Shock: Jonathan Papelbon doesn’t read books

March 20th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Remember in high school, when, on the first day, a teacher would do those ice-breaker exercises, even if you went to a school with 480 kids and everyone knew everyone (intimately) anyway? And inevitably, you’d have to name something interesting you did over the summer, and the best book you read? The really proud-to-be-smart nerds would drop Faulkner or Hemingway. The eager dummies would say The Da Vinci Code. And, without fail, a jock or two would proudly blurt “ESPN the Magazine.” Everyone would laugh, the teacher would get pissed, and the jock would look around and be like, “Yo, what? I don’t read books, teach!” And the kid currently composing this way-too-long paragraph would have such hazy memories of high school he could only recall people according to the nonexistent cliques in his brain? Remember that?

Well guess what: Jonathan Papelbon is that jock:

The approximately 19-hour trip to Japan that the Red Sox embarked upon last night was going to feature an array of time-killing devices but the No. 1 diversionary tactic is going to be poker, the Texas Hold ’Em variety.

“I’m going to play the whole trip,” closer Jonathan Papelbon said. “My plan is to slow play the (expletive) out of them and take all their money.”

He had no other plans. Reading is out.

“I don’t read books,” he said.

Willful ignorance usually makes E an angry boy, but I don’t even mind this. It’s widely known that Papelbon is a big dumb goof anyway — just look at that picture, for god’s sake — so what, we expect him to whittle his 19-hour flight down by diving into Pynchon? Please. There’s enough room in this world for another dumbass. As long as he has that unhittable splitter, anyway.

Plus, books are ruining baseball. Or was that computers? I can never get the two straight. Ah, that’s right: books written by computers are ruining baseball. Fixed.