MY WORLD SERIES WISH LIST

By: B -- 10/23/05

I certainly have the Midas touch concerning the 2005 baseball season. Do I ever. My ineptitude is uncanny; every team I cheer for goes right down the tubes.

My baseball heart wholly belongs to the Twins, so of course they underachieved all season. Once the Twins dropped out of the race, I rooted for the Indians (a team I don’t even like) to overtake the White Sox in the standings. They did not. I then decided to root against the Yankees, which promptly resulted in them getting red-hot and earning a postseason berth.

On to the playoffs. I love the Red Sox; they got their asses handed to them by their whiter-socked foes. I then devoted my cheering to the Angels, who were then hastily dispatched by those same damn White Sox.

Yes, it’s been a frustrating 2005 season for me as a fan, which is why I’ve decided to root for three things to happen during the World Series, as opposed to simply choosing a team for which to root. More requests, more likely for one of them to come true, right? Here goes:

1. I want A.J. Pierzynski to suck.

As I’ve said before, I hate bush league players like AJ Pierzynski. You know them; they’re the cheerleader types with no integrity who get off on annoying the other team.

Amazingly, some players can perform well without acting like a jackass. Swear to God. You don’t see Derek Jeter or Albert Pujols clapping like morons every time they do something well; they’re used to being good. So why tolerate AJ’s antics?

Twins players griped about him, San Francisco players openly chastised him (apparently for being both annoying and lazy), and the only team to embrace him is the already-most-annoying-team-ever Chicago White Sox. Well, they can have him. I wish them a long and happy marriage.

All I ask is that AJ sucks in the World Series.

This doesn’t seem like too irrational a request; AJ has mostly sucked throughout the postseason. For all his lucky calls throughout the playoffs, AJ’s performance has been woefully average: he batted .257 during the regular season and is batting .258 during the playoffs. Not embarrassing, but certainly nothing to brag about.

There are numerous writers (including this website’s Matt Huss) and other media members singing Pierzynski’s praise because of his postseason performance. They’re claiming that AJ i is “a winner,” and “gutsy,” and “really stepping it up this postseason.” I have difficulty understanding how AJ is doing so well when he so obviously is not. Is he considered a winner just because he plays on the winning team? Tadahito Iguchi is batting .176 this postseason; is he a winner? Is he gutsy? What’s the diff?

Times like these make me feel like I’m in an episode of the Twilight Zone, where I’m the same but everyone else in the world has gone insane. Let’s keep our heads and act like adults: AJ is an immature and annoying player, slightly-better-than-average at his position, who has been on the fortunate end of two game-changing missed calls. Nothing more, nothing less. I shall now step down off my soapbox (but not for long).

2. I want Roger Clemens to suck.

Again, not a difficult request. He sucked in game one (two innings pitched, three earned runs) while battling a strained hammy. Convenient how Clemens comes up lame in almost every big game he pitches. No one craps the bed in the playoffs like Clemens; you could set your clock to it.

In the regular season, however, Clemens was practically unhittable, turning in a rub-your-eyes 1.87 ERA. Amazing stuff, even more impressive considering he’s 43 years old. I mean, my mom is 43 years old and she lost her split-finger over five years ago.

Even so, anyone who knows Clemens’ past couldn’t have been worried about him going into the postseason. He’s been famously horseshit in the playoffs even during his younger days in Beantown.

Remember that Clemens was the starting pitcher in the infamous game 6 in the ’86 World Series (the Buckner Game), before allegedly asking out of the game after the seventh inning due to a blister. A blister! Jack Morris could have had an ear chopped off in game 7 of the ’91 Series and he would have stayed in the game. There are pitchers who step up in big games, there are pitchers who perform the same, and there are pitchers who can’t handle the pressure. At best, Clemens belonged in the second category, but he was mostly in the third.

But let’s be clear: I don’t want Clemens to suck just because he usually does. That’s too easy. My dislike for Clemens goes much deeper than that, with much of my hatred stemming from what I learned from Boston sports fanatic/writer Bill Simmons. I’ll bullet-point this to keep it short (unlike my boy Simmons, who’d write 20,000 venom-spitting words about Clemens if given the space):

> From 1986 to ‘92, Clemens was a Boston demigod, winning three Cy Youngs for the Red Sox and setting all sorts of records. The fans loved him… but eventually learned they couldn’t fully trust him. Boston went 2-6 in playoff games started by The Rocket, which was the beginning of Clemens’ reputation for blowing the important games. Clemens was never an “I’ll carry this team myself” type of guy. As Simmons has said, “You could always count on him when it mattered least.”

> In 1996, after four years of injuries and erratic performances, Sox management offered the 34-year-old a less-than-astronomical contract offer, which he gruffly rejected before accepting an offer with the Toronto Blue Jays (aka the highest bidders).

> Clemens showed up to Toronto training camp in the best shape of his life and rattled off two straight Cy Young awards for a .500 ballclub, sending the proverbial middle finger to a Red Sox team who had the audacity to offer a reasonable contract to a player who basically sleepwalked through his previous four seasons.

> In ’98, illegally forced a trade to the Yankees (eventually winning two rings with them), causing Toronto fans to hate him and Boston fans to somehow summon even more hatred in their hearts. Through the eyes of a Boston fan, this was like Clemens stealing his girlfriend, then e-mailing some explicit sex pictures to him and everyone he knew.

> Threw a broken bat shard in the vicinity of Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series, which led to one of the most awkward scenes in recent baseball history: both players, tied for the honor of World’s Biggest Pussy, stood awkwardly about fifty feet away from each other until their teammates cleared benches to get in the middle of them, which of course led to both players doing the “hold me back!” routine. A historically pathetic moment for both players.

> Screwed over the Yankees by un-retiring to play for the Astros. Yankees fans never really liked him anyway, but I’ll bet they felt slighted for giving him such a warm send-off.

> Currently boasting a 5.63 ERA in the 2005 postseason. That makes four cities who have been burned by trusting Clemens as a decent person and big-game pitcher.

There are guys who have no connection with the fans, sometimes seeming oblivious to the role fans play in the game. There are guys who sign with the team who offers the most money, regardless of circumstance. There are guys who just never seem to show up in big games. Remarkably, Clemens fits all of these criteria, which makes me hate him way more than I hate AJ (and almost as much as my all-time most hated athlete Isaac Bruce).

All I’m asking for is Clemens’ postseason ineptitude to continue. Sounds feasible, doesn’t it?

3. I want the Astros to win the Series.

This is unfortunately intertwined to #2, and, even more unfortunate (since the Sox won game one), my most important request. As is public knowledge, I loathe the White Sox. In addition to AJ, I hate their pompom-waving manager, I hate the insane Carl Everett and I hate the soft-tossing glassy-eyed Mark Buerhle.

Also: I went to Cellular One Field (appropriately nicknamed “the Cell”) last month and had a terrible experience. The ballpark, still fairly new, was 100% blah; a cement behemoth located smack-dab in Southside Chicago, the armpit of the United States. The fans were pricks. There is nothing to like about the White Sox. Nada.

And besides Clemens, I rather like the ‘Stros team. Biggio and Bagwell have always been personable, workmanlike ballplayers, and how can you not love Lance Berkman? I was sold when I first learned his nickname is Fat Elvis. That nugget alone allowed me to forgive Andy Pettitte’s disco-tight pants.

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