Check this out in August's Hooter's Magazine
Hate is such a negative word. Hate is a serious word. You may dislike something or someone, but if you hate something or someone, you possess a really, really, really strong aversion towards that person or thing with a passion. People seem to hate certain athletes too for various reasons, stemming from jealousy or frustration, betrayal or disrespect. While football players and basketball players have people across the country that “hate” them, baseball seems to have a rich tradition of hated players dating back to the early 1900s all the way through present day.
In the movie Field of Dreams, there is one player that even the former players in Ray’s magical field wouldn’t let play and that is the one and only Ty Cobb. The Georgia Peach was elected to the Hall of Fame on the inaugural ballot and set 90 records upon his retirement, but it was his aggressive style that most people remember. Rumor has it that he used to file down his spikes to injure the opponents while breaking up a double-play at second base. There is also the story of Cobb going into the stands and beating up a heckler that turned out to be missing most of his hands from an accident. To call Cobb a hated player would be an understatement. Not only did the fans “hate” Cobb, but passed-down stories of teammates hating Cobb certainly demand that he be included on any list of hated players.
While Cobb is one of the all-time hatees, plenty of recent players have drawn the ire from the fans over the last few decades. The steroid scandal of the 1990s and 2000s, has thrown numerous athletes into the fans’ hate-ray. Perhaps the leading “villain” from the steroid era is Barry Bonds. The former San Francisco slugger and all-time home run leader broke the single-season home run record then the all-time record under the cloud of steroid suspicion, which ruffled a bunch of feathers. People claim that Roger Maris and Hank Aaron were still the rightful record-holders and should be reinstated over the steroid users. Before the steroid mumbo-jumbo mess that has Bonds facing perjury charges for possibly lying to a grand jury, Bonds still was not liked due to his prickly attitude towards the media and the fans. Bonds never seemed to want to do interviews or was always biting and snapping during the few interviews he did. Bonds was certainly disliked before the alleged steroid us; now he is certainly hated.
Another player that falls under the hated players: steroid era is Roger Clemens. The Rocket was well-known for an unusual workout routine involving barrels of rice but now we find that perhaps it was pills and the juice. Forgetting for a second that Clemens may have juiced, he was pulling the Brett Favre routine back when Favre wasn’t pulling his annual retirement do-si-do. Clemens held the Houston Astros hostage, deciding just to pitch for three-quarters of the year, then half, then a quarter of the year before doing the same thing to the Yankees. This rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, mainly because teams would let him get away with it. Boston fans though hated Clemens long before his in-or-out routine when he mailed it in during his final few years in Beantown before leaving for Toronto and turning the training back up to win two Cy Young awards in his two years in Canada. Red Sox Nation also remembers Clemens pushing for a trade to Boston’s biggest rival where he won another Cy Young and a pair of World Series titles for the New York Yankees. Ask any Boston fan his number one hated player and he’ll say Roger Clemens.
The Bash Brothers may now be known as part of the steroid-tainted band of bombers, but Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco rubbed people the wrong way during their Oakland days of murdering home runs and celebrating by smashing forearms. The A’s made the World Series three straight years from 1988-1990 thanks in large part to the long ball but the Dodgers had had enough when they mocked the A’s in the series-clinching game. When the Dodgers mimicked the A’s, many baseball fans across the country finally felt as though Oakland got its comeuppance.
Perhaps no player though was more hated by a pair of fictional characters than Keith Hernandez by Seinfeld’s Kramer and Newman. After an error in a crucial which allowed the Philadelphia Phillies to score five ninth-inning runs, Newman and Kramer claimed that Hernandez responded to a taunt in the parking lot by spitting on them. Kramer and Newman held a five-year grudge against the New York Mets (franchise) Hall of Famer. The hatred Kramer and Newman harbored towards Hernandez that came across the screen was palpable; you really felt as though Kramer and Newman was retaliate in an extreme manner if their paths ever cross. (well not really) Once the truth was revealed though that it was not Hernandez but in fact Roger McDowell that was the second-spitter, the hatred seemed to melt away and Kramer and Newman were fine with the Mets first baseman.
And isn’t that what we should do with our hate: let it melt away once we take a step back and think about why we hate someone. Do we REALLY hate that Barry Bonds (maybe) took some juice to stroke even more long balls then possibly lied about it? Do we REALLY hate that Clemens went back and forth every year like Favre? Do we REALLY hate that McGwire and Canseco started the stupid celebratory handshake craze? Do we REALLY hate these baseball players? Well, yeah. We do. We can’t help it. They play a game we all played as kids and sometimes they don’t seem to appreciate it. We know we would. It may be jealousy but it is sometimes cathartic to have a little hatred in our hearts. Because we “hate” some people, that just means we love our heroes even more. Without villains, heroes don’t exist, and we all need our heroes.
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