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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Monday, April 14, 2008Huffington Post: I’m a Diehard Atlanta Braves Fan. Does That Make Me a Jerk?Stretched the limits of muzzleloading performance…only from Remington.
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1. Hello Rusty Kuntz, Goodbye Rusty Cars Posted: April 14, 2008 at 04:12 PM (#2743533)Most people will probably think you crossed it when you described a Braves fan born in 1983 as "diehard." I imagine you lost many members of the more senior Braves fanbase with that one.
This thought sent me wondering: are there equivalent difficulties in fandom to being a "diehard?" Is it any harder to root for a losing team than it is to root for a winning team that includes prominent players that you really don't like? Just for example, I can imagine a Dodgers fan that has developed a deep-rooted hatred of any set of Jeff Kent, Andruw Jones, Larry Bowa, Joe Torre, etc. If the Dodgers go to the playoffs this year, will it be any easier to root for these guys to succeed than it would to hope against hope rooting for a last place team of decent fellows? How easy can it be to root for a Canseco-led A's team or a Reggie-led Yankees championship?
Luckily I was too young to realize what a colossal arsehole Canseco was. If I had been older, I would have pretended Jose wasn't on the team and focused on the likable guys--Lansford, Stewart, Hendu, Steinbach, Honeycutt, Weiss--or the entertaining guys--Eck, Rickey!. No team can be 100% jerky (1986 Mets excluded! Though that team was so villainous, it was fun.)
I have to profess ignorance. Is this something he said after the ass-whuppin at the hands of the Reds? That was not his finest moment, I will agree. But if you were an A's fan in the late 80's/early 90's, Stew defined cool. Shaft with a splitter.
No, he said it about the 1989 White Sox -
It was just out of left field. The '89 A's were a powerhouse, and the White Sox were bad. It was just in extremely poor taste to call out the other team that way.
Yep, that's an ugly quote I'll give you that. Also, lumping Kittle with Baines and Fisk is just wrong.
That too.
It actually was pretty easy to root for Canseco. He wasn't a person, he was a cartoon. Viewed through that lens, all his exploits didn't make him an #######, they just made him a character. The A's were full of cartoons actually. TLR (the genius), Stewart (the stare), Eck (the swagger), McGwire (the collossus), Lansford (the redneck), Rickey (the greatest). And then a bunch of glovemen up the middle.
It actually was pretty easy to root for Canseco. He wasn't a person, he was a cartoon.
Agree. Canseco, love him or hate him, was must-watch.
And like Ted Turner said, there's a fine line between being colorful and being an a$$hole.
Course, I'm a huge Shaft fan. Now that I know of him more, I think Stew's a tool.
In the early 80s I had a subscription to The Sporting News (it was the only rag I knew at the time that published minor league stats)
Kittle's 1982 season was eye popping .345-50-144 (.442/.752)
Of course what I know now is
1: He played in the PCL, his team averaged : .295/.376/.468 and went 70-74
2: He was 24 and a born DH
The same year Greg Brock hit .310-44-138
he was a 25 year old 1B playing in Albuquerque (Team average: .315/.399/.473- but that really as a good team 85-58)
One of Bill James' first MLE articles deconstructed those Albuquerque Dukes' teams- a teammate of Brock, Mark Bradley ahd hit .317 (.417/.488) with 102 ribbies, his MLE worked out to something like .250/.315/.345... there was, according to James, a lot of "air" in the PCL numbers that you had to remove...
Anyway, I recall that there was a great deal of excitement over Kittle prior to and during his rookie season...
He had as much raw power as anyone I've ever seen. I think he has the record for balls hit on the roof at old Comiskey Park. He was completely all-or-nothing, though.
He was also a total butcher in the field.
That 35 HR season he had, at the time, was near historic. The rookie record was still 38. As a kid, I thought for sure he was going to be a HOFer. No, I had not yet heard of sabrmetrics yet.
That depends... have you ever done the 'tomahawk chop'?
The Yanks were bad prior to 94 but I'd still want to see someone's fanhood survive a run of years like the Yanks had in the 80s before labeling them a diehard.
Seriously, I do find it amusing that many Brave fans never knew what it was like to have a losing season until 2006. They almost could have gotten from 1st grade through college without seeing a losing team. To be fair, they're catching up quickly with all these frickin' one-run losses the past few years. Grrrr.
Ah, as opposed to predictable. Perhaps Traderdave can share his equally valuable insights.
No, but being a contributor at HuffPo is a pretty good indication of being one.
"There is not one player over there, regular player with the exception of a few- Carlton Fisk, Kittle, Calderon, maybe, that can hold my jock as far as I'm concerned."
A couple of months later, TSN had the quote as:
"These guys, with the exception of Fisk and Kittle, couldn't carry my jock."
Kittle's book has the quote with Baines and Fisk carrying the jock though.
Wouldn't bother me. I'm sure plenty of my favorite books, movies, and albums have been created by scumbags. I'm sure I've eaten plenty of great meals in restaurants without good team chemistry. I just don't care.
I probably need help.
Orioles fandom welcomes you.
Comiskey Park in 1983 was not exactly a great hitting environment, either.
Some Red Sox fans, okay, many of them are insufferable. But not all of them are.
Sox fans do not deserve my insights.
Been there, done that.
I take it you'd object to a foam tomahawk on display in my cube?
I think SOSHU called me out because he recalls my tales of loutish Sox fans. Like Shredder, I have had some pretty unpleasant experiences w/ Sawx fans on the road.
The only time I went to Oakland was 1988. Don't go to Baltimore on May 31st ;).
It sounds like you're missing out on one of the most fun parts of fandom.
Also, Cubs fans on the road can give Boston fans a run for their money in the ####### department, though I'm not sure who emerges the ultimate loser there.
Really? Not that I don't believe you, but my experience with that region includes 0% Mets fans. I don't even know someone who knows someone who's a Mets fan in central CT.*
*I don't know that many people, but the people I know know a lot of people.
Quinnipiac does a good job of tracking CT baseball fandom: link
Understandable, because if I remember correctly, he was one of the last guys to play without an ear flap.
I remember his first game after being imported from the Mexican league. Skip was audibly dubious. And I'll raise you (a) 60 games of wondering where the hell Jose Alvarez came from; and (b) the stellar Ozzie Virgil v. Rick Mahler argument on the mound during their 10th straight season-opening loss against the Dodgers on a Saturday night.
I was watching that game from the Ramada Inn in Beckely, WV, where we had just moved to the day before (we were living in the Ramada because the house we bought wasn't ready yet). A week earlier I had been in a bad car accident (unhurt) with four other 14 year-old boys and one sixteen year-old (who, as it turns out, wasn't a very good driver) after we all snuk out of one of the kids' houses to try to get beer. It was supposed to be my moving away party but it got ugly.
Anyway, at a loss as to what to do with me for getting in so much trouble, my parents defaulted to grounding me for a month, which was kind of pointless considering I was moving to a hotel room in a town in which I didn't know anyone. As I sat with nothing to do but to watch the Braves lose in increasingly ugly fashion, however, the punishment began to grow teeth. If Zane Smith hadn't stepped up to stop the bleeding the next day I may have gone stir crazy.
But like I said, it was just about my favorite season as a Braves fan. For most of the past 23 years the team and I have been on contrasting trajectories, but in 1988 their misery matched mine and we wallowed in it -- together -- all summer long.
OK, just checked it out. It was Friday, April 15th. Bottom of the third. There was a single to short, which I distinctly recall was a botched play by Andres Thomas, but that was scored a hit anyway. Next play Orel Hershiser bunted Dempsey over to second. This is when I recall the argument happened. Virgil visited the mound and the infielders converged. Ozzie begins yelling at Thomas, either for the play on Dempsey's grounder, or his failure to respond properly to the bunt or something. Heated words were exchanged, the manager breaks it up, and Skip talks about how eight game losing streaks will do that to a team.
This message is brought to you by Nostalgia Perfume and no-life navel-gazers everywhere.
I was born in Baltimore during the 1968 season. The Orioles had never had a losing record when I left home for college. To make up for it, I have since moved to Chicago, where I have had innumerable experiences with losing baseball teams.
Even if you couldn't distinctly recall it, the odds are pretty good...
I'll go out on a limb a say Andres had a crappy night at the plate too.
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