Jeff Pearlman closes the door on John Rocker, and his guilt

Yeah, there were a lot of guys who were all business and a few who came pretty close to being rude to people, but none yelled at a kid. I always loved watching the athletes during those things, because you could get a sort of feel as to what they were really like. A lot were quiet, which was fine, but it made you appreciate the ones like Rickey Henderson and Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. I remember Henderson was hilarious because he was posing for so many pictures and personalizing autographs, which he wasn't supposed to do, the promoter came over and said, "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to stop with the photos because Mr. Henderson is on a tight schedule, and Rickey said, "Oh, it's OK, I'll stay later. You don't even have to pay me extra...."

Clark was the biggest asshole I saw by far. McGwire was a distant second. This was mostly guys who had some ties to the Bay Area.

 

Interesting ... I'd always heard Mays was kind of a dick.

A buddy of mine who grew up in Minneapolis used to hang out around the Twins' players entrance when he was a kid to try and get autographs. He once told me he asked Roy Smalley for an autograph and Smalley said "sorry, I've got to go meet my wife." He then got into his car and started reading the paper.

 

Rickey threw me a ball when I was a kid.
Lasorda is still king dick of all time relative to cuddly reputation. He is fat and mean-spirited, in that order.
Jim Carrey- another huge asshole who became an Internet troll at 50 as his talent and Q score went off a cliff.

 

Mays is a legendary dick.

A friend of mine was interviewing a prominent ballplayer live on the radio, talking about the players' relationships with the fans. The player said he had seen a baseball legend act like such a horrible jerk, he vowed to never be like him. Once they reached a commercial break my friend asked "Willie Mays, right?" He was right.

 

The piece struck me as prolonged navel gazing.

His books have been decent.

 

They're really not that good.
They're very safe choices that anybody with a smidge of talent could write the heck out of.

 

Mays shook hands and answered questions, which was more than what most did. This was ages ago and he was surrounded by Giants fans, so who knows? Henderson is known for being a lunatic, but I always loved the guy after that show. He was tremendous. He had just gone to the Yankees and was wearing a Yankees hat and a kid asked him to put on an A's hat for a photo and he happily obliged.

Hank Aaron, who, recent comments aside, is a great, great guy, never looked up for three hours. There's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it disappoints the masses.

 

Really McGwire? When was this? Post-roids scandal?
I always thought he was kind of quite. Not a jerk and no-where near the Will Clark orbit.

 

Know who was shockingly nice at a card show when he was younger? Barry Bonds. In 1987, BYM2 was taken to a card show in suburban Pittsburgh by BYM2 (BitterYoungMomador2), where Bonds was signing autographs. Mom looks at Bonds while he is signing a head shot and says, "I know you! You're a pitcher!" While I wanted to crawl under the fucking table, Bonds laughed, took it in stride and said no, no he plays in the outfield. I'll never deny Bonds isn't a huge dick, but I'll never forget his reaction nor my Mom's temporary insanity at age 36.

 

My dad always claimed that Denny McClain took my dad's younger brother's bat on bat day and, rather than autographing it as requested, snapped it in half, just to be a dick, and walked away laughing his ass off.

 

McGwire was nowhere close to being as much of a dick as Will Clark, but he was pretty bad. There were a lot of Bay Area writers rolling their eyes at all of the warm and fuzzy stories that came out during the HR chase.

This was pretty early in his career, it wasn't even 1990, because I wasn't at shows nearly that often after I turned 16.

 

Hank Aaron was dead on: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/24527622/braves-receiving-racist-letters-regarding-hank-aarons-comments