“This Baseball Season, Just Take Me Out”
JMB · April 1, 2005 at 10:13 am · Filed Under General baseball
I love articles like this. Weren’t people saying the same thing after 1994? And when Alex Rodriguez signed his $252M contract? Yeah, they were. And — I’m just guessing here, based on attendence numbers — most of those people either came back to the game or didn’t even give it up in the first place.
Seriously, though, I think the world is a better place with one less smug Yankees fan… so I say good riddance, Matt Villano!
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24 Responses to ““This Baseball Season, Just Take Me Out””
The article isn’t even compelling. “Baseball took away my beer and t-shirts that say suck. . . I can’t watch, it’s not pure anymore.” Wow, he really loved the game.
Some of you will undoubtedly remember this guy standing outside the stadium in 2002 (?) with his petitions about free speech after the whole Yankees suck thing. I seem to remember him renouncing the game and turning in his season tickets at that time, too. His series of smug articles in the Seattle Weekly was a low point for journalism in this town (except for his support of the Grand Salami, which kicked total ass).
What a tiresome nitwit this guy is. How does someone like him get pages in a major magazine, with pro location photo shoot to boot?
Among the things that have ruined baseball for him is the sad fact that you can’t chant SUCKS! anymore. Boo friggin’ hoo.
This johnny-come-lately also seems to be missing the point of the steroids pseudo-investigations, which is not that everybody’s juiced today, but in the past — probably peaking during his Golden Age.
He’s been going to games religiously for less than a decade. He obviously has the nostalgia bug bad, and it’s hit him earlier than usual. I’m sure he’s already working on his “man, that bum A-Rod can’t pick it anywhere near as good as Scott Brosius, back in the day” rap.
Just wait — he’ll be going to games again by the end of the year, these bozos always do.
Boo freakin’ hoo. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out. What a whiner Matt Villano is …
I can’t decide whether that article was more boring than it was self-indulgent or vice versa. Matt is now my sixth-vavorite Villano, after this guy.
I hope he lets the door hit him on the way out, on the off-chance it’ll smack some sene into him.
I think Mr Villano is a liar. To quote:
“The truth is that I won’t miss baseball at all; like any failed relationship, the end of this love affair had been brewing for a while.”
Just because it a relationship needs to end doesn’t mean you won’t miss it.
That’s just lazy writing.
Is it wrong to read the headline and think “I hope someone does take you out, Matt?”
Strictly speaking, the reason people are upset about steroids is because someone broke the law and leaked grand jury testimony. That’s the guy we should hate.
And no, Troy, that’s not wrong. That’s just efficient.
Yawn…like anyone is interested in his family biography as it relates to baseball.
I didn’t even get throught the whole drivel. I stopped as soon as I heard his ‘issues’ and would have stopped sooner. I have to admit I was curious what his complaints are…too bad nothing he has to say is compelling or interesting.
Another hack writer who has to push out a piece here and there to pay the rent.
See you at the ball field Matt.
Of course, that he is turning in his season tickets to Yankee Stadium has nothing to do with the fact that he lives in Half Moon Bay.
Of course he’s going to be doing a lot more hiking… because that’s all there is to do in Half Moon Bay! (I guess you could go mountain biking, and surf Mavericks if you’re into that kind of thing).
He will have to fight traffic for at least an hour if he wants to go watch baseball, and even then, well, he’d be watching the Giants and their creaky joints.
I was suprised last year when my brother had to turn one of his yankee sucks shirt inside out at FENWAY!!!!! Doesn’t really stop you from putting it back on in the bleachers though.
It seems like certain teams let stuff go farther then others(redsox) compared to chants you will hear at safeco, just different crowds.
I just wish they would stop telling people to shutup when they are heckling the oppenents, that is a good part of the game.
April Fools. Doh!
MSNBC must be starved for content. There isn’t a single interesting idea in that piece. That piece of…
Additionally, announcements of one’s punitive actions is a tactic, a way of drawing attention and mollifying actions from others. This is a common strategy among Pussies (is this old Czech term permitted?)
If you no longer wish to be a baseball fan. Fine. Be a man and walk away.
Tho, I have to tell you, Matt, Baseball will at no time miss you.
Jay (#12),
I thought about that. I really did. But the top of the article says “March 21 issue,” so I’m thinking he’s for real.
jason
The heckling is something that can be fun to get in on and it can get to be too much.
Some seem to get more crude and louder as they game wears on as if the heckler is becoming frustrated. The banter and chatter is fine, when it starts getting personal or crude in that I don’t want by 8 yr old to hear it, I get a little pissy with some.
He’s a yankees fan. Isn’t the world a better place without them?
And aren’t they also the ones that demand that the team loads the roster with a payroll so large that it requires selling 5 dollar bottles of water to make a profit?
He moved to California. He’ll be bitching about leaving there soon enough also.
#3 (me) “boo friggin’ hoo”
#4 “boo freakin’ hoo”
I almost went with “freakin'” but went with the only half-way expurgated version rather than the full. You guys pick: which one’s better?
The next guy who starts droning on and on about the saintly sounds of Ebbets Field, especially if he was never there, is going to hear the word “SUCKS!” at a rather high volume from me. But I’m going to use it in a long, complex sentence with many dependent clauses. Maybe even a paragraph. But they wouldn’t be able to print it in Newsweek.
#3– he’s freelanced for a long time; back in ’02 Villano started writing for The weekly, beginning with a long complaint about how the fans of his “real team” (the Yanks) were vastly better than those of his “new team” (the Ms); he based this on the fans in sec. 148 objecting to his standing and bellowing in a loud voice. ah, Section 148, home of the bleacher bums.
Later (when in the midst of his ‘suck’ campaign) he watched the Ms & Yankees in Yankee Stadium and commended his hometown fans in sec.699 for their “wonderfully creative taunts including “Lattes suck” and “Pine trees suck”.
#12 & #14 – This article appeared in a print copy of Newsweek as well.
Ditto the “boo freakin’ hoo”
hans has it right. Hard to use season tickets for Yankee Stadium when you’re hanging with the hippies in Half Moon Bay. Maybe one of those giant pumpkins they grow around there will fall on the guy.
C’mon you guys! Let’s give Matt the true New Yorker’s sendoff:
“Don’t let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out!”
Half Moon Bay is really a nice place; maybe I will drive by when I’m up there in July and tell him how lame this column was.
Robinred, good to see you! How’s life buddy? Email me sometime.
It shouldn’t be shocking that, in a time when people are willing to pay $4 for a cup of coffee, $40,000 for a new car, and $400,000 for a 2-bedroom condo, baseball tickets cost $40. However, the best way to influence the market is with your pocketbook, and that’s what he’s doing, so there’s a modicum of a point to this drivel.
This guy’s lamenting the loss of a game that he never experienced. So, Matt…you mean things have changed in the 75 years since your Great-Grandpappy sold peanuts at Yankee Stadium? Tragic.
If shadowy baseball thugs had confiscated and burned all the copies of his “Baseball 101” book, shut down the Court Deli and outlawed Stella D’Oro cookies, then he’d have a point. Since none of that happened, he still has the option of enjoying baseball, but he’s chosen to be a thirtysomething baseball curmudgeon and make his rambling, incoherent complaints to anyone who will listen. While this doesn’t make me like baseball any less, it does make me glad I don’t have a Newsweek subscription anymore. Oh, I agree with others’ points made about the ‘roids.
I can definitely believe this guy wrote for the Seattle Weekly…quite possibly the whiniest rag I’ve ever masked off a paint job with.