Seems that ever since the Ron Artest incident, the commissioners in the sports world go out of their way to heavily suspend and fine the athletes for overreacting to seemingly ordinary incidents. I’m not sure why Kenny R went all Sean Penn on these two. Maybe a glare from a lens got into his eyes. Maybe he had a Dead Zone/That’s So Raven premonition that a Princess Diana or a Lindsay Lohan-type disaster would befall him courtesy of the paparazzi. Either way, that’s no excuse for storm trooping the two. He should have ignored them, or do what Kareem Abdul Jabbar did when a papar taped him strolling in a mall with his family: get very close, then casually kick the camera. He might get suspended for that, but it would be short and to the point, instead of being drawn-out and idiotic.
Still, Rogers gets twenty games, or around four starts, for that? I don’t know. If he kicked one of them in the nuts, would he get only 15, like Rodman did?
Kenny Rogers has been an asshole for years, and has never spared the media his opinion of them.
These were not paparazzi stalking him- these were sports media cameramen filming players on the field before a sporting event! If you don’t want to be photographed, retire.
The guy’s a jerk and I think the suspension is right on.
I meant that he had a 100 percent correct premonition that something disatrous would befall him, like what Stephen King had written about years back. So Kenny took action to prevent the disaster, like what the Dead Zone character did. In doing so, he created his own disaster.
He wasn’t on the DL, but yes, he did break a bone in his non-pitching hand hitting a water cooler. While some of the medical folks have hinted that he should be able to play, he elected not to make his next start. Some of the Leering Press in Dallas have opined that he should be playing and he’s either 1) a wimp, or 2) not wanting to hurt his record during a contract year by pitching when the team is slumping and is using his hand as an excuse. This pissed Kenny off more than he already was/is. (There’s only one person in the media Kenny will talk to – Dallas Morning News writer Evan Grant. He refuses to speak to anyone else.)
On that particular evening, there was more press around than normal, owing to the fact that Kenny had broken some sort of framed picture in the clubhouse the day before because he was angry.
He’s always been a hothead, but he’s played for the Rangers three different times and had built up a lot of personal equity in this town. He threw most if away that evening.
My fantasy is that the cameraman is actually a former Navy Seal who proceeds to beat the ever-living shit out of Kenny Rogers while another cameraman films the whole thing. Or would that be wrong?
It may be his job to throw baseballs, but in today’s world of ESPN and MLBTV, it’s flat-out unreasonable to think that one can just avoid the media at all costs. From what I can tell, it’s not that the cameraman or anybody was asking him for any sort of interview or anything, just filming him and the other Rangers before the game. I think it is absurd that a professional athlete in any sport, especially one of some stature as Kenny Rogers has gotten some (though not overwhelming) talk of a Cy Young, to expect that they can avoid being the media. At the ball park, no less.
Perhaps I’m being too influenced by the Rockies’ broadcasters take on it this evening, and too influenced by the media attitude toward Eddie Murray, who never spoke, but also never attacked. paraphrase=“Doesn’t he realize who pays his salary?” Nobody ever stayed in the major leagues because he smiled pretty for the camera. The media has no right to hound a player; the media does have a right to not be attacked.
A little. I was more taking exception at the line “but I’m not happy with the concept that ballplayers have a responsibility to feed the media. They don’t.” In this case, I don’t feel as if the media was “hounding” or really doing anything at all to Kenny Rogers. They were filming everybody on the field as they warmed up. From what I’ve seen, Rogers ran out onto the field and the cameraman turned without having any advance indication of who it was. Rogers took exception at simply being filmed. We agree that his suspension was deserved, I just don’t feel as if the media was demanding to be fed at this point.
