Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Ken: catfish AT zombia d.o.t. com
Ryan: rarmbrust AT gmail d.o.t. com
Philip: kingchimp AT alamedanet d.o.t net
According to the Oakland Tribune, Esteban Loaiza was arrested at 3AM on Wednesday morning for DUI and speeding. The CHP reported he was driving over 120mph.
It would sure be nice if the A's could use this as an excuse to get out of that contract, but invoking the "morals clause" in the standard player contract is very difficult to do even in the worst behavioral examples, and unlikely to succeed.
We're still stuck with him. I was having a hard time liking Loaiza to begin with, but I tried. Now, however, I shall now consider Loaiza as a resident of the deepest levels of my doghouse. He's going to have to not only play extremely well, but show show a healthy dose of genuine contrition and remorse, to have any chance of getting off my list of least-favorite Oakland Athletics players of all time.
I've been trying to come up with names, and I can't think of anyone who I actively hated to see in the uniform. I do not have particularly fond memories of Kenny Rogers (though I wonder how much of that is colored by his post-A's exploits) or Rueben Sierra, but that's as far as my thinking goes. I guess one of the latter installments of Rickey Henderson or the post-homeplate-missing Eric Byrnes also were unacceptable to me, but those were largely related to on-the-field issues as opposed to personality disorders (mine or theirs). Same goes for Jim Mecir, who my wife thinks is named "Oh no!" because that's what I yelled every time he came into a ballgame from 2003 onward.
... he's just Rob Picciolo
and everywhere he goes
people wonder why he's playing
bobbles every ball
running into walls
oooh .... what they're saying ...
So here are my top candidates:
Ruben Sierra
...big gap...
Arthur Rhodes
Randy Ready
Kevin Seitzer
Buddy Groom
Ernie Young
Jimmy Haynes
Jim Spencer
Don Baylor (twice!)
Ozzie Canseco
Mike Moore
Ariel Prieto
Ben Grieve
Johnny Damon
Mike Holtz
Mike Venafro
Charles Thomas
No Giambis, with 2 to choose from? I couldn't stand Jeremy Giambi even before he didn't slide.
I can't honestly say I disliked the Giambis while they were here. I dislike them now.
Terrence Long.
Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.