already, as they always do, they are far ahead of us, as they were with Jerry Lewis.  

Did you know that they gave Brian Cashman Le Prix de Magritte 15 years ago? 

It's true! 

It was back when Cashman started using first-round draft picks to select already injured pitchers. L'Academie Française understood this as the absurdist take on baseball that Cash meant it to be, when the rest of us were just stupefied.

What Cashman realized was that the sport he loved and had come of age in had become inherently absurd.

Hence his constant preoccupation with Rule 5 Draft. What an absurdity that is, in and of itself! All Cashman has been trying to do is point this out.

For that matter, exactly what is an "Astro"—or even a "Met"? When even the team names no longer make sense, how can we expect anything else to do so?

For those who doubt, have you seen the "City Connect" gear that ballplayers are now forced to cavort in?

Could anything BE more absurd? Or the "special" uniforms, in which our poor players must be driven close to schizophrenia, made to dress up alternately as combat troops and breast cancer survivors?

And what about the balk rule?

Some believe Cashman to be merely incompetent, or engaged in some sort of sinister connivance. But these are always the criticisms of genius before its time.

No, my friends, it is we who don't get it—who don't understand the brave protest he is making against the degradation of the game he once loved.

So Cashman has traded a pitcher for a man in a walking boot. How marvelous!

Surely, this can only be the beginning of a stunning new phase, for this giant in the art of the absurd.

What could be next? We can only speculate.

A groundskeeper, traded for a cockatoo, peut-être? A traveling secretary, for a plate of smelt?

The mind can only boggle.

And could it be that "Cashie," as his adoring fans at the Sorbonne call him, is actually the hidden genius behind the "Three True Outcomes"? An incredible satire in its own right, when we consider that man has only one true outcome, which is death. 

And when he describes the Yankees' roster as an "ecosystem," what could he really be doing, but pointing us to the ecosystem of this earth, that is dying all around us?

No, what Cash-man—a name suspiciously close to "Banksy," no?—has prescribed for us in this troubled world is the best medicine: laughter. Let us take it, before it is too late.