This morning a friend emailed me a link to a Kevin Kaduk blog post presenting (rather than dissecting) the “feud” between Jays’s GM J.P. Ricciardi and Reds’s man-mountain Adam Dunn.

I hesitate to call it a feud, because, really, it has all the electricity and potential for violence of a Chad Michael Murray haircut.

Here’s what Ricciardi said regarding Dunn:

“Do you know the guy doesn’t really like baseball that much? Do you know the guy doesn’t have a passion to play the game that much? How much do you know about the player?

“There’s a reason why you’re attracted to some players and there’s a reason why you’re not attracted to some players. I don’t think you’d be very happy if we brought Adam Dunn here …

“We’ve done our homework on guys like Adam Dunn and there’s a reason why we don’t want Adam Dunn. I don’t want to get into specifics.”

So, basically, Ricciardi quoted Dunn’s stats, then accused him of dogging it.

Here’s Dunn’s response:

“I don’t care about the perception people have of me, if anything happens, it looks like I ain’t going to Toronto. I can eliminate one team. I’m not converting my dollars into looneys and twoneys just yet. They’re really good, actually.”

Ricciardi, who’s probably MLB’s most accessible GM, was doing a weekly radio call-in show with the FAN 590’s Mike Wilner. The show, called Wednesday’s with J.P. is a post-game forum for fans to call in, speak to Ricciardi and Wilner, and ask about the direction of the team. With the Jays in a fifteen-game slump, I’d like to say that Ricciardi should be excused for his brief lapse of honesty. But I’m not sure that it’s acceptable for a GM to say anything about a player on an opposing team that goes beyond, “He’s a good guy. We like him.” (Which, if you listen to the Ricciardi-Wilner show, is a frequent refrain. Of Kevin Melillo, whom the Jays acquired to fill a hole in their AAA infield, Ricciardi once quipped: “We’ve been looking at him for a long time. He’s a good guy, we like him.”)

Jays fans will remember the all-star break of ‘06, when Ricciardi criticized the heart of the Jays’s batting order for not producing enough offense. Given that the team wasn’t scoring any runs, Ricciardi was right. He was just saying what fans were thinking. Yet it’s an impossible double standard. Fans want their GM to act as a beacon of responsible double-talk, but they also want him to be honest. They want honesty, but they seem to know the difference between “professional” honesty and lay-person’s honesty.

What fans outside Toronto probably don’t know is that Wednesdays with J.P. callers have, since the beginning of the season, been calling for Ricciardi to pick up Dunn. J.P. has always held that such a deal would involve a pitcher like Shaun Marcum going the other way (probably with a top prospect like Brett Cecil or David Purcey), and that Dunn was good, but not that good. So what Ricciardi’s quote really tells you is that the Jays have been looking at Dunn–and looking hard. Which means they know they need to get better on offense; they know they need another hitter. And they obviously haven’t been able to find one.

I think that Ricciardi is frustrated and angry, and I think that Dunn is overrated. I also think that once the Jays start winning (as they surely will) all this will be forgotten.

But, getting back to Dunn’s quote, the most remarkable thing about his rejoinder is that he seems to have mastered the intricacies of Canadian currency. Who’d have thought that a kid from Houston would ever say the word “Twonie”?

I don’t like Dunn as a player, but I’ve got to applaud his fiscal sensibility.

Ricciard has since apologized for his comments.