Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Why Jose Offerman is Banned from Baseball (in multiple countries) & I Can't Stop Watching?



First you read the headline, then you watch the video.

Offerman gets lifetime Dominican ban (ESPN Desportes)

Please note: This article is not the hysterical Nick Offerman AKA Ron Swanson, the best part of NBC's Parks & Recreation. He is allowed to go to the DR any time he wants (as far as I know anyway).



I'm sure I'm not the only person who is unable to avoid clicking on a link when it involves rage and an athlete. Every sporting event is filmed from t-ball games to NCAA Women's Field Hockey. What is more shocking nowadays is when you hear about something and you can't immediately type the incident into Google and find a video of it (like when you type "Tiger Wood's buxom wife" & "golf club").

Videos have become so pervasive that they become expected. Reality shows whittle days of life into one hour segments giving people hours of entertainment, gossip for days and memories of another person's life for a lifetime. Yes I know, Jersey Shore's the greatest and you can't believe I'm not DVRing it.

Still, when someone mentions blowup and sports, count me in.

I love the minor league manager tirade collection, the angry coach post game press conferences featuring the Jim Moras, the Dennis Greens, and the Mike "I'm a man! I'm 40!" Gundys. Man, Gundy had the speech of a lifetime in that one. o this day, it still gets me right into stitches. Bad days, all I need is Mike Gundy:


To me, there is a difference between watching tempers boil on a ballfield and rubbernecking at the scene of a car accident. One is a choice and one is mistake. It may be a choice that comes filled with unpreventable rising adrenaline and pure competitive fire that only a professional (or a onetime professional can have). That one time professional in this case is two time all star, ex-Dodgers porous gloved infielder turned every team's utility man Jose Offerman. He ended is major league career where many eroding-skilled Latin-born players (usually infielders) end up, on the New York Mets where, as any tortured fan knows, these players end up overstaying their welcome, followed by an unnecessary contract extension that overpays them handsomely. (see Luis Castillo, Roberto Alomar, Carlos Delgado).


There's our man Jose.

In 2007, Offerman turned up in the independent Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks, with rosters full of "players who are not quite talented enough to play at a higher level." (Wikipedia) In comparison to pros, the top Atlantic League players make about $3000 per month, while most make somewhat less. Despite the incentive of that large paycheck, Offerman did not make it through the 2007 season due to the images in the youtube compilation...


If a picture is worth a thousand words than are one hundred pictures are one-hundred-thousand words?

First you read the headline, then you watch the video. Offerman was suspended indefinitely pending legal action against him. In the criminal case, he eventually received a special probation as the action was seen as an aberration & that he would be unlikely to offend in the future.

Until two years later that is. It seems Offerman has now left the world of player on player violence and entered the world of manager on umpire violence. Offerman was managing the champions of the Dominican Winter league, the Licey Tigers, when the fury got the best of him again. Can you have two aberrations?


Offerman received the Pete Rose treatment, banned for life from the league.

Is this funny? Probably not. It's kind of sad. Offerman has to be blackballed by any type of professional baseball for the rest of his life. Here is where it gets kind of weird.

Offerman had become interim manager of the Tigers, replacing Dave Jauss who was suspended by the league for two years for bumping an umpire during a playoff game. Coincidentally, Juass has become the bench coach for the Mets for next season, meaning if Mets manager Jerry Manuel is ejected from a game then Juass will take over. If I were an ump, I wouldn't mess with any former Licey Tigers managers.

It all comes full circle. Get thrown out of the Dominican league and becomes a member of the Mets staff, the team that takes Latin players when their careers are over, the same team where Jose Offerman ended his career. It has to be more than a coincidence.

4 comments:

herb said...

It should be pointed out that Offerman was standing maybe 3 inches from the umpire and somehow missed him with that punch. And then the umpire took a dive. Go back and look at the replay, theres some serious WWF stuff going on. This was staged. Not sure why, but it was.

kate said...

i dont know herb - he went down pretty fast. still a shame though, calm down everybody - lets all get along.

airo said...

i think he also might have dropped but the finish was of WWE caliber.

also, he's an ump, so he's a pussy.

Anonymous said...

Interesting back story to the Gundy rant:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3341578