Welcome to the final blog post of 2012. No Friday conversation today, sorry; I guess it’s turning into more of an occasional feature.
In this day and age of Twitter, it seems – actually, the emergence of Twitter seems to have exacerbated an already existing phenomenon – nothing or no one is just OK anymore. It, he or she is either loved or hated, black or white.
This annual exercise, then, tries to pull things back into the middle. Who or what in the baseball world (and occasionally outside the baseball world) is overrated – not as great as perceived – and who or what is over-hated – not as terrible as believed? These are my judgments:
Sandy Alderson: Over-hated
Jason Bay: Over, mercifully. Nice guy.
Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez: Overrated. Exponentially so when bundled.
Tom Brady: Over-hated
Melky Cabrera: I don’t know, but come on, the whole phony website thing was hilarious, wasn’t it? It was like when they set up the fake town in “Blazing Saddles,” only not as successful.
Robinson Cano, Joe Girardi, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher: Over-hated, over-hated, over-hated, over-hated (Spoken while checking off air boxes, a la Elaine saying, “Fake, Fake, Fake, Fake” in this “Seinfeld” episode.
Brian Cashman: Over-Pineda’d
“A Christmas Story: The Musical”: Overrated
Roger Clemens: Over-hated
Terry Collins: Neither
R.A. Dickey: Over…eh, enough on him already.
“Gangnam Style”: Over-hated
Ozzie Guillen: Over-elated by Fidel Castro’s staying power
Josh Hamilton: Both
Instagram: Overrated
Derek Jeter: Overrated
Jeremy Lin: Overrated
The New York City Marathon: Overrated by the people who put it together
NFL refs: Overrated
The Orioles: Over-run-differentiated
Jose Reyes: Over-hated
Alex Rodriguez: Overstimulated
Rich Rodriguez: Overrated
The San Francisco Giants: Over-paraded
Marco Scutaro: Overrated
Shutting Down Stephen Strasburg: Over-hated
John Stearns: Over-hated
Ichiro Suzuki: Overrated
The Triple Crown: Overrated
Mike Trout: Over-hated
Bobby Valentine: Over-hated
Working together to overcome adversity: Over-hated
David Wright: Just about, well, right.
Delmon Young: Overraged. Whoops, hit the wrong key. I meant “Overrated.”
–Happy holidays, and happy and healthy 2013 to all. See you on January 7, 2013.
