The latest column from Folio Weekly’s A.G Gancarski is a potent, terrible mix. It combines rage and incoherence and raises the question: Does this sports columnist like anything about sports?
A.G. opens his latest pile of bitter, incoherent invective with the fact that pitcher Bert Blyleven finally got elected to the Hall of Fame. It’s not available on line and typing it all up would make me weep, but let’s hit the lowlights, shall we?
In preceding years, his numbers just weren’t good enough. Now, since he last pitched during the Poppy Bush administration,
Totally irrelevant political reference. The second time he was traded was during the Carter administration.
the question becomes, what exactly made him a more attractive candidate in 2011 than in 2001? The answer, lamentably, has less to do with the journeyman hurler than it does with what happened to the game itself since Blyleven retired.
This setup presents the opportunity to answer that question entertainingly. The short answer is most sportswriters recognize that a pitcher’s won-loss record is a terrible way to evaluate them. Blyleven’s election is an excellent chance to go into that. But that approach would restrict A.G.’s all-encompassing rage. Also, he wasn’t a journeyman, you fuckwit.
Specifically, the ’90s.
So this won’t really be about Blyleven. I hope it won’t be about steroids.
The time when every city with a baseball team felt compelled to build those hitter-friendly bandbox stadiums at taxpayers’ expense -- and why not, given how astronomically awesome the American economy was then?
Yep, he brings up steroids. Next is hacky criticism of Albert Belle and Barry Bonds that every other sportswriter has made.
And, of course, Brady Anderson -- the light-hitting, light-footed shortstop who somehow hit 50 home runs one year, never to come close to that number again.
Anderson was a centerfielder, but whatever. Then he makes fun of Sammy Sosa’s accent, linking him (incorrectly) with the ‘baseball’s been berry berry good to me’ line. Which was Saturday Night Live in the 70s, when Sammy was still a kid in San Pedro de Macoris. Then there’s this.
Yeah, baseball. And your prescribing doctor. And the myopic largesse of the flabby-hearted American taxpayer, deluded into equating the success of a professional sports concern with some vicarious accomplishment of his own.
Baseball+prescribing doctor+fat American taxpayers=what the fuck are you talking about? He then notes that the Hall of Fame inducted Blyleven and Roberto Alomar this year.
Strong choices, both.
Wait, didn’t you imply at the start that Blyleven’s selection was somehow wrong?
Never mind that when these guys were playing, they were built like Superstar Billy Graham at the height of his ’roid-driven performance.
I promise you that string of words appeared in his column. I wish there was a link (as opposed to Folio’s publisher, editor, writers, readers, advertisers, etc.). As far as I know Billy Graham was a non-juicing, non-baseball-playing evangelist.
But we pretended not to notice, because we wanted our heroes, our subjects of masturbatory fantasies.
Again, an actual string of words from A.G. I can’t really call it a sentence. Also, eww.
I remember it like it was yesterday, mostly because, when it was happening, I was an obese social isolate with little to do besides upsize combo meals and peruse prime time professional sports.
Now his simmering rage is starting to make sense. Which makes me wonder, why did Folio give a platform to write about sports to this bitter idiot? This is followed by a tedious rant aimed at Mark McGwire.
HA! Heard of GTMO buddy.
I’m going to assume he’s referring to Guantanamo Bay.
There is no presumption of innocence outside of a sixth-grade social studies text, not in this America,
as opposed to the alternative universe America in which A.G. is clever, articulate, slim and banging a different hottie each night.
where schools churn out semi-literate sociopaths who are ready-made customers of the prison-industrial complex, where they become made men, learning the lessons their gutless fathers couldn’t stick around to teach them.
My head is spinning (figuratively). Given the differences among the races in out-of-wedlock birth rates and incarceration, this sounds racist.
But fear not, all is not lost.
Don’t use the same word twice in a seven-word sentence, unless you’re poetic. And you’re not.
The owners got the ball parks. The juice boys got paid. Why keep them out of the HOF now?
Jesus. Are you now, at the end of your rambling, incoherent screed that suggested steroid users are cheaters who should be shunned from the Hall of Fame, saying go ahead and admit all of them? Stop writing.
A.G. opens his latest pile of bitter, incoherent invective with the fact that pitcher Bert Blyleven finally got elected to the Hall of Fame. It’s not available on line and typing it all up would make me weep, but let’s hit the lowlights, shall we?
In preceding years, his numbers just weren’t good enough. Now, since he last pitched during the Poppy Bush administration,
Totally irrelevant political reference. The second time he was traded was during the Carter administration.
the question becomes, what exactly made him a more attractive candidate in 2011 than in 2001? The answer, lamentably, has less to do with the journeyman hurler than it does with what happened to the game itself since Blyleven retired.
This setup presents the opportunity to answer that question entertainingly. The short answer is most sportswriters recognize that a pitcher’s won-loss record is a terrible way to evaluate them. Blyleven’s election is an excellent chance to go into that. But that approach would restrict A.G.’s all-encompassing rage. Also, he wasn’t a journeyman, you fuckwit.
Specifically, the ’90s.
So this won’t really be about Blyleven. I hope it won’t be about steroids.
The time when every city with a baseball team felt compelled to build those hitter-friendly bandbox stadiums at taxpayers’ expense -- and why not, given how astronomically awesome the American economy was then?
Yep, he brings up steroids. Next is hacky criticism of Albert Belle and Barry Bonds that every other sportswriter has made.
And, of course, Brady Anderson -- the light-hitting, light-footed shortstop who somehow hit 50 home runs one year, never to come close to that number again.
Anderson was a centerfielder, but whatever. Then he makes fun of Sammy Sosa’s accent, linking him (incorrectly) with the ‘baseball’s been berry berry good to me’ line. Which was Saturday Night Live in the 70s, when Sammy was still a kid in San Pedro de Macoris. Then there’s this.
Yeah, baseball. And your prescribing doctor. And the myopic largesse of the flabby-hearted American taxpayer, deluded into equating the success of a professional sports concern with some vicarious accomplishment of his own.
Baseball+prescribing doctor+fat American taxpayers=what the fuck are you talking about? He then notes that the Hall of Fame inducted Blyleven and Roberto Alomar this year.
Strong choices, both.
Wait, didn’t you imply at the start that Blyleven’s selection was somehow wrong?
Never mind that when these guys were playing, they were built like Superstar Billy Graham at the height of his ’roid-driven performance.
I promise you that string of words appeared in his column. I wish there was a link (as opposed to Folio’s publisher, editor, writers, readers, advertisers, etc.). As far as I know Billy Graham was a non-juicing, non-baseball-playing evangelist.
But we pretended not to notice, because we wanted our heroes, our subjects of masturbatory fantasies.
Again, an actual string of words from A.G. I can’t really call it a sentence. Also, eww.
I remember it like it was yesterday, mostly because, when it was happening, I was an obese social isolate with little to do besides upsize combo meals and peruse prime time professional sports.
Now his simmering rage is starting to make sense. Which makes me wonder, why did Folio give a platform to write about sports to this bitter idiot? This is followed by a tedious rant aimed at Mark McGwire.
HA! Heard of GTMO buddy.
I’m going to assume he’s referring to Guantanamo Bay.
There is no presumption of innocence outside of a sixth-grade social studies text, not in this America,
as opposed to the alternative universe America in which A.G. is clever, articulate, slim and banging a different hottie each night.
where schools churn out semi-literate sociopaths who are ready-made customers of the prison-industrial complex, where they become made men, learning the lessons their gutless fathers couldn’t stick around to teach them.
My head is spinning (figuratively). Given the differences among the races in out-of-wedlock birth rates and incarceration, this sounds racist.
But fear not, all is not lost.
Don’t use the same word twice in a seven-word sentence, unless you’re poetic. And you’re not.
The owners got the ball parks. The juice boys got paid. Why keep them out of the HOF now?
Jesus. Are you now, at the end of your rambling, incoherent screed that suggested steroid users are cheaters who should be shunned from the Hall of Fame, saying go ahead and admit all of them? Stop writing.
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