As a lifelong Met fan who was a regular at Shea as a kid, I consider myself well acquainted with the sight and smell of garbage. Rubbish was a ubiquitous companion at the ballpark in those days, and if you weren't careful or discerning you were liable to step in it, purchase it, or watch it on the field. I became expert at sifting through the grime of our humble, beloved locale (and team), and extracting the relatively pristine beauty of a hard-fought ballgame.
One of the turning points of my formative fanhood came when I tried and failed to pass our rivals the Atlanta Braves through that sieve. There was little to like and much to despise about some of the key contributors on those teams, and even in my youth my bullshit detector was good enough to penetrate their cocky, handsome smiles and reveal them for the putrescent cankers they really were. I'm taking this time to rehash my hatred of the Braves because even though it appears that they are weakened and their string of roughly 136 straight division titles will come to an end, they remain amply worthy of our derision.
I'll start with Andruw Jones, mostly because people have been comparing Cameron favorably to him but also because I hate him. Andruw (that's "Ahn-druw" to you, thanks so much) got his start in the island nation of Curacao, where in relative obscurity he first convinced himself he was the best baseball player ever. In 2000, Sean Deveney of the Sporting News painted this portrait of a young Jones on the island:
When he was growing up on the island of Curacao, playing third base as a 10-year-old, he would field grounders and hold them, letting the helpless young batters run down the line, before he'd throw to first.
To be fair, Deveney goes on to compare Jones to Willie Mays and write things like this:
At night, the tides of the Caribbean Sea massage the tiny island of Curacao, ocean waves pushing into the hollows of the volcanic rock that forms the island's west coast. The sea moves in with a heavy huff and slides out in a whisper. In and out the tide comes, huff and whisper, huff and whisper.
But at least he records for posterity the irrevocable truth that money and fame in the MLB were not the source of Jones' arrogant hot-dogging. He was a despicable fellow from a very early age.
This is still his way. He is so good in the outfield that he makes it look easy, easy enough that you'd think Mike Piazza should try his hand at right field this Spring. There is no denying that he's good, especially since his every move is designed to remind you of that fact. I take comfort in the rare misplays his nonchalance forces as proof that you do incur bad karma by wearing sunglasses indoors.
So far this is a pretty thin case for hatred. At best, arrogance when backed up by performance could be grounds for irritation. You have to look beyond his stellar talents as a ballplayer to find the roots of my extreme distaste for Jones. Allow me to put on my sabermetrician's lab coat (tweed jacket with elbow patches) and offer an equation to help explain:
[Young + .5 (From a Minuscule Island Nation) + 3 (Suddenly Famous and Rich)] x Moron^100 = GCS
That's right, the Gold Club Scandal.
For those of you who have forgotten or somehow never heard of this tragic stupidity, I'll give you a brief rundown. (Here's a link to CNN's detailed and fact-based coverage.) The Gold Club was a gentlemen's cabaret owned by men with ties to the Gambino crime family. They brought popular athletes to the club and plied them with refreshments and free sex with whores, promising all the while that their actions would remain, ha ha, circumspect. What was in it for the mobsters? Well, all the attention from superstar athletes brought in a lot of clientele, whom they promptly and efficiently ripped off for a lot of money.
The real kicker is that many popular athletes - Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutumbo, Terrell Davis, and of course our old friend Andruw Jones - were made to testify as to what went on, either in the club, or at the behest of GC personnel. Here's what happened. Jones was a regular Gold Club member, but one day in either 1996 or 1997 he got invited to a special party by a club employee. At this party, with the club owner Steve Kaplan and several other upstanding fellows watching approvingly, Andruw walked into a room where he saw two women "doing lesbian action". Presumably at this point Mr. Kaplan and Jones had a conversation that went something like this:
"You don't see stuff like this in Curacao, do you Andruw?"
"That's Ahn-druw, Mr. Kaplan, but boy howdy you're right. Guess I'd better sleep with these two girls and show them what they're missing."
"Hey, wait a minute! They're not whores, Andruw."
Girls: "Yes we are, Mr. Kaplan, you just paid us!"
"Ha ha ha, they're just kidding, son. They want to sleep with you because you're such a good baseball player and you don't look like you're ten years old at all! After all, this is a party and there are girls here, as you will later testify, so what's more natural than having sex with the both of them while I and my trusted associates watch?"
Reluctantly persuaded, Andruw put on his shades and smirked his way into the middle of a disease-ridden hooker sandwich that undoubtedly fit like a Gold Glove. Young cherubic Andruw was not charged with anything criminal, by the way, but in my book he's a filthy moral cesspool and whenever I see him on television I can't help but think of the mob and those two girls (Huff and Whisper, let's call them) and hope to god whenever he's caught by the cameraman scratching his jock it's a legacy of his whore-diddling habits.
If you thought that he was the only despicable player on the Braves, you're wrong. If you thought that he was the only despicable player on the Braves with the surname Jones, you're still wrong. (What are the odds? In Atlanta, apparently pretty good.) All American Hero Larry Wayne Jones is called Chipper because he resembles his father so much that he's a "chip off the old block". Makes you wonder what nickname they're going to give to the illegitimate child produced by his affair - one of several that year - with a Hooters waitress after the 1996 season. Would "Bastard" be too cruel? Does it work on too many levels? I can't comment on this any better than ol' Chip himself:
"I want to be a better role model," he said. "I've gone out to schools and I've been on TV and I've said all the right things and it appears like I've done all the right things, but I was really leading kind of a hypocritical life."
At least his personal life provides Met fans with plenty of ammunition for when he destroys us at Shea. That counts for something, doesn't it? Laaa-aaarry - you're a putz.
I'm sure I'm leaving out some notable scum, but in the interest of preserving my own sanity I'm going to turn directly to the most galling aspect of my contempt for the Braves. The worst part of this coming season is knowing that the fate of my favorite team hinges on the success of a broken down onetime rival. Tom "The Bomb" Glavine felt the death of his usefulness as a ballplayer coming on, and in a last act of gallantry launched himself at Shea where he imploded like an inverse kamikaze. He ruins us not only on the field, but also in the front office, where his solicited advice apparently impacts personnel decisions. I'm willing to bet that summoning up his brother Mike - future card-carrying member of the Pete Rose, Jr.-founded Get a Real Job You Untalented Coattail-riding Hack Society - will not be the last move to bear his stamp.
Some of you may be thinking, if thinking isn't mutually exclusive with the following notion, wasn't it heartwarming that he wanted to play with his brother, just once? The answer is no. Ownership pandering to the desires of an overpaid, under-performing former enemy is a move worthy of our revulsion, every time. Thankfully we didn't go after Maddux as well. One ace pitcher in his decline from our biggest and sorriest rival is enough for me.
For the record, I'm not saying that the Mets are saints. In fact, I'm probably the first guy out there to rip on them when they do stupid things. There's a fine line between stupid and deplorable, though, at least from where I'm sitting. We've known for years that ballplayers aren't necessarily the best role-models, but I'd rather root for the ones that aren't quite so obviously human slime. I'll leave you for today with this illustrative example:
Piazza, who lives in Manhattan, visited hospitals and witnessed candlelight vigils. Valentine, third base coach John Stearns and four players--Ventura, Todd Zeile and local products Al Leiter (New Jersey) and John Franco (Brooklyn)--rode a police van to ground zero the day before the Mets began their series against the Braves.
The scene at the site of the attack was harrowing, yet moving. Workers discovered an arm with a wedding ring, raising hope that the victim could be identified, providing closure for his widow. The fire company closest to the Trade Center displayed a door recovered from one of its trucks, symbolizing the quest to find all who were lost.
"We were all nervous driving down there" Zeile says. "Not nervous to see the destruction, see what these (terrorists) turned the city into--nervous that we would be presumptuous to think that we might have anything to add to (the workers') plight, that we might be able to inspire them in the least."
Yes, that's Todd Zeile, much-maligned free agent signing. No, don't get up. His OPS last year was .693.
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