Luke Scott showed up yesterday at the Winter Meetings in Orlando.  Why?  Who knows.  He lives about an hour outside of Orlando, and was stopping by the hotel to speak with his agent.  Or something.  Once again, who knows.

It wasn’t the fact that he stopped by that confused anybody that much.  He had his hunting beard going, and went on and on about his guns and hunting adventures to reporters.  The part that made jaws drop and eyes open up wide was this (quoted from Yahoo! Sports, the full text can be found here if you plan on reading about his arsenal of weapons and other small talk.

“[Obama] was not born here,” Scott asserted to Answer Man in the session’s last segment. “That’s my belief. I was born here. If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go — within 10 minutes — to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, ‘See? Look! Here it is. Here it is.’ The man has dodged everything. He dodges questions, he doesn’t answer anything.”

Wow.  Just.  Wow.

Reactions?  Comments?  Well, the Orioles had some:

“Luke Scott’s comments do not reflect the opinion of the Baltimore Orioles organization,” team spokesman Greg Bader said Wednesday in an e-mail. “The fact is that Barack Obama is our President, duly elected by the people of the United States. End of story.”

Orioles representative Greg Bader said that through an e-mail to the press.  Basically, the Orioles wanted to make the world aware that Luke Scott, while he has full freedom of speech, does not represent the club in terms of its political thinking.  In other words, they just think he’s a fool.

His teammate Adam Jones had some words for Scott as well:

Luke Scott Luke Scott Luke Scott you still my boy
Followed up by this comment:
whatever comments luke scott made were made by him. im his teammate and friend. besides that we have different views so thats that.

So what do you think?  Avoiding a political discussion, what are your thoughts on Scott speaking to a reporter about such issues, especially with such strong words?