Wednesday, January 31, 2018

The 10 Baseball Players I Hate

At some point last year, one of the baseball sites that I frequent, The Hardball Times, published a story called "The 10 Players I Hate" in which the author listed the players who had tormented his favourite team during his time as a fan. I thought that is was a great idea for an article and provided a funny look at the things that you obsess over as a fan and the minutiae and petty differences that can consume you when you devote a significant amount of your time to something as silly as sports.

I'm deep in the "Lost & Directionless" part of baseball's off-season, where the action of the previous year seems so far away that I can barely remember it and pitchers and catchers reporting, let Spring Training games, are still on another calendar page, so I need something to hold me over and remind me of the weird passion that takes over my brain from April to October.

With that being said, here are the 10 Baseball Players I Hate:

Derek Jeter


If you lived in Toronto, Boston, Baltimore, or St. Petersburg between 1995 and 2015 you could set your watch to Derek Jeter dashing your hopes and dreams as a baseball fan. The only thing worse than the unending parade of sportswriters who were eager to feed Jeter peeled grapes was the fact that he kind of deserved it. Growing up, I despised him and thought it was obvious how much of a dick he was, but it wasn't until I got older that I realized that perspective came from me being sour about Jeter leading the Yankees to elite levels of success and a decent chunk of it coming at the expense of my Blue Jays. I'm now mature enough to admit that Derek Jeter is one baseball's all-time shortstops, but I don't think I'll ever get to a place where I don't hate the fuckin' New York Yankees.

Dustin Pedroia


Much like Jeter, much of my hate for Dustin Pedroia derives from the fact that he played an integral part in the Boston Red Sox dominating the Blue Jays. He still plays a part in that. To truly hate a player, they must be good, and Pedroia has been steadily good for a long time. He was the face of the "hustle" Red Sox teams of the 00's, where a new white guy with a beard seemed to turn up every week. He runs to 1st base after walks and was probably his coach's favourite player on every team he's been on. He has a stupid face and I love when he fails at the sport of baseball. Red Sox fans love believing that their team is still a lovable underdog and Pedroia's dumb-ass playing style is a big part of that. Fuck the Red Sox.

Mark Texeira


Though I have following the Jays for my whole life and going to games for just as long, my high school year were particularly formative in my experience as a baseball because that is when I started to carve out my own place as a Jays fan and establish an identity separate from my parents in following the team. For that reason, the Jays teams of 2003-2010 are especially dear to me because they coincided with that time. They were the teams that Timmy fell in love with, not that the Chandlers fell in love with. Those teams also fucking sucked. You know who are great at beating down shitty Jays teams? The New Yankees. A potent force for them during that time was switch-hitting first baseman and noted jabroni Mark Texeira. New York is apparently allergic to players who don't hit 30 dingers and OBP in the upper 300's. During the 00's, Tex was the latest in a never-ending parade of expensive free agents that led to division titles and for that reason I will always despise him.

Note: On May 12th, 2009, I watched Roy Halladay shutout the Yankees by himself. Texeira went 0-4 with two strikeouts and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Eric Hosmer


Unsurprisingly, most of the players on this, the pettiest of all lists, come from the Blue Jays' rivals.  The Jays played a heated regular season and then playoff series against the shittiest and dumbest of all loser-ass teams, the Kansas City Royals. In their prime, the Royals were led by first baseman Eric Hosmer who sucks for the following reasons: 

-bad at hitting home runs 
-thinks he's better than he is 
-dumb beard, haircut, and douchey face
-leads dumb team that got the luckiest of any team ever at the right time

He talked a lot of shit and came up with clutch, piddly singles with maddening frequency. Thanks for ruining our playoff run you piece of trash.

Kevin Youkilis


Take a deep breathe and reflect for a moment. You're right. It's true. A Major League Baseball player actually used that stupid fucking batting stance you see above. I hate Kevin Youkilis for many of the same reasons that I hate Dustin Pedroia. They played on the same teams that won a lot (including a World Series in 2007) and were the nexus of the Boston "gritty, white baseball players with beards" criclejerk that was the bane of my existence. What a bunch of grinders! Putting in professional at-bats! More like casual racism coated in pinetar. Bud, your name is fuckin' stupid.

Rougned Odor


As a sports fan, I try to act like I am above the typical lowbrow, macho brandishing that the rest of the world associates with professional athletics. I read the things that the New Yorker publishes about baseball. I applaud when teams do things to make their environment more inclusive. I distance myself from the intoxication culture imbued in the crowd. I focus on the small subtle things in the game instead of falling prey to gossip-y narratives given to the public by media corporations. That being said, it's also important to recognize that I am part of that world and sometimes you need to lean into it. Roughned Odor is a rat-faced fuck who was a catalyst in the Texas Rangers taking the ALDS to 5 games and got in a fight with my savior, José Bautista and for that I will curse his name until the day I die.

Darren O'Day


The hateful part of my brain has an expressway attached to it which can only be accessed by players who have wronged José Bautista, Josh Donaldson, or Marcus Stroman. It doesn't matter what they have done, I must stand by my boys and support them. Darren O'Day and Jose Bautista have a, admittedly, petty rivalry that started over the former skipping towards the dugout after a strikeout. Since then, José has owned O'Day and the rest of the Orioles, giving me a huge supply of revenge home runs to watch while I laugh and clap my hands. The best rivalries are the ones where your side relentlessly beats down the other side and never loses.

Chipper Jones


The differences between being an American sports fan and a Canadian sports fan are small. The typical American sports outlets, like ESPN and FoxSports, weren't broadcasted in Canada while I was growing up, but we did get TBS, which has traditionally been the home of Atlanta Braves baseball. As a result, the Braves were more or less the only team other than the Blue Jays who I saw on TV. I hated their announcers, I hated their hats, and I hated how good they were in the 90's. At the centre of the team was their Hall of Fame third baseman Chipper Jones who I hated for being good, for being constantly brought up by the TBS team, and for having a good nickname.

Roger Clemens


I only vaguely remember the time when Roger Clemens pitched for the Blue Jays. He was very good! Then he requested a trade and left to play for our bitterest enemies, the New York Yankees. Not only that, but he won two World Series titles right after leaving. He was the perfect storm of being a jerk, being an amazing player, being associated with steroids when I was vehemently against them, and playing for the Yankees. It was impossible not to hate him and I revelled in his defeats.

Jose Cruz Jr.


For the sake of fairness, I thought that I should also include a Blue Jays player who I hate and the first one I thought of was Jose Cruz (Jr.). Cruz was part of the Jays teams that were thoroughly dominated by the Yankees and Red Sox in the late 90's/early 00's and was, in hindsight, a pretty key contributor. For the life of me, I can't explain why I disliked him so much. His numbers were pretty decent and he was a good player on bad teams. Then he got bad as soon as he left Toronto. That wasn't enough for me though, and I hated him purely for his whole time in the city. One game I went to, they gave out free player t-shirts to all kids under 13 in the ballpark. Once I saw they were Cruz t-shirts, I was dismayed and never wore it once.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

We Can Just Lay Here

We're going to partake in a little bit of a Throwback Thursday here and revisit a post style that I haven't used in a while: A link dump with short paragraphs around them to make the post look longer and more thought out than it actually is.

First off, sincere congratulations to the band Oso Oso for signing to Triple Crown Records. The Yunahon Mixtape is one of my favourite records ever and makes me feel a lot of things. They're opening a tour in Toronto next week, but I slept on getting tickets and will be missing them for the first time in a couple of years. What a great band! Happy that they are moving on up! Triple Crown Records put out All I Have to Offer is My Own Confusion by Fireworks, so for that alone they are in my good books.

To go with this news, the band also just released a video for the second track off of Yunahon, "Reindeer Games". It's a great song and I think the video does a good job of capturing the album's vibe. There's a lot of nice tummies in this video.


Also, my friends Nick, James, Scott, and Ben play in a band called Dog Cops. They've been playing shows around the GTA and working on songs for the last year or two and they just put out a single. Great stuff and free to download!



I'm working on the text for a second zine right now, hoping that I can have it finished by the end of February. It's about ska. Have any ideas for the cover art? I would love them.

Lastly, I deeply love independent pro wrestling. Though I started out watching the WWF like most people, I'm happy that my interest in it led me to this much better, more interesting, and weird in the best way subculture. It's strange, but perfect.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

No One Likes a Dropout

Something that I've been thinking a lot about the last couple of days is the importance of having a major goal that you are working on for yourself. This can range from having a small personal project you work on around your job or school to trying to conquer a bad habit to something bigger, like pursuing your "dream".

This was spurred by a recent episode of a favourite podcast of mine, in which two independent pro wrestlers and a lifelong musician (who also wrestles) were discussing how awkward it can be to broach the topic of their careers to a random acquaintance. Surprisingly, whenever the person gets around to asking "So, are you still doing the wrestling thing?" and they affirm that they are, the response is almost always positive. The three then speculate that it's because the person who is asking has usually given up on the dream that they were pursuing when they were younger. The example that one of them gave was the guy asking being a hockey player with NHL aspirations in high school.

This story made me think of a memory from high school. I went to St. Michael's College School in Toronto, which is known for, among other things, having a big and prosperous hockey program. As such, almost everyone at my high school played hockey at a higher-than-normal level and many had aspirations to one day play at a professional level.

One day, while I was changing at my locker for cross-country practice I overheard two of my classmates talking about another contemporary of ours and his NHL aspirations and how he wasn't that good. The line I remember is "One day Luke is going to have to come to terms with the fact that it just isn't going to happen." It struck me as so petty and shitty that these two would speak so meanly of the guy behind his back like that. His hockey playing doesn't affect them in any way, so why shit all over it? Also, it was funny to realize that all of the bros who were patronizing and shitty to me were also that way to each other.

The most telling thing to me is that I can't remember the names of those two boys for the life of me, whereas Luke Gazdic's name is easy to recall, for an easy reason:



That type of thing has to make you smile.

As embarrassing as it can be to hold on to dreams you started in your teens, more embarrassing is forgetting them and having nothing to define yourself later in your life. Really, being embarrassed about your dreams and goals is a result of how personal they are and how dear they are to the part of you that you rarely show to others.

I guess this is sort of a call to all my friends to keep working on what fulfills them and drives them. There is nothing embarrassing or shameful about that, despite what turkeys would have you believe. Making things and making things happen is fucking sick. In the spirit of this, I will share all of my dreams and goals, big and small.

  • Write a novel.
  • Land a kickflip.
  • Finish two more zines.
  • Write and put out an EP of my own music, all on my own.
  • Play a show in which I am the singer of a band.
  • Teach a university course.

Friday, January 5, 2018

I Don't Mind, I Don't Care

As is tradition, now that the calendar has turned over and my "Best Music" list has been etched into whatever the IMU equivalent of stone is, I have started to immediately discover a couple of releases from last year that I missed out on and really enjoy. I swear that I spend more of the year catching up on what I missed than checking out new releases.

First: Precious Art by Rozwell Kid

I tried to get into Rozwell Kid's first album The Rozwell Kid LP, but just couldn't do it. The band started to gain a lot more traction and my jaded ass wanted to listen to them less and less because so many people were talking about them. Turns out that good bands get popular because they're good. Who knew?




Second: Dumb Dads by Peace Be Still

I will never, for the life of me, understand why Peace Be Still is name-checked as an upper-crust Toronto band. They perfectly toe the line of abrasive, earnest emo and poppy punk trip right the fuck over. The intro riff to "Bozo"? BUD. They were amazing live too! It turns out that they broke up this year and I didn't even know, but if that's the case, then Dumb Dads is hell of a high note to go out on. Sincere applause for being a wonderful band.