Asshole Of The Week: Greg from Cleveland

Welcome to Asshole Of The Week, where every Friday your trusty Foul Balls editor picks out the one person from the previous seven days who makes him think, "Man, what an asshole." It could be anybody from an athlete, an owner, someone in the media, or just anybody who happens to catch my ire.

This week's Asshole Of The Week is actually a bit of a hybrid post, because I hear that these hybrids are good for the environment, and since Earth Day was earlier this week, I figure I should do something.

So this one's for you, Earth! I love you, ya big blue bastard.

I call it a hybrid because not only will it feature the biggest asshole I came across this week, but it's also a FanHouse commenter, so it's kind of a "Typing in CAPS LOCK" as well. I met this FanHouse commenter-whose name is Greg, and he's from Cleveland- earlier this week when I wrote a satirical post in which I pretended to be the Cleveland Indians putting out a want ad for a left fielder.

I was inspired by this article I read in Cleveland Morning Journal. It was an article about the platoon the Indians use in left-field having a Major League worst .186. So instead of just taking those stats and recycling it into a post, I decided to do something new. My bosses at FanHouse have been telling me they want me to highlight my retarded sense of humor a bit more, and I thought the want ad would be the perfect way to humorously say that the Indians left-fielders suck.

Well, as with any fan base, there are a few fans who cannot stand when you say their team, or a player on it, sucks. Even if it's obvious to anybody who's paid any amount of attention to that team.

One of those fans was our Asshole Of The Week, Greg in Cleveland, who responded to my post with this.

Have you even watched the Indians yet this year?... Dellucci has actually been one of the most productive hitters on the team in his 35 at-bats. .257 AVG. .395 OB% .429 SLG% 1HR 7 RUNS 4 RBI. In addition he's had a number of hard hit balls recorded for outs. I agree Micheals isn't hitting, but I would at least do some re-search instead of reading somebody else's opinion and literally just playing copy and paste.

First of all, research doesn't need the hyphen. Let's get that straight. Then what's with the ellipses after the question mark in the first sentence? (Christ, I've become Panger) And to answer that question, yeah, they've played the White Sox six times already, of course I've watched them.

Finally, how in the hell am I playing copy and paste? There wasn't an unoriginal word in that article, I didn't even quote anything from the article, I just referenced it with a link. I asked Greg these same things in my own comment, and then informed him that if a .257 average is what he wants out of his left-fielder, good for him. I'm of a different opinion myself.

To which Greg replied,

.257 Avg???? He's a #2 hitter with a .395 OB% at this point. That's setting the table just fine. I guess you forgot to look at the production from places like 3B/RF/etc. because you don't actually follow the team.. Those are spots where we are recieving literally NO production. Instead you recycled someone else's garbage, and didn't look very smart for it. Furthermore my original point wasn't to say Dellucci should be on an all-star team, but that he should be recognized as one of the few players who is playing above expectations.

Yeah, you said yourself, he has a .257 batting average. As for his .395 OBP, he'd had 35 at bats on the season up to that point, do you honestly think a guy with a career .330 OBP is going to maintain that for a season? At 34 years of age?

I don't look very smart? You're the one who can't spell received, and you're the one who's spending his time arguing with a blogger in a comment section over David fucking Dellucci. Not even Dellucci's parents have spent this much time defending their son in his lifetime.

That's when I came up with this witty little response that was sure to shut Greg up.

Apparently I should have titled this post:

Wanted: Cleveland Indians Fan With Sense of Humor

Burn! Oh my God, I am hilarious. Seriously, if there was a Nobel Prize for comedy, I'd have like seven of those things already. Two for the Indians post alone. Still, Greg did not see the humor in my comment.

Never been to Cleveland, Huh? Seriously we hate clueless mainstream media.

You also hate grammar. In English, we don't capitalize the word "huh" unless it's the first word in a sentence. Like when your teacher used to ask you what 5+5 was and you replied, "Huh? I don't know, twelve?"

And clueless mainstream media!? You do realize you're reading a blog, right? Blogs are hardly mainstream media, my friend. We're kinda the anti-mainstream media. Luckily, another commenter named Eggs pointed this out for me.

Mainstream media!? Calling this mainstream media is like calling Pauly Shore an Oscar contender.

Finally, there was another commenter from Cleveland, who also is named Greg. The difference between this Greg and our AOTW Greg is that I like this Greg.

This is another Indians fan, and another Greg. I thought this entry was hilarious, and think the Greg commenting above me is an idiot. That is all...

Thank you, Greg #2. You may be known as Greg #2, but you're #1 in our hearts.

So you would think that this is where the feud would end, but you're wrong. The next day I wrote a post about Indians pitcher Jake Westbrook going on the disabled list, and in it I mentioned how the Indians had called up outfielder Ben Francisco from Triple-A. The reason they called him up? In hopes that he could fill the void out in left field.

This angered OG, Original Greg, greatly. Once again, somebody had to stand up for David Dellucci.

Yup man Dellucci has been brutal....

.289AVG 2HR 6RBI 8R .939 OPS and an OB% over .400 now hitting out of the #2 spot....

Great Indians coverage, you really know this team Fornelli.

Now at the point when Greg wrote the comment, he had seen Dellucci's numbers rise thanks to a strong performance that night. As I noted earlier, he'd only had 35 at bats this season, so one decent night is going to inflate his stats. Of course, this all came 4 hours after I wrote the post when Dellucci still sucked. So in other words, I'm a horrible writer who knows nothing because I can't see the future.

It was at this point where I knew that Greg was going to be the AOTW, and frankly, I wanted nothing more to do with him. So I wrote this comment after his.

Greg,

I don't know if you noticed the time stamp on this post, but it was written before David's 2-for-5 with a homer and 2 RBI performance of Tuesday night.

So I guess you're right, I do a horrible job of covering the Indians in the future.

As for his production so far, if you want to believe that Delluci is going to continue to hit at such a clip, by all means, continue building his wing in the Hall of Fame.

I'm more of the opinion that he's going to regress to the career .260 hitter he's always been. If that kind of production is good enough for you from your left fielder, a traditional power position, then whatever, to each his own.

Finally, if you hate my coverage of the Indians so much, then why the hell do you continue to read me? There are plenty of other places you can get your Indians needs if FanHouse isn't good enough for you.

May I suggest Let's Go Tribe, The Diatribe, Tribe Report or Tribe Treasures? All wonderful blogs that do fantastic jobs of covering the Indians.

Have a nice day,
Tom Fornelli

I'll bet you can't guess what kind of response I got.

First of all don't ever suggest Indians Coverage to me (A thousand pardons, your majesty!) cause you don't know where to even start to look (Yes I do. I just gave you like five fucking examples!). Secondly you look dumb to Indians fans when you write Dellucci's name in this post. (Yes, like that Indians fan in the other post that said you are an idiot. I look dumb to him.) He was hitting when you wrote your last post, and he's hitting now. So when you say there can't be much worse of an option than Dellucci you sound just plain stupid. I'm not asking you to look into the future, just look at the facts before you rip off some other site's opinion. (I used stats. Stats aren't opinions, they're numbers. An opinion is more like "I think Greg in Cleveland is a mongoloid.) The sad thing is how wrong you know you are.....Never mention Dellucci and the HOF (I know you didn't mention it, I was making fun of you and your undying love for him.)...You just seem desparate (despErate. When did I become such a grammar Nazi? Thank God I don't read my own posts.) to get a point across that every moron that watches any baseball already knows. Go save some face with someone who doesnt know any better...

Sorry, man. You're right. You obviously know more about baseball than me, because any real baseball fan knows that it just doesn't get any better than David Dellucci. I mean, he's awesome. Four out of 5 dentists agree that you'd rather have Dellucci in left field than, say, Manny Ramirez.

What could I have been thinking?

Greg in Cleveland, you're our Asshole Of The Week. Congratulations. Now have fun living in Cleveland. Home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and despair.