HawaiiYou wrote:
The Hawk wrote:
Zippy-The-Pinhead wrote:
I’ll alway remember him for being a jerk to a young girl asking for his autograph at Sox Spring Training in Sarasota back in the day. The younger players were great though. It still seems odd but the field was surrounded by chain link fence back then so you could easily walk up behind players and chat with them. They also passed right through the crowd entering and exiting the field.
Yeah. People, especially young kids used to idolize these guys and some of these guys were assholes. Or other times, the player was simply having a shit day? When I was a kid my Dad took me outside the ramp where the players walked to get onto the field for an autograph. I asked one of my heroes, Nellie Fox, for one and he told me to get the hell away from him. My dad started to go after him and Billy Goodman intervened and gave me an autograph and told my dad, forget Fox, he's an asshole.
Biggest baseball player assholes Hall of Fame : Tom Seaver, Johnny Bench. maybe Bench has mellowed out but he was a real attractive lady after retirement from the stories I've heard thru the years.
I don't find any of the stuff unusual about a lot of great baseball players or pro athletes in general being assholes. Depending on what era you are talking about, the money wasn't anywhere approaching what it is nowadays, there were few long term contracts so competition for jobs was always going on and hence money. Until the Curt Flood situation, players were locked to a team for the duration most likely and the unions were weak until they got organized and powerful. A lot of even the stars were bitter because the owners had all of the power and they really didn't.
What this did, though, was result in a very balls out game by the players, much to the fans delight. Players played tough and in a lot of cases dirty with head hunting, brush backs, taking out middle infielders, barreling over catchers, etc. That was just the way the game was back then. There were on field fights all of the time. Now, if a pitcher throws a curve ball and the player has to duck, he glares back at the offending pitcher and shouting from phony "toughguys" erupts and the managers want the opposite team to APOLOGIZE for shit that happened on the field.
This is not to say, though, that the game back then was better in all aspects nor is today's game better either. The game is just greatly different with some parts better(namely the elimination basically of head hunting and deliberately trying to disable an opponent) today while the tinkering with the ball, the addition of roids and cheating in the game much worse.
So, while I hated Nellie Fox for a long long time after he blew my off for an autograph, I forgive the SOB for stiffing me and thank Billy Goodman for his autograph.
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