Stop Me If You've Heard This Before, But Adrian Gonzalez Is Complaining About Something, Says He'll Never Play In The WBC Again
Noted complainer Adrian Gonzalez is complaining again. Sometimes he’s been right, like in the postseason this past October:
And other times, his complaints have been downright cringeworthy, like when he blamed the schedule and God’s plan for the Red Sox collapse in 2011:
Gonzalez sat in a chair in front of his locker and insisted that it was all part of God’s plan that the Red Sox failed to make the playoffs.
“It’s definitely something that didn’t plan for. We were wholly confident that we would make the playoffs but it didn’t happen,” he said. “We didn’t do a better job with the lead. I’m a firm believer that God has a plan and it wasn’t in his plan for us to move forward.”
Asked what he saw from the team this month, Gonzalez stayed on his theme.
“God didn’t have it in the cards for us,” he said.
On Tuesday, when I asked him about the collapse of the team in general terms, Gonzalez blamed the schedule.
“We play too many night games on getaway days and get into places at 4 in the morning,” Gonzalez said. “This has been my toughest season physically because of that. We play a lot of night games on Sunday for television and that those things take a lot out of you.”
I told Gonzalez that teams like the Red Sox and Yankees have long had those challenges, it’s part of playing for a high-profile team.
“Why does it have to be?” he said. “They can put the Padres on ESPN, too. The schedule really hurt us. Nobody is really reporting that.”
They’re still making fun of those quotes in Boston to this day. I was at bar near Fenway this past summer for a game that the Red Sox blew in the late innings, and this blackout drunk dude kept screaming, “I GUESS THIS ONE JUST WASN’T IN GOD’S PLAN, HUH? GUESS NOT, GOD!” Gonzalez’s most recent complaint, though, is about the World Baseball Classic, and he appears to be quite pissed off about it.
So, Gonzalez thinks that Team Mexico was cheated out of the World Baseball Classic because of some funky tiebreaker rule that had to do with average runs per inning, or some weird stat like that. They got eliminated by a percentage point. I’d be ripshit, too, but rules are rules, however dumb they are. The best part of the story is that Gonzalez is legitimately upset about this, instructing anybody who asks him that they shouldn’t participate in the WBC, all while his Dodgers teammates are making fun of him for being a crybaby.
Inside a major league clubhouse, the bitterness of one man doubles as fodder for the amusement of others. And so on Wednesday morning, Dodgers outfielder Joc Pederson grinned when he saw that Adrian Gonzalez had returned from the World Baseball Classic.
“Adrian, what happened?” Pederson called across the room. “What happened?”
Seeing Gonzalez talking with reporters, closer Kenley Jansen imitated the weeping of a child. A few other Dodgers joined in. Pederson came over to greet Gonzalez. The two men hugged.
“Hey, did you win?” Pederson deadpanned.
“We won,” Gonzalez said. “We did what we had to do.”
“Unbelievable, huh?” Pederson said. “What kind of rules are those?
“That’s MLB for you,” Gonzalez said.
I don’t know why, but picturing Joc Pederson asking Gonzalez if his team won while he’s basically on the verge of tears is hilarious to me.