Everyone knows that you don’t mess with a man’s woman, and you don’t mess with a man’s money.  Chad Kreuter broke the latter unwritten rule, and Chan Ho Park isn’t too happy about it.

Park — who’s currently playing for the Philadelphia Phillies — claims he loaned the cash to former Dodgers catcher Chad Kreuter back in 2005.

In the lawsuit, filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, Park says he made the loan because Kreuter “had been a highly compensated Major League Baseball player” and he assured Park that he “would have no difficulty paying [Park] back.”

According to the suit, Kreuter signed a promissory note for the debt, but only made one payment for $290,000.

I guess it was pretty nice of Park to lend his boy Chad some money, but you can’t sit around forever listening to the excuses of a deadbeat.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Park from this story, though, it isn’t that he’s a nice guy who’s willing to lend money.  And it isn’t that he’s the type of guy who will drag your ass to court if you don’t pay him back.  No, it’s pretty clear that Park is terrible at evaluating talent and should never hold a managerial position with a baseball team when his playing career is finished.  I mean, just because Kreuter tells you he’s gonna have the money doesn’t mean you have to believe him.  If Park had lent money to, say, Russ Martin, then yeah, I think payment of the debt is pretty likely.  But you can’t count on a guy born in 1964 with a career .692 OPS to be making money playing baseball.

A quick perusing of Moneyball could have helped Park avoid this whole fiasco.

[TMZ.com]