A.J. Pierzynski: A case study

May 22nd, 2006 | Posted by PostmanR

I know A.J. Pierzynski is an asshole. And I know he isn’t liked by many players and a good number of baseball fans. And if I wasn’t a White Sox guy, I wouldn’t like him either. But I am, and because of it, I love his style of play.

His decision to run on the supposed dropped third strike against the Angels in game two of the ALCS was a heads-up, smart play.

And if you think that Pierzynski’s running over of Michael Barrett on Saturday was a dirty play, you don’t know baseball. If a catcher is blocking the plate, you have every right to mow him over. That’s baseball.

At lot of people are claiming the fight happened because it was Pierzynski’s jerk reputation preceding itself, but I’d blame it more on a combination of that and Barrett’s reputation of losing his cool. Last week against the Padres, the Cubs catcher got into it with David Roberts of the San Diego Padres. In 2004, benches cleared at Wrigley Field as Barrett jawed with Roy Oswalt of the Astros at home plate. Barrett was the one who said ‘I didn’t even have the f’n ball, bitch’ to Pierzynski and threw a cheap shot punch. (Although it didn’t help that A.J. nudged him as he went for his helmet.)

People didn’t like that Pierzynski raised his arms to the crowd and came back to the dugout fired up while giving out high fives to his teammates after the fight. And again, if I’m an outside observer watching this, I’d be annoyed. But as a Sox fan, I like that a guy shows a little fire, emotion and passion.

Bottom line, if you don’t have Pierzynski on your team, you aren’t going to like him. If he’s on your team, you’re going to love him. It’s as simple as that.

I know everyone has probably seen this clip a bazillion times by now, but hey, we’re going to put it up on our site for your viewing pleasure because this happened Saturday and we weren’t blogging. There’s not a thing you can do about it, okay?

Enjoy.