HOF Reporter says Bowden tried to "stick it to the Reds with Thompson"

Hall of Fame Dayton Daily News sportswriter Hal McCoy includes this little retrospective piece on Daryl Thompson's inclusion in the Kearns-Lopez-Bray-Majewski deal. He writes:

Amazingly, Washington insiders said Thompson was included in the deal because he had major shoulder surgery in 2005 (torn labrum) and Bowden didn't think he would last. As one Bowden acquaintance said, "Bowden thought he was sticking it to the Reds with Thompson."

I don't blame Bowden for including a guy who is known to be an injury risk in a trade. That's part of baseball--sometimes you acquire or trade away a guy who is recovering from an injury and both teams know that the player's health is part of the risk involved.

The reason this is troubling to me as a Nationals fan is that, based on this reporting, Bowden was trying to score some petty points by showing up up the other team. It adds to his reputation as a bad guy to deal with, as it has been widely reported for years that lots of GMs around the league avoid dealing with him. This rep was mentioned in the reporting on the Soriano non-trade in 2006, and again in 2007 when we couldn't move Cordero. (One of our commenters recently posted this article reporting that Kevin Towers wouldn't even take calls from Bowden.)

The fact that Krivsky ended up filing a complaint against Bowden for allegedly hiding the injury to Majewski just adds to this perception. I don't know if that allegation was true, but all this stuff adds up when you're talking about a guy's reputation, and if I was an MLB GM, I'd at least be circumspect whenever JimBo called.