Tarnish

Tarnish

We project all sorts of stuff onto professional athletes, usually a mix of voyeurism and hero worship:  That could be me out there in centerfield.  The Mick is a great guy, a wonderful human being.  I mean, he hit a pitch over the scoreboard in right.

It’s a natural tendency that doesn’t hurt anyone, provided you remember heroes have been known to have feet of clay on more than one occasion.  The real problem is when athletes won’t play along in our little fantasy game.  They prefer being jerks.

The White Sox last won a World Series in 2005 with a roster that had two questionable personalities, starting with catcher A.J. Pierzynski.  A.J. was—and is—a jerk, the kind of guy who’ll bump you on purpose and probably spike you too, I’ll bet.  But he’s always played hard, stayed out of jail and never been out of a MLB job for the past nineteen years.  So with A.J., you project at your own risk.

The same was true of outfielder/DH Carl Everett, a fairly unpleasant fellow who once grabbed his crotch after hitting a homerun and earned a 10-game suspension for bumping an umpire during an argument.  On top of that, Everett let the world know he didn’t believe in dinosaurs, which earned him the most suitable of nicknames, the Truthasaurus.  Everett didn’t do a whole lot with the Sox other than make fans scratch their heads over why Kenny Williams acquired him in the first place. 

And now the Cubs have made their own head-scratching move by acquiring closer Aroldis Chapman from the Yankees in what is being heralded as the move that gets the team into the World Series.  Theo Epstein and the front office claim they told Chapman over the phone that they expect him to behave—no more domestic abuse allegations, please—only Chapman said in an interview he didn’t remember what team officials said in the call; he’d been sleeping just before.  But he can throw the ball at 105 MPH, so all is forgiven.

As with A.J., only now taken to the nth degree, you project at your own risk.