This reminds me of one of those scenes in a high school dramedy where the cool kid gets too freaked out about spending time with his nerdy friend and says things he's going to have to apologize for later: The Cincinnati Reds would like to let you know that the Roy Oswalt rumors are false. And that Roy Oswalt is a total grossmeister, and they'd never spend any time around him, like, except to make fun of him, right? Here's Walt Jocketty, who's rarely been embarrassed by spending time around older free agents before:
↵↵↵"It's all rumors... I'm sick and tired of it. We've had no serious talks. We've had no contact with the player."
↵
Hat-tip to Drew Silva. You can almost feel the disdain here. He even goes from "no serious talks," which suggests there might have been unserious talks, to—We've had no contact with—with, that player. I'm sick and tired of it.
↵If this is like those high school dramedies, some time in the next half an hour Walt's going to find some way to apologize to Roy, who's tired of having his heart broken, and then they're both going to stand up to Walt's cool friends who made him say all those mean things. I'm looking forward to it.