Idiots Write About Sports

Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers does not like cameramen. Not one bit.

The 40-year-old left-hander first shoved Fox Sports Net Southwest photographer David Mammeli, telling him: “I told you to get those cameras out of my face.”

Rogers then approached a second cameraman. He wrestled the camera from Larry Rodriguez of Dallas-Fort Worth television station KDFW, threw it to the ground and kicked it.

These were not cameramen jumping out of the bushes and scaring the poor Gambler half to death, by the way. Rather, they were rather innocuously filming the Rangers as the team filed out onto the field for batting practice before the Rangers-Angels game, a process repeated at ballparks across the country without aging left-handers going caveman on the fourth estate.

But don’t take my word for it. Let the cameras — those damn, dirty cameras that must be smashed! — tell the story. There’s an ESPN Motion clip of the incident— sadly, no direct link seems to be available, which makes me want to smash cameras — available at ESPN if you search long and hard enough.

Not to go off on a rhetorical flight of fancy here, but this is the second time in less than a year that a Ranger player has thrown a temper tantrum with unfortunate consequences. Last September, it was a relatively unprovoked Frank Francisco throwing a chair into the crowd at an A’s game. (As argued in this space previously, whatever you think of hecklers, you would certainly be hard pressed to find a string of words so vile that they needed to be fended off with a folding chair… particularly one thrown by a man sitting 100 feet away when the offending words were first uttered.) And now it’s Kenny Rogers, engaging in this not-terribly-constructive form of media criticism.

It is perhaps unfair to draw a connection between two different incidents involving two different hotheads who just happen to wear the same uniform. Then again, no one has a problem rattling off a series of unconnected incidents involving fan behavior at the Oakland Coliseum whenever someone in the crowd so much as farts in the general direction of the field. However, there is a connection in the way the Rangers opted to handle each incident — which is to say, mutter vague aphorisms about appropriate behavior and leave the actual disciplining to someone else.

That’s what happened with Francisco. Rangers brass, led by the ridiculous Buck Showalter tut-tutted the chair-throwing (while implicitly excusing it by blaming those dastard Oakland fans), but left any further reprimand to Major League Baseball’s 16-game suspension of Rodriguez and whatever punishment the Alameda County courts wind up dishing out. The only thing keeping Francisco out of a Ranger uniform at this point is the surgery he had on his right elbow — he was never in any danger of losing his job.

You have to figure that the same thing holds true for Rogers. The video I can’t link to has Ranger owner Tom Hicks sounding vaguely disapproving of unprovoked attacks on camera operators but hastening to add that Kenny Rogers is a fierce competitor. Sounds to me like the organization will be happy to let whatever suspension Major League Baseball doles out — a month, I’m going to guess — be the full extent of its disciplinary efforts.

And why not? Just like Francisco was a critical component to the Rangers’ better-than-expected bullpen last season, Rogers is one of the few Texas pitchers worth a good goddamn this year. And at the risk of repeating myself from the last time the Rangers let one of their misanthrope players off the hook, it’s a hell of a lot more convenient for Buck Showalter to take a stand against misbehaving players who don’t perform on the field than the ones who actually might help him win ballgames.

Perhaps the Rangers will surprise me and cut all ties to Rogers. I doubt it, though. I’m too familiar with the lyrics to this particular song and dance.

Update: David Pinto has a link that offers much more direct access to the video footage than hunting and pecking around ESPN.com.

Referenced by IntegrateIT, in the entry Kenny Roger vs. Cameramen:
Texas Rangers' pitcher Kenny Rogers had words a got physical with two cameramen before Wednesday's game. One of the cameramen went to a medical facility afterwards, probably with $$$ in his eyes and filed a police report. Complete story here.Some grea...

I actually laughed out loud at the headline, Phil -- good one ;-)

Sweet title!

I dunno. There was another Pinto story --

http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/010086.php

indicating the Rangers front office is actually feeding the media negative stories about Rogers. IMO they didn't want to long-term him, and were on their way to a divorce without being quite so up-front about it before this started.

I saw that story, too. And while I don't doubt there's a kernel of truth to it, it strikes me as odd that once the player a team is supposedly trying to drive out of town actually does something that would make his departure go down a lot easier, team officials get all mealey-mouthed about the guy. I mean Hart, Showalter, Hicks, et. al. can't even say something as bland and inoffensive as "assaulting cameramen is wrong" without going into contortions about what a heck of a competitior Kenny Rogers is.

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