You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

i mean, how can anyone like a guy who combs his hair?

the Burrell who outlasted Bobby Abreu, Randy Wolf, David Bell, and others was the polar opposite of Mickey Mantle. He kept us at arm's length.

Right. Mickey Mantle was warm and cuddly and enjoyed an unfailingly warm and open relationship with New York fans.

a guy who plays the game with mousse in his hair

Who gives a ####? Who's paying more attention to the wrong things -- a guy who plays the game with mousse in his hair or a guy who cares that a guy plays the game with mousse in his hair?

A protest? Or a personal-hygiene statement in a sport dominated by blackened teeth and blackened spit?

Or maybe he just had something in his ####### teeth?

the ratio of haters over advocates seemed infinitesimal.

Might want to check your math, sparky.

I see they finally ran out of current Phillies to excoriate.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

it was a pun

the ratio of good Philadelphia writers over bad Philadelphia writers seems "infinitesimal"

How can Kansas City have such good writers and Philly such bad ones?

it was a pun

Nah, he either doesn't know what a ratio is or thinks infinite=infinitesimal.

Or maybe he didn't know to never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line.

...when he repeatedly popped up and struck out when just putting a ball in play would have been beneficial....

Not to pile on, but when a batter pops up, he has put the ball in play.

OK; so it is piling on. What can I say? It's what we do here.

DB

Larry Bowa was a popular hire, but I don't remember him being particularly well-liked as a manager. As for Burrell, I always thought Abreu took a disproportionate amount of the hate and that Burrell was more or less embraced as a good but flawed hitter. He seemed to get along with the RF bleacher crowd when I sat out there (which was just a few times a year). The phans certainly liked him more than the media.

Somehow I must have missed the vague, amorphous wave of Pat Burrell hatred that needed to be emotionally resolved. Now, can we do something about that prick Will Venable?

Philly liked Pat up through 2002. Partly because of his performance and partly because of the JD Drew thing. But then after his excellent 2002 season he "tanked" in the eyes of the fans and then *gasp* wouldn't listen to Mike Schmidt and everybody else when they were all giving him advice. He basically had the audacity to not hit with a high batting average and strike out a bunch so he was a bad player in their eyes. Bobby Abreu was for the most part a non entity until he got the big contract and Larry Bowa came to town. Once they chased Rolen out of town Abreu became the next scapegoat for the Phillies' failures. Larry Bowa was a popular hire and a well liked manager for most of his short tenure with the Phillies.

Last year I sat infront of a family from Philadelphia at a game in Toronto. All afternoon the son (who couldn't have been more than 13 or so) kept going on about how terrible Scott Rolen was, and how any team that had Scott Rolen as one of its best players was obviously a pretty crappy team.

Those people sure know how to hate a player...even if they were too young to ever see him play.

I don't recall Burrell being booed in Philadelphia in the way that Donnellon portrayed. Fans were pretty damn patient with him during his slumps.

Abreu, however, they f'n hated.

How can you even tell if he has mousse in his hair when he's either wearing a cap, helmet, or gimp mask?

Pat Burrell is a hitting machine.

One thing I learned from wikipedia, which may be incorrect considering the transiency of the source, is that kind of suit would be generically called a bondage suit. Only after Pulp Fiction has it become known as a gimp suit.

Philly liked Pat up through 2002.

There was definitely a stretch where he wasn't liked in 2003-04, but once he rebounded in 2005 he was accepted for what he was - great power and patience with lots of Ks. Having Howard and Utley emerging as elite players around then certainly helped.

There's been no reason* for Giants fans to hate Pat the Bat. In fact, the combination of his hitting for power (something the Giants desperately needed) and his comaraderie with his teammates (especially his college friend, Aubrey Huff) has made Burrell popular. (It also helps that his joining the team coincided with a great 100 game stretch of winning baseball.) Unlike the City of Brotherly Hatred or New York City, San Francisco is not really a town of haters--most of the time.

Lately, most of the dislike has been for players who make way too much money for their level of production. You might think Barry Zito, then, would get some of this form of hatred. But I don't think he has. Zito is a community-oriented guy, and his personality fits in with the aura of The City. That said, most Giants fans would like to see his contract dumped. But--Kenny Williams! Kenny Williams!--that's not likely to happen.

I think the last player for the Giants who was passionately hated was Armando Benitez, as a closer. If Benitez had not come to San Francisco, the hatred would have fallen on Tyler Walker, a local kid who was lousy in that closer role. Benitez was an odd bird and he sucked. Bad combination. Most Giants closers have been loved--perhaps none more so than Rod Beck. But the hatred toward Benitez was tame in comparison of that for Johnnie Lee LeMaster. In fact, LeMaster is the standard bearer for hated Giants.

Here is my list of the most disliked Giants players by Giants fans since 1994:

2010 - Aaron Rowand
2009 - Aaron Rowand
2008 - Brian Sabean
2007 - Armando Benitez
2006 - Armando Benitez
2005 - Armando Benitez
2004 - A.J. Pierzynski
2003 - Marvin Benard (A)
2002 - Marvin Benard
2001 - Marvin Benard
2000 - Marvin Benard
1999 - Shawn Estes (B)
1998 - Julian Tavarez (C)
1997 - Julian Tavarez
1996 - William VanLandingham (D)
1995 - Royce Clayton (E)
1994 - Royce Clayton

(A) Benard did nothing to deserve disdain. His problem was that he was a 4th or 5th outfielder and Sabean stupidly gave him a contract that was overly generous for his level of talent. The fans tended to hold that against Marvin until his contract expired.
(B) Estes came across as a flakey guy. Once his performance level tailed off, that was held against him.
(C) Tavarez is a dislikable person anywhere. However, the fact that he came to San Francisco and made anti-gay comments didn't help his cause here.
(D) Perhaps VanLandingham's greatest crime was having a last name that easily morphed into his nickname, VanLaunchingPad.
(E) Royce Clayton was hyped as the second coming. Giants fans expected him to be one of the 2-3 best shortstops in major league baseball. Yet he played a lot more like a Johnnie LeMaster than a Derek Jeter.

*Other than this sh!tty defense. I was at a Giants-Dodgers game at AT&T where Burrell made a bad play on a curving flyball to left hit by Matt Kemp. Maybe 95% of all left-fielders take two to three steps in and Kemp is out. (Burrell was playing deep--maybe 12-15 feet from the warning track.) Burrell freezes as the ball curves from left-center toward him in dead left. He takes one step back (after a beat or two) and the ball drops 6-8 feet in front of him for a "single." Then as the ball reaches Burrell he doesn't square up to it. Instead, feet in concrete, he just stabs his mitt across his body for it, the ball bounces off his glove and rolls to the warning track. Little League? The scorer gave Kemp a single and Burrell an error for the runners advancing a base each. But realistically, that was all on Burrell. It should have been F-7.

It could be worse... he could keep his hair slicked with smelly bear grease.

Rich,

I would put in Shinjo in 2002, Neifi in 2003, Edgardo, Bocock and Jose Castillo all had their moments too.

Good post, Rich. Van Launching Pad was a little unfair as a nickname; after all, it wasn't as though he was especially vulnerable to the long ball in the manner of someone like Kevin "K-Bomb" Foster. We called him Van Frying Pan (VFP), which seemed a bit more on target, as the guy was always in trouble.

His most memorable outing has to have been when it was nearly the end o' the line for him, in a game that's an odd conflation of the first two of the 2010 WS. The Giants and VFP faced off against a just-becoming-ubergreat pitcher in the midst of some franchise traveling (Kevin Brown) in 1997 on a nice June day at Candlestick Park (not quite as mutually exclusive a set of terms as one would think). The final score was 9-0, with the Giants getting no-hit by Brown, but it was another of those odd games that just come unraveled the way a seam weakens slowly and then suddenly, violently splits: going into the top of the seventh, both Brown and Van Frying Pan had no-hitters going. (Of course, Brown hadn't walked anyone through six; VFP had already walked five, including loading the bases in the second but fanning Charles Johnson and getting Brown on a dribbler. The Fish had a 1-0 lead after six, because VFP had a mini-melt in the fifth, walking, wild-pitching, and finally balking with a man on third.)

The seventh inning, however, proved to be supremely unlucky for VFP. He walked Bobby Bonilla (yes, this was the "veteran" Marlins team that would eventually win the World Series). Jeff Conine scorched one to right-center, but Glenallen Hill (of all people...) tracked it down. Charles Johnson came up again; on VFP's first pitch, he popped up near the Marlins' dugout. J. T. Snow came over, did a little death dance near the steps, and--dropped the ball for an error.

Three pitches later, Johnson homered.

Clearly rattled, VFP then walked Brown; Dusty replaced him with Phoenix refugee Dan Carlson. And yes, 'twas litterally (spelling error intentional...) from Van Frying Pan into the fire, as Carlson was sizzling in exactly the wrong sense of the word: he wasn't simply fried, he was torched by the Fish for five straight hits.

Dusty just let him burn.

When only embers remained, the Marlins had scored--yep, SEVEN runs in the inning. Poor Jeff Conine made two outs in the same inning (though he could take solace in the fact that he'd been the runner who'd scored earlier, on VFP's balk).

VFP walked eight in his next start, but he somehow managed to win it. It was his last one in the big leagues. The team he beat--the Angels--signed him as a free agent over the winter, but in '98 Van Frying Pan "pulled a Blass" at AAA (0-6, 11.23 ERA, 44 BB in 32 IP). Every once in awhile, when I get ready to scramble some eggs, I think about him. Thanks (I think...) for reminding me again...

@18

That list about right to me. As you said, the level of dislike is pretty variable for each of those, and Benitez is the one that was really hated. Bad player, bad teammate.

Sir Ponson probably fits in there somewhere, though.

Royce Clayton fits in with the Fred Lewis type of weird overhyped Giants prospect. They seem to get these guys and, although nothing in their record shows it, the team puts out that they are going to be stars. Then, even when they are decent players, they become disliked by the fan at large for not playing up to their "potential".

Y'know, from the title, I assumed the writer was from Tampa. His last 4 years in Philly, Burrell put up a 126 OPS+ with a line of 262/386/504 with a K about every 4 AB.

He goes out to SF and hits 266/364/509 (132 OPS+) with a K about every 4 AB ... and they wonder what happened to the Pat Burrell they knew?

He even seems to have hit more pop-ups in SF.

So, it's not so much that you were wrong about Burrell but rather that you're a hypocritical, bandwagoning moron.

Tampa fans -- now they've got a right to say "hey, buddy, where was this when you played for us?"

Between this one and the weird Cole Hamels column last year, what's the deal with the Philly media deciding how handsome players are, and then hating them for it?