Ron Artest? Michael Vick? Meh. They've got nothing on baseball's lowliest cretins.

5. Pete Rose
An obvious choice, owing to his years of swearing he didn't gamble on baseball… then admitting his misdeeds... then capitalizing on the controversy by selling a book and signing "I'm sorry I bet on baseball" tchotchkes. He drew a 30-day suspension for shoving an ump, spent five months in the pen for tax evasion, ignored his son for years, you name it. No, Rose didn't deserve to be portrayed by Tom Sizemore in the ESPN biopic about his troubles—that's a fate nobody deserves—but in retrospect, only the "hustler" part of his Charlie Hustle persona was truly didactic. On the plus side, he cut a mean Aqua Velva promo.

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Xavier Nady, Pittsburgh Pirates: This one’s pretty simple. Nady has never hit righty pitchers (he boasts a career .744 OPS against righties, versus an .873 mark against portsiders), yet this season he has inexplicably smacked the bejesus out of ‘em (.945 OPS in 88 at-bats). A few weeks from now – likely after he’s dealt back to the left-leaning Metsies – Nady will embody the phrase “regression to the mean.” Meanwhile, out of deference to Xavier McDaniel, let’s put our teensy brains together and see if we can come up with a better nickname for the guy than X-Man. You know, like Son of X-Man.

Cliff Lee, Cleveland Indians: Through his first five starts, Lee’s numbers look like something from one of those little leagues where 19-year-old pitchers with rigged birth certificates mow down prepubescent fifth-graders. But look at who he’s put ‘em up against: the A’s (sluggish offensively), the Mariners (in a two-year hitting slump), the Twins (who frequently approach the plate armed only with swizzle sticks) and the Royals (who have yet to score a run this decade). Maybe Lee has turned a corner, or maybe he has merely benefited from being pitted against bench detritus. What do you think, inspector?

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5. Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, Chicago White Sox
There’s a big difference between benign homer announcers (Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray) and noxious, self-important blowhards like Harrelson, who basically disappears when the Sox are down. Pop quiz: Which of the following is not a vaguely suggestive-sounding mainstay from the Hawk’s canon of cliché?

a. “Sit back, relax, and strap it down!”
b. “Let’s do some chunkin’!”
c. “Snap it like you meant it!”
d. “He’s getting ridden hard and put away wet!”


4. David Cone, YES Network
He’s fairly new to this broadcasting thing, as witnessed by this clip in which he worries about Yankees rookie Ian Kennedy getting “jerked off” in the bull pen. Cone is already on track to join YES Network predecessor David Justice as the only English-language baseball commentators whose broadcasts demand subtitles.

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