Braves Collection: John Rocker

2000 Impact

I suppose I could go off on a rant here and talk about how I think John Rocker is perhaps the dumbest player in the history of baseball, but honestly, that's typing more about him than the little brained jerk deserves. (I certainly won't quote the guy ... I'd hate to attract the wrong element through the occasional Google search.)

Of course, I could also go off on a rant about how he was more than happy to run his mouth to the press, but when it came time to back it up on the field, he folded. He choked. He crumbled. He was pathetic and he became a bad, bad joke. I won't talk about that though.

Instead, I'll state the obvious. For a short period of time, John Rocker was very, very good. Loving attention, both good and bad even more than your typical professional athlete, he decided to build his image through the press. He gave a series of relentlessly self-promoting interviews that culminated with the Sports Illustrated story that sent the country into a feeding frenzy. Rocker's performance really didn't seem to suffer that much at first but he was clearly unbalanced mentally. (He was even demoted at one point for threatening a reporter.) Many of his teammates couldn't bring themselves to say a single nice word about him. Eventually, the Braves would tire of his act and send him packing. His career collapsed.

Now, John Rocker is a bitter man who blamed the disaster of his big league career on anyone but himself. His career collapsed when he gave a self-promoting interview to Sports Illustrated, and then blamed the reporter for printing the words he said in an interview. On the record. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

John Rocker now sells real estate in the Altanta market and pretends to be offended when he overhears someone speaking in Spanish. He is also my least favorite player in the history of Major League Baseball. Here's to you John, you stupid, stupid man.

Dang, I did type a lot.