Big Hypocrite

Who here likes old school baseball?

Because I sure do.  Hell, if I'm a pitcher (and a damn good one too) and you're a hitter and you tag me for a couple of home runs in the playoffs you can rest assured you are going to get plunked the next time I see you.

It would be disrespectful for me not to hit you.  There have been too many great players in this great game that have understood how it goes and carried on anyways.  Nobody is bigger than the game and the great ones truly understand that.  Derek Jeter still goes to bed every night thanking his lucky stars that he gets to play short-stop for the New York Yankees, as his job, and then he proceeds to ravage whatever super model he wrangled that night.  Good for him and we all tip our caps to him.

It's an honor and a privilege to play the game of baseball and it's also a weird fraternity that has weird rules that date back before the invention of refrigerators.  Unless you are Shane Victorino who stands exactly on top of the plate while batting you have a few reasons why you were just hit by a ball thrown by the pitcher:

1. He's throwing erratically and it was bound to happen anyways.
2. You are Alex Rodriguez.
3. It's baseball, you should have seen it coming and that's why we make pads now, jackass.

There it is.  It's really quite simple.

Then you have players like David Ortiz who just really doesn't understand why he's the biggest hypocrite in baseball and if it weren't for Donald Sterling it would be all of sports.

The Tampa Bay Rays have an ace pitcher, his name is David Price, and he owns a Cy Young award.  They only give those out to the best pitcher of each league each year.  The Rays played the Boston Red Sox last year in the playoffs and David Ortiz hit two home runs off of David Price.  By the way, the Rays did not win that series.

The first time David Price saw David Ortiz this year he plunked him with a pitch to pretty much his ass region.  Clearly this was not trying to invoke injury as Ortiz has quite the padded posterior since he spends most of his time on the bench.  As a designated hitter he is only required to hit and not do half the stuff that everybody else on his team is doing.  This wasn't malicious of Price.  This was baseball.  This was 'you beat me pretty good last year now take your lumps and let's move on'.

Only Ortiz didn't see it that way.  He took exception to the beaning and when you are the King of Beans your voice gets heard by ESPN.  Ortiz said he no longer had any respect for David Price and that this game that children play on the regular in suburban parks with Popsicle breaks had now become 'war'.  War?  Really?  Have you seen war?  Because I feel like you haven't.  You wouldn't use that word for a baseball game if you knew what it meant.  A guy throws a baseball at your ass and it's a declaration of war?  No congress would ever substantiate that decree.

David Ortiz put on his tiara and little pink Tutu and yelled, "Mommy, that guy hit me!"

David Price came back and said, quite simply, that David Ortiz thinks he's bigger than the game--which is strange because you never really find a lot of pretentious behavior coming out of Boston...(cough cough)

Let's now flash forward to tonight's game between the Rays and Red Sox in which Ortiz was facing three-year man Chris Archer.  Archer started the third inning with a walk and a base hit to let two men on for Ortiz in a scoreless game.  Archer struck out Ortiz in the first inning with a change-up and I was fearful he would try it again in the third.  Alas, my fears came true when Archer threw the change-up and Ortiz sent it over the wall for a three-run home run.

Here's where I take issue:  Ortiz hits the home run, flips his bat, stands there and stares at the dugout, turns, and then leisurely trots around the bases as if he just hit the home run that cured cancer.  It's as if he almost forgot that he was in Tampa, in the third inning of a game that goes at least nine, and that his team was in last place and putting up their starting pitchers on the trading block as the hours ticked by.

Look, there's a lot of rules in baseball that are hard to follow and get misinterpreted as the years go by but I think it's pretty rudimentary that if you hit a home run and stand there and taunt the team that gave it up that you better be prepared for some sort of retaliation.

David Ortiz is ridiculous.  He expects the baseball world to bow to him while he pisses all over their backs.  It's ridiculous how brainwashed he has people too.  Even the great Carl Yastrzemski thinks that Ortiz is a better hitter than him and is only second to Ted Williams.  I just puked.

Yaz is obviously slipping in his older age and it makes me sad.  Yaz won the triple crown, he has 3,419 hits, 452 home runs, and oh by the way has seven golden gloves which they only give to people THAT PLAY IN THE FIELD!  David Ortiz shouldn't even be allowed to say Edgar Martinez' name without feeling ashamed of himself, let alone Carl Yastrzemski giving credit to someone who won't even appreciate it.

The rest of the game goes by without incident for some reason.  I didn't get it at the time but afterwards I can only imagine it's because we're going to let David Price do the dirty work when the Rays welcome the Red Sox back to the Trop in late August.  When interviewed after the game Archer just pointed to Price and said that he was right when he recognized that Ortiz thinks he's bigger than the game.  Ortiz simply just made fun of how little time Archer has spent in the major leagues...just like the classy guy he is.

For someone who boldly took the face of a city in the midst of a tragedy just a year ago to act the way he has this year is absolutely appalling.  I don't know about the rest of you but I like my heroes to not be cry babies.

David Ortiz is apparently okay with rules as long as they don't apply to him.  I'm okay with never letting David Ortiz see another pitch from any Rays pitcher again...so long as it hits him square in the back.  We'll have the pity party meeting him at first base.

Float on, graceful swans.