It's pretty cool that ballplayers get to take the plate to their own personal theme song. But if we've learned one thing, it's that professional baseball players have the worst taste in the entire world (see Ryan Braun's t-shirt line. It makes Ed Hardy look like J. Crew). So we've gone through the Yanks and Phils respective lineups and put together an alternate World Series soundtrack.
YANKEES
Derek Jeter Actual song: "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z Should be: "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z The Captain gets what the Captain wants. And this Big Apple anthem is as good a choice as any.
Johnny Damon Actual song: "I Walk Alone" by Saliva Should be: "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry Mr. Steinbrenner, you know that new sound you're looking for? Well, listen to this.
Mark Teixeira Actual song: “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister Should be: "Baba O'Riley" by the Who Bask in olden times, when Paul O'Neill batted third for the Bombers, there was no more thrilling sound than the first notes of this classic blasting through the stadium as Paulie came to bat with the game on the line. Time to bring it back.
Alex Rodriguez Actual song: "PSA" by Jay-Z Should be: "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John Remember when Kate Hudson leads the whole tour bus in the sing-along in Almost Famous? That was awesome.
Jorge Posada Actual song: "Me Estas Tenando" by Wisin y Yandel Should be: "Rappers Delight" by The Sugar Hill Gang Straight out of the Boogie Down Bronx: "I said a hip hop a hippie to the hippie to the hip hip Jorge!"
Hideki Matsui Actual song: "Big Shot" by Billy Joel Should be: "Surrender" by Cheap Trick Because this song is awesome and Cheap Trick is huge in Japan. Although "Big Shot" by Billy Joel is pretty fucking great too.
Robinson Cano Actual song: "Run This Town" by Jay Z Should be: "Bring the Noise" by Public Enemy New York hip-hop is fine, but since Jeter gets dibs on Jigga, Cano will have to settle for this PE classic, guaranteed to blow the roof off (the, er, roofless) Yankee Stadium.
Nick Swisher Actual song: "Rock Star" by Ludacris and R Kelly Should be: "The Swish" by the Hold Steady Baseball-loving Midwesterner heads to New York and hits the big time. Also, the song is called "The Swish."
Melky Cabrera Actual song: "I Know You Want Me" by Pitbull Should be: "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones No New York lineup would be complete without at least one Ramones song.
PHILLIES
Jimmy Rollins Actual song: "I'm Good" by The Clipse Should be: "Addams Family Values" by MC Hammer Did you know that as a teenager, Rollins appeared in several MC Hammer videos including this spooktacular hit? Of course you did.
Shane Victorino Actual song: "Buffalo Soldier" by Bob Marley Should be: "Paper Planes" By M.I.A. Is there any other option for the man nicknamed "Pineapple Express"?
Chase Utley Actual song: "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin Should be: "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin We'll give Utley the Jeter treatment. "Kashmir"'s killer riff is the perfect introduction to Chase's gritty play. Just ask CC Sabathia.
Ryan Howard Actual song: "Forever" by Drake Should be: "Big Poppa" by Notorious B.I.G. It may be sacrilege for a non-New Yorker to claim this classic but dude is 260 lbs. and the only other option is "The Fat Boys are Back."
Jayson Werth Actual song: "Arma-goddamn-motherf-------geddon" by Marilyn Manson Should be: "Armageddon It" by Def Leppard Okay, we get the sentiment, but Manson's track blows. If you want to take your swing too some apocalyptic bullshit, we recommend Def Leppard's bombastic arena rocker. Raul Ibanez Actual song: "Save You" by Pearl Jam Should be: "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix Considering he played most of his career in sunny Seattle, it's not surprising Ibanez went with the grunge kings. But if were up to us (and right here, it is) he'd take his cuts to another Seattle rocker. One who ultimately choked on his own vomit.
Ben Francisco Actual song: "Amazing" by Kanye West Should be: "Ben" by Michael Jackson This one is a no brainer. Pedro Feliz Actual song: "Calle Ocho" by Pitbull Should be: "You Make My Dreams" by Hall & Oates Is there a song more likely to put a smile on the faces of Phillies' fans than this cheesetastic number from the city's favorite sons.
Carlos Ruiz Actual song: "Turn My Swag On" by Soulja Boy Should be: "Gangster Boogie" by Schooly D The Yanks may have Jigga, Sugar Hill Gang and PE, but Philly answers with this classic from hip-hop's first gangsta rapper. Plus, it has the word boogie in it.
Following "revelations" that New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003, nobody was ready to forgive him for his past mistakes on and off the field. Not the media. Not New York fans. Definitely not Saturday Night Live, which turned his ESPN confessional interview into a punchline—"I was young...I was 'naifff'".
But, never doubt the healing power of home runs. His 2009 postseason has been nothing short of magical, driving in as many runs as the Minnesota Twins combined. In short, Kate Hudson has done what years of performance enhancers, marriage, and numerous reported one-night stands could not. Don't believe us? Here's proof...
Sure, she hasn't starred in a non-penis-shriveling movie since 2005's The Skeleton Key, but you can't knock her girlfriend skills with those numbers.
We were putting the final touches on this piece about baseball’s biggest postseason goats when, providently, our attention was distracted by the shout of an adjacent television set. Something of great, terrible importance had just occurred. We moved in to investigate and were stunned by what we saw.
Matt Holliday tried to catch a ball with his groin. No, really, he did. His less-than-balletic effort opened the door for the Dodgers, who promptly marched through it en route to a come-from-behind 3-2 win in the ninth inning.
Welcome to the postseason goat hall of fame, Matty. Its other members, listed below, welcome you warmly.
Babe Ruth, New York Yankees: Do you know how game 7 of the 1926 World Series ended? With Ruth’s bloated carcass splayed at second base after inexplicably attempting a steal, that’s how. Even the great ones occasionally don the goat horns.
Bill Buckner, Boston Red Sox: It’s incredibly unfair that Buckner has been scapegoated for Boston’s nigh-unbearable loss in game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Calvin Schiraldi couldn’t get a third out with the Sox up by two in the 10th inning, Bob Stanley uncorked a game-tying wild pitch and manager John McNamara removed Roger Clemens from the game prematurely. Alas, none of those screw-ups proved as cinematic as the Mookie Wilson ground ball that somehow trickled between Buckner’s legs. The guy notched 2,715 hits in the majors, yet this is what he’s remembered for. Life’s a bitch.
Donnie Moore, California Angels: The Angels were a single strike away—one, uno, einer, один, etc.—from advancing to their first-ever World Series in 1986 when Moore left the ball up for Boston’s Dave Henderson, who promptly deposited it behind the left-field fence. The Red Sox won the game and the next two; ironically, they similarly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory several days later (see under: Buckner, Bill). Moore never recovered from the failure and took his own life years later.
Herb Washington, Oakland A’s: The guy’s sole role on the A’s was as a pinch-runner. Seriously: he was an All-American sprinter who’d never played organized baseball at any level. So what does he do upon entering game 2 of the 1974 World Series? Get picked off in the ninth inning of a one-run game the A’s lost. Lucky for him, they eventually won the title.
Fred Snodgrass, New York Giants: In game 8 (really!) of the 1912 World Series, he dropped a popup in the 10th inning, which fueled a Red Sox rally that won the game. Of course, it’s not like anyone you know was around to see this. You’re just going to have to take our word for it.
Steve Bartman, superfan: Of course, it wasn’t his fault that the Cubs lost game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series, even though his (perfectly within the rules) interference with Moises Alou cost the team a certain out. But it’s easier to blame Bartman, with his low-brimmed cap and dorky headphones, than it is Dusty Baker (who left Mark Prior in the game too long) or Alex Gonzalez (who punted a sure-fire double-play grounder). We sure love us some nerdnick scapegoats here in the U.S. of f’in A. Whoo!
Mickey Owen, Brooklyn Dodgers: The Dodgers were poised to even the 1941 World Series at two games apiece. They were up by a run in the ninth with two outs and nobody on… or at least they were until Owen committed that most heinous of catcher atrocities, a passed ball on a swinging third strike. Given that lifeline, the Yankees did what they tend to do: namely, win the game and the series.
Willie Davis, Los Angeles Dodgers: What is it with the Dodgers and the goats? Davis, never renowned for his fielding prowess, destroyed game 2 of the 1966 World Series by committing three errors on back-to-back plays. First he lost a fly ball in the sun, then he dropped the next hitter’s fly ball and capped off his reign of error—a pun! a delicious pun!—by chucking the ball past the third baseman. To make matters worse, this game proved to be Sandy Koufax’s last. He deserved better.
Matt Holliday, St. Louis Cardinals: And so we arrive back at our most recent gaffe hall of fame inductee. St. Louis fans are famously yay-for-everything-and-everybody! when it comes to their Cardinals, but there was a boo or three when they returned home to be finished off by the Dodgers. Sad. Shame on you, Matt Holliday, for souring the game’s least surly, most supportive fans.
Since the 2009 Major League Baseball campaign is basically finished for all but 10 teams—the six division leaders, plus the two teams in each league with a legit shot at the wild card—it’s time to start wrapping stuff up. And so, not unlike the Democrats, we begin with the poor, the dumb, the downtrodden, the defenseless: We begin with the 2009 Pavano awards, which reverse-honor the season’s biggest, saddest loserheads.
B.J. Upton, Tampa Bay Rays
During the 2008 playoffs, he looked like a faster, better-conditioned version of Willie Mays. But after a slow recovery from shoulder surgery, Upton didn’t wake up until July. Since then, he has run the bases as if overmedicated and ranged after fly balls with the intensity of Tony Soprano fetching his morning paper. If there’s a better tough-love candidate in the game today, I don’t know who it is.
The City of Chicago
The Cubs got hurt and the White Sox got creative—which, owing to GM Ken Williams’ August shenanigans, might’ve been worse. It’s way cool that the guy is making high-risk moves (taking on two huge contracts in Jake Peavy and Alex Rios) at a time when everybody else is hoarding prospects like survivalists hoard canned peaches. At the same time, Williams has traded his team into a corner: the Sox won’t have much in the way of flexibility this off-season. As for the Cubs, it’s been one mess after another: the injuries (to a goodly chunk of the pitching staff, to Aramis Ramirez), the lethargy (Lou Piniella doesn’t bother much anymore with his bench or bullpen), the embarrassments (Milton Bradley and Alfonso Soriano chafing at their roles and batting-order placement, Carlos Zambrano showing up looking like he ate a single-A prospect and then complaining about being dubbed “lazy”), etc. Come October 5, the city will choose to pretend that the 2009 baseball season never happened.
Vernon Wells, Toronto Blue Jays
Big contract, small effort. He boasts the demeanor of a deposed county commissioner and the trade value of a bedbug-infested mattress. How he avoids nightly beer dowsings by the surprisingly surly Toronto fans, we’ll never know.
Manny Ramirez, Los Angeles Dodgers
His overall offensive numbers remain more than acceptable and his team may yet enjoy some October glory. But on the personal/legacy front, Manny took more of a hit this year than any player in the game. He was outed as a double flunker of tests for performance-enhancing substances, serving a 50-game suspension for one of them. Since his return, he’s been human at the plate and typically indifferent in the field—less the world-beater he was upon being dealt to the Dodgers last summer than the aging, one-dimensional batsmith he’s supposed to be at 37. Wait, that’d kind of make him Manny Being Granny. We made a funny! Hoy-o!
Every single individual associated with the Royals except Zack Greinke and Billy Butler
The Pirates received a healthy dose of so-bad-for-so-so-long flogging when they clinched their 17th consecutive losing season, but the Royals have lapped them as the league’s most harrowing cautionary tale. At least the Pirates know they’re terrible, wiping clean their roster (and payroll) of anyone over the age of 14. The Royals, on the other hand, preach the on-base percentage gospel, then go out and acquire Yuniesky Betancourt, who is to baseball what Courtney Love is to music. Thank GM Dayton Moore—who somehow scored a contract extension, leading most observers to believe he’s either blackmailing the owner or boinking his daughter—for making the mess messier via a series of moves that spat in the face of reason and then kicked dirt on its motionless corpus. Nobody here, from ownership on down, has anything resembling a clue.
Chris Young, Arizona Diamondbacks
For years, we’ve been hearing how Young ranks among the game’s preeminent centerfield prospects. We heard it when he was bouncing around in the lower reaches of the White Sox farm system and then again when he was lighting up the AAA night sky with his power, speed, arm, instincts and jaunty personality. After a monster rookie campaign and a reasonable if not electric follow-up in 2008, Young fell backwards, hard. He spent a chunk of August in the minors, either as punishment or as a last-gasp attempt to help him find his smile again. Regardless, he screwed many a fantasy-team owner across this great nation: as of this writing, he sits at .198 BA/12 HRs/34 RBIs. For that, he is deserving of our utter contempt.
Brad Lidge, Philadelphia Phillies
Closers are generally called upon to “close out” games, rather than extend their duration. A more apt title for Lidge, then, might be a “continuer”: Way too often this season, his contributions kept the game going, giving opponents another few whacks in extra innings or a reason to assemble in a joyous home-plate hogpile. It took Phillies manager Cholly Manuel until this week to tire of Lidge’s frequent sheet-soiling and remove him from ninth-inning duty. You could tell the skipper was pissed: he used the word “dadgum” multiple times while discussing it.
Ray Ramirez, New York Mets: Who is this guy, you ask? The head trainer for the majors’ achiest, breakiest franchise, the one that’s as able to diagnose a simple bruise or sprain as a pelican is to preside at a wedding. It’s unfair to blame Ramirez alone, as there were trained physicians who failed to diagnose injuries (“Did I say it was a twisted ankle? I meant to say that the hamstring was ripped off the bone and mangled, as if it’d been gnawed on by a ferret.") and players who withheld information about their physical condition. But there were way, way, way too many injuries for all of them to qualify as flukes, and that falls on the training and conditioning staffs.
In our last dispatch, we noted the utter absurdity of a clause in Bobby Abreu’s contract that calls for the payment of a $100,000 bonus in the event that he wins a Gold Glove award. Abreu, only slightly more instinctive and athletic afield than a typical beer-leaguer, clearly has no chance of cashing in on this. But it got us to thinkin’: What are some of the other desperate, dippy and otherwise unrealistic incentives that have been shoehorned into MLB players’ contracts?
Some of the clauses weren’t as silly at the time they were granted as they seem today (the Gold Glove incentive in Jim Thome’s contract, for instance, was added before his trade to an American League team and subsequent shift to designated-hitter duty). Others haven’t yet been made public (most Yankees, we presume, have clauses in their deals guaranteeing hand-cut flowers in their lockers every afternoon and dial-a-concubine access on road trips). The ones we note below, on the other hand, made no sense from day one.
Read on and be awed. All info comes from the invaluable, wildly entertaining Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
Carlos Lee, Houston Astros: When Lee signed with the ‘Stros as a free agent in late 2006, pundits questioned whether the team was paying a premium for what he’d already accomplished, as opposed to what he’d do in the future. They also wondered how well he would age, given that he was already packing 255 pounds of something other than muscle onto his 6’2” frame. Enter the “nominal weight clause” in his deal, which likely guarantees that Lee will refrain from inhaling more than 16 White Castle sliders in a single sitting. The obvious questions: Who enforces this? Does the team have spies stationed at Houston’s myriad lard repositories? How often does he have to stand on a scale? Somebody oughta investigate.
Gil Meche, Kansas City Royals and Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds: This isn’t to besmirch either player’s sporadic competence so much as to cast doubt on their prognostication skills. Both Meche and Cordero play for teams that haven’t been competitive since the first Bush administration, and yet both players saw fit to secure $100,000 bonuses in their lucrative free-agent deals for winning World Series MVP. Hope is a dangerous thing.
Mark Teixeira, New York Yankees: Teixeira’s deal pays him salaries of at least $20 million per year through 2016, plus he received a cool $5 million the second he signed on the dotted line. Presumably this means he can afford to buy anything except France or publishing rights to the Beatles catalog. Still, Teixeira doesn’t receive his Yankees season tickets gratis; his contract merely assigns him the right to purchase up to eight of them. Weird.
Mike Lincoln, Cincinnati Reds: In his eight seasons as a professional pitcher, Lincoln has started, respectively, 15, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 and 0 games. In his contract, Lincoln has a clause awarding him $50,000 for his 12th, 15th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 25th and 27th starts. This is like incentivizing a dog for performing data entry: He doesn’t have the skills or the inclination, so why bother?
Orlando Hudson, Los Angeles Dodgers: Hudson, left standing when last off-season’s game of free-agent musical chairs came to an end, accepted a way-low contract right before spring training commenced. To offset the pain of earning a sub-poverty $3 million in 2009, Hudson can receive up to $4.62 million in bonuses based on plate appearances. As of Thursday, he’d earned $3.55 million; once he passes 575 plate appearances in a few weeks, he’ll earn an extra ten grand per appearance. So don’t be confused when you see Hudson make a ka-ching! gesture every time he dashes out of the batter’s box.
Bobby Jenks, Chicago White Sox: Not to keep harping on the Gold Glove clauses, but anyone who has seen Bobby Jenks pitch (or eat) knows that the burly-boy righty has mobility issues. This is like saying a chair or a tree has mobility issues: it’s not exactly a secret. The real silliness, however, isn’t that he gets money for winning a Gold Glove. It’s that as a late-game reliever who has thrown no more than 70 innings in a single season, he’s not on the field enough to merit even token Gold Glove consideration. In conclusion, most agents are insane optimists.
Thanks to “Moneyball” and packs of roving, feral stat nerds, baseball has somehow earned a reputation as the thinking man’s sport. Never mind that no pursuit involving pitched, struck or bunted projectiles should ever be lauded for its intellectual mettle—that characterization just ain’t true.
While baseball may lack talent-squandering halfwits like Plaxico Burress (who took the “shooting yourself in the foot” metaphor to new heights) and John Daly (who now lists Hooters as his place of residence), it nonetheless boasts more than its share of dense, oafish, mindless and otherwise obtuse folk. Here, then, is our annual list of the game’s dumbest people.
Manny Ramirez, Los Angeles Dodgers: It used to be that everybody thought Manny Ramirez was merely a bit off, that his various eccentricities (taking bathroom breaks in Fenway’s Green Monster, auctioning off grills on eBay, etc.) masked a keen baseball mind. Well, now that Manny has been popped for using performance-enhancing goodies—after having tested positive during the program’s grace period, no less—we can probably put that theory to rest. And that says nothing of his free-agent follies, when he and (triple-smart-with-sprinkles) superagent Scott Boras eventually accepted an offer that they’d initially dismissed as insulting. If it acts like a dummyhead and braids its hair like a dummyhead, it’s a dummyhead.
Trey Hillman and Drayton Moore, Kansas City Royals: It’s hard to glean exactly who’s responsible for the Superfund site that is the Kansas City Royals, so we’ll tag both the manager and the GM with the scarlet ‘D’. Hillman earns the distinction owing to his lineups (one 3-for-5 game earned the loathsome Jose Guillen three months of regular playing time) and creative bullpen usage patterns (the team blew three straight late-inning leads to Tampa Bay last month without summoning ace closer Joakim Soria from the bullpen). Moore, on the other hand, gave an interview in which he preached the on-base-percentage gospel… then, a short time thereafter, imported allergic-to-walks slugger Mike Jacobs. It’s not hard to envision Hillman and Moore splashing around joyfully in a kiddie pool filled to the brim with stupid, oblivious to the other more responsible adults conducting business nearby.
Bobby Abreu, Los Angeles Angels: Early in free agency, the going rate for offensively skilled corner outfielders with either defensive shortcomings (Raul Ibanez) or emotional ones (Milton Bradley) was three years at $10 million per. Somehow, after the dust settled, Abreu ended up with a one-year deal for $5 million and a bit more in incentives he’ll never reach (Abreu is as likely to win a Gold Glove award as a hyena is to juggle). The caveat here is that Abreu may not have had much of a say in negotiations as his agent, Peter Greenberg, did. So perhaps Abreu is merely dumb by proxy.
Jim Bowden, nomad: When hired as GM of the Nats, Bowden was the envy of a goodly chunk of the game’s executives. He toiled in a huge, potentially lucrative market that was ripe for the taking after its denizens had endured years of Oriole boobery, and under an ownership group that was eager to make a splash. Instead, Bowden muffed draft-pick signings, handed out two-year contracts to portly spare parts like Ronnie Belliard and Dmitri Young, and got himself embroiled in a bonus-skimming scandal. If he works in baseball again, it’ll be as a peanut vendor.
Luis Castillo, New York Mets: Thanks to his game-losing drop of an easy pop fly and his forgetfulness in covering second base on potential force plays, he’s become the poster boy for the malignant dimwittedness that has infected the entire Metsie organization (GMs accusing beat reporters of lobbying for jobs, player-development chiefs yanking off their shirts and challenging double-A players to poetry slams, etc.). Maybe Castillo isn’t dumb so much as scatterbrained, but his name always seems to appear in the lead paragraph of the “you won’t believe how the Mets blew it this time” game stories.
Steve Phillips, ESPN: ‘Tis a fine testament to his dumbness that our word count limits us to discussing only his most foundation-shaking brain farts—his faux press conferences, etc. Indeed, every word that comes out of Phillips’ mouth is an avalanche of dumb, whether he’s talking about potential trades (he once speculated that then Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez could be dealt to the Yankees, which ranked right alongside the Mars rover’s discovery of a stack of lunar flapjacks on the probability matrix) or evaluating A-list players (earlier this year, he described Carlos Beltran’s game as “inconsistent,” despite a mountain of statistical and even anecdotal evidence to the contrary). Phillips is the reason God, or perhaps God’s gadget guru, invented the mute button.
J.P. Ricciardi, Toronto Blue Jays: In some quarters, Ricciardi has been praised for finding a way to shed the way-above-market-value contract of effort-challenged outfielder Alex Rios, who was claimed off waivers by the White Sox. Well, who signed the guy to the contract in the first place? Who gave away a not-untalented corner outfielder in his prime and received nothing in return? Who gave out equally dunderheaded deals to Vernon Wells (baseball’s second-worst, behind only Barry Zito’s monstrous contract), A.J. Burnett (the inclusion of an opt-out clause made it obscenely player-friendly and triggered his premature departure) and B.J. Ryan (short relievers not named Mariano Rivera ain’t worth more than a small commitment, because they’re injury- and slump-prone and easily replaced)? Ricciardi did. A few tiny victories don’t negate tens of losses, both on the field and off.
As their first indelible baseball memory, most fans remember some huge, high-profile event: the ball rolling through Bill Buckner’s legs, Bo Jackson in the All Star Game, Luis Gonzalez’s climactic hit in the 2001 World Series, whatever. Me, I remember Johnny Wockenfuss.
You remember Johnny Wockenfuss, right? Platoon catcher with the Detroit Tigers, great name, heroic mustache… You’ve seen pictures. Or not.
Truth is, if you remember the guy at all, it’s for the same reason that I do: His closed-tight batting stance, in which he wiggled his hand as if signaling to a family member or ladyfriend stationed along the first-base line.
Wockenfuss started me on a lifelong fascination with the batting stance. While I haven’t taken it as far as Batting Stance Guy, I find it infinitely more interesting to think and talk about some of the great plate rituals lost to time—Lee May’s stirring-an-upside-down-drink bat waggle, Freddie Patek’s subterranean crouch, Willie Stargell’s windmill routine—than I do tomorrow’s Mariners-Royals tilt. Here are the ones that continue to capture my imagination, many years after the fact in some cases.
Gary Sheffield: The batting stance as indicator of homicidal intent. He waves the bat menacingly, as if to cower the ball into submission. Gary Sheffield’s batting stance has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq. Do not taunt Gary Sheffield’s batting stance.
Dick McAuliffe:The batting stance as do-not-try-this-at-home primer. The hands placed unevenly on the bat, the feet pointed seemingly in eight different directions—if you’re teaching a young’un how to hit, McAuliffe’s stance is the absolute worst place to start. His stance has more moving parts than an automobile.
Mickey Tettleton: The batting stance as slacker pose. Tettleton stood rail-straight and held his hands chest-high, which had the effect of keeping the bat almost parallel to the ground. When the pitch came plateward, however, Tettleton didn’t uncoil so much as unfold. How he made contact with hurled projectiles, I’ll never know.
Julio Franco:The batting stance as yoga. Franco, still not entirely sure if he’s retired for good at age 50, literally wrapped the bat around his head as he waited for the pitcher’s delivery. His arms and shoulders may well have been made of a flexible synthetic fabric.
Kevin Youkilis: The batting stance as exhaustive nuisance. Where to begin? With the hands slip-sliding down the bat, as if he’s bowing a violin? With the knees pressed together as if he’s trying to clasp a penny between them? With the do-the-hokey-pokey tushie shake? He holds himself in a way that would allow for simultaneous swinging and hula-hooping, which is a rare skill indeed.
Tony Batista: The batting stance as body language. Batista kept his body wide open, with head and torso directly facing the mound. In doing so, he literally turned his back on the catcher and umpire. How rude is that? Perhaps they have a history.
Craig Counsell: The batting stance as Napoleonic kiss-off. I MAY BE TINY BUT I WILL HOLD MY BAT HIGH AND PROUD.
Jeff Bagwell:The batting stance as profound feat of coordination. Okay, pick up a broom or some other bat-like household implement. Grip it tight, with your elbows positioned at the same height. Crouch low. Spread your legs three yards apart. Have you fallen yet? Somehow, Bagwell never did.
Felix Millan: The batting stance as pathetic acknowledgement of offensive impotence. Come on. We have no problem with choking up on the bat – Barry Bonds did it for some time, as did blonde wonderboy Davey Eckstein—but Millan took the practice to its most extreme. Here’s a tip: get a smaller f*#$in’ bat.
Phil Plantier: The batting stance as limbo practice. All together now: How low can he go? How low can he go?
Roy White:The batting stance as wily accommodation of physical quirk. The coolest part of White’s stance is invisible in most photos: the way he pointed both his feet inwards, as if trying to construct a triangle. Whether or not White could help himself, the pointy-toed stance made for some fun imitatin’ during recess.
Joe Morgan: The batting stance as unwitting tic. (Batting Stance Guy demonstrates 1:33 into the above video) Before he gained renown as America’s least informed color commentator, Morgan was a pretty darn OK baseball player. His swing, in which his back elbow twitched with the menace of a screen door off its hinges, always smoothened before it reached the zone.
Watching Tuesday’s Red Sox/Tigers brawl, in which the two pugilists engaged in a tussle more akin to something you’d see on “So You Think You Can Dance” than in the UFC Octagon, got me to thinking: Is there any sport in which would-be brawlers do a worse job of defending their teammates and/or honor than in baseball? The answer, until badminton thugs stop beating each other bloody, is “hell, no.” After some investigation, we’ve identified the game’s worst/wussiest offenders.
Robin Ventura, Chicago White Sox
Back story: After finding his torso on the receiving end of a Nolan Ryan heater, Ventura threw caution (and crusty-veteran deference) to the wind and rushed the mound. What happened next was so memorable that fans commemorated its 15th anniversary last week.
Technique: Run toward the mound. Find yourself in headlock. Absorb 19 punches in four seconds. Wonder how it came to this.
Tips: Never underestimate your foe. Ryan wasn’t pitching like a 46-year-old; why would Ventura assume that he’d scuffle like one?
Armando Benitez, Baltimore Orioles
Back story: Before he gained renown for his ability to surrender even the most insurmountable of late-game leads, Benitez was a bullet-armed eighth-inning guy for the Baltimore Orioles. In 1998, after serving up a three-run homer to Bernie Williams, he planted his next 98-MPH pitch between Tino Martinez’s shoulder blades. Mayhem ensued.
Technique: After an initial you-lookin’-at-me? staredown, running away with alacrity from anything pinstriped.
Tips: Rather than sprinting around the infield willy-nilly, Benitez should’ve made for either the clubhouse or the hills. Even his teammates were less than pleased with the blatant “if I go down, you’re coming with me” retaliation.
Back story: Back in the summer of ’65, when the Giants and Dodgers hated each other with the blue-hot intensity of a thousand toast-r-ovens, Marichal brushed back a handful of Dodgers. Dodger hurler Sandy Koufax wouldn’t return the favor, but his catcher had other ideas: When Marichal came up to bat, John Roseboro damn near took off the pitcher’s ear with his return throws. Marichal responded in kind.
Technique: Bonking his foe on the head with a bat, hard enough to draw a healthy stream of blood. This precipitated a 15-minute-long riot which, amazingly, did not require mobilization of the National Guard.
Tips: Marichal needs to trade in his wooden implements for a balled fist. It ain’t a fair fight when one guy is carrying a hunk of wood and the other is armed with a leather receptacle.
Kevin Youkilis, Boston Red Sox Back story: A Red Sox guy threw at a Tiger guy. A Tiger guy threw at a Red Sox guy. Youkilis, being the Red Sox guy, took this personally.
Technique: Head-of-steam charge mound-ward. Push-flail at the head of his foe, Detroit pitcher Rick Porcello. Fall.
Tips: When rushing the mound, rush it slowly – think a crisp stride on a fall afternoon, not a Black Friday dash down aisle three to get one of the six cheap big-screen TVs. If you’re moving at full speed, any nudge, shove or deke will land you on your keester, mister.
Jose Canseco, literary bard
Back story: Few of Canseco’s brawls took place on the ballfield; he was more likely to scrap with random clubgoers or wives/girlfriends. Nonetheless, long after he squandered his baseball fortune, Canseco started getting his ass kicked with impressive regularity. He’s the lapsed jock most likely to sacrifice whatever little’s left of his frontal cortex for a few shekels, and watching him get whupped is one of sports’ great unfettered joys.
Technique: Unleash wild kicks. Keep moving. Once tagged, tap until the ref offers shelter from the punchstorm.
Tips: Don’t fight anybody with twice your reach. If you must, strive to take out the dude’s legs or perhaps pull a Three Stooges (read: comically overstated eye-poke).
Alex Rodriguez
Back story: In the fateful year of 2004 (a.k.a. “the one in which the 98-pound string bean finally grew a pair and kicked some sand back at the bully”), A-Rod started jawing with Boston catcher Jason Varitek after being plunked by Bronson “Brandon” Arroyo. For his efforts, he was rewarded with a mouthful of mitt, which touched off a brawl that saw Pedro Martinez shove 90-something Yankee coach Don Zimmer to the ground.
Technique: Lots of cursing. When A-Rod starts throwing haymakers, they’re of the man-flails-at-invisible-assailant variety.
Tips: Less talk, more rock. A-Rod also oughta work on his basepath-clearing technique, as witnessed by the infamous Slappy-McSlapRod incident during the playoffs that year. I mean, really. Just lower a shoulder and knock the dude into next week. It’s all legal.
Kason Gabbard
Back story: Mariners’ giant Richie Sexson was having a bad week: his team was stinking up the joint and his child was sick. So he reacted to Gabbard’s inside heater – nobody’s idea of a statement pitch – as if Gabbard had littered on his grandmother’s grave.
Technique: None. Even before Sexson hurls his helmet in advance of his arrival, Gabbard assumes a pose of deep supplication – as if he were preparing to pray rather than tussle. His mouth says, “No”; his body language says, “Oh, heavens to Betsy, no.” Leave the fetal curls to the fetuses, will ya?
Following "revelations" that New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003, nobody was ready to forgive him for his past mistakes on and off the field. Not the media. Not New York fans. Definitely not Saturday Night Live, which turned his ESPN confessional interview into a punchline—"I was young...I was 'naifff'".
B.J. Upton, Tampa Bay Rays 
Carlos Lee, Houston Astros: When Lee signed with the ‘Stros as a free agent in late 2006, pundits questioned whether the team was paying a premium for what he’d already accomplished, as opposed to what he’d do in the future. They also wondered how well he would age, given that he was already packing 255 pounds of something other than muscle onto his 6’2” frame. Enter the “nominal weight clause” in his deal, which likely guarantees that Lee will refrain from inhaling more than 16 White Castle sliders in a single sitting. The obvious questions: Who enforces this? Does the team have spies stationed at Houston’s myriad lard repositories? How often does he have to stand on a scale? Somebody oughta investigate.
Gil Meche, Kansas City Royals and Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds: This isn’t to besmirch either player’s sporadic competence so much as to cast doubt on their prognostication skills. Both Meche and Cordero play for teams that haven’t been competitive since the first Bush administration, and yet both players saw fit to secure $100,000 bonuses in their lucrative free-agent deals for winning World Series MVP. Hope is a dangerous thing.
Mark Teixeira, New York Yankees: Teixeira’s deal pays him salaries of at least $20 million per year through 2016, plus he received a cool $5 million the second he signed on the dotted line. Presumably this means he can afford to buy anything except France or publishing rights to the Beatles catalog. Still, Teixeira doesn’t receive his Yankees season tickets gratis; his contract merely assigns him the right to purchase up to eight of them. Weird.
Mike Lincoln, Cincinnati Reds: In his eight seasons as a professional pitcher, Lincoln has started, respectively, 15, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 and 0 games. In his contract, Lincoln has a clause awarding him $50,000 for his 12th, 15th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 25th and 27th starts. This is like incentivizing a dog for performing data entry: He doesn’t have the skills or the inclination, so why bother?
Orlando Hudson, Los Angeles Dodgers: Hudson, left standing when last off-season’s game of free-agent musical chairs came to an end, accepted a way-low contract right before spring training commenced. To offset the pain of earning a sub-poverty $3 million in 2009, Hudson can receive up to $4.62 million in bonuses based on plate appearances. As of Thursday, he’d earned $3.55 million; once he passes 575 plate appearances in a few weeks, he’ll earn an extra ten grand per appearance. So don’t be confused when you see Hudson make a ka-ching! gesture every time he dashes out of the batter’s box.
Bobby Jenks, Chicago White Sox: Not to keep harping on the Gold Glove clauses, but anyone who has seen Bobby Jenks pitch (or eat) knows that the burly-boy righty has mobility issues. This is like saying a chair or a tree has mobility issues: it’s not exactly a secret. The real silliness, however, isn’t that he gets money for winning a Gold Glove. It’s that as a late-game reliever who has thrown no more than 70 innings in a single season, he’s not on the field enough to merit even token Gold Glove consideration. In conclusion, most agents are insane optimists.
Manny Ramirez, Los Angeles Dodgers: It used to be that everybody thought Manny Ramirez was merely a bit off, that his various eccentricities (taking 
Trey Hillman and Drayton Moore, Kansas City Royals: It’s hard to glean exactly who’s responsible for the Superfund site that is the Kansas City Royals, so we’ll tag both the manager and the GM with the scarlet ‘D’. Hillman earns the distinction owing to his lineups (one 3-for-5 game earned the loathsome Jose Guillen three months of regular playing time) and creative bullpen usage patterns (the team blew three straight late-inning leads to Tampa Bay last month without summoning ace closer Joakim Soria from the bullpen). Moore, on the other hand, gave an interview in which he preached the on-base-percentage gospel… then, a short time thereafter, imported allergic-to-walks slugger Mike Jacobs. It’s not hard to envision Hillman and Moore splashing around joyfully in a kiddie pool filled to the brim with stupid, oblivious to the other more responsible adults conducting business nearby.
Bobby Abreu, Los Angeles Angels: Early in free agency, the going rate for offensively skilled corner outfielders with either defensive shortcomings (Raul Ibanez) or emotional ones (Milton Bradley) was three years at $10 million per. Somehow, after the dust settled, Abreu ended up with a one-year deal for $5 million and a bit more in incentives he’ll never reach (Abreu is as likely to win a Gold Glove award as a hyena is to juggle). The caveat here is that Abreu may not have had much of a say in negotiations as his agent, Peter Greenberg, did. So perhaps Abreu is merely dumb by proxy.
Luis Castillo, New York Mets: Thanks to his game-losing drop of an easy pop fly and his forgetfulness in covering second base on potential force plays, he’s become the poster boy for the malignant dimwittedness that has infected the entire Metsie organization (GMs accusing beat reporters of lobbying for jobs, player-development chiefs yanking off their shirts and challenging double-A players to poetry slams, etc.). Maybe Castillo isn’t dumb so much as scatterbrained, but his name always seems to appear in the lead paragraph of the “you won’t believe how the Mets blew it this time” game stories.
Steve Phillips, ESPN: ‘Tis a fine testament to his dumbness that our word count limits us to discussing only his most foundation-shaking brain farts—his faux press conferences, etc. Indeed, every word that comes out of Phillips’ mouth is an avalanche of dumb, whether he’s talking about potential trades (he once speculated that then Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez could be dealt to the Yankees, which ranked right alongside the Mars rover’s discovery of a stack of lunar flapjacks on the probability matrix) or evaluating A-list players (earlier this year, he described Carlos Beltran’s game as “inconsistent,” despite a mountain of statistical and even anecdotal evidence to the contrary). Phillips is the reason God, or perhaps God’s gadget guru, invented the mute button.
