“We don’t need no women playing baseball.” Oh, Vicente Padilla, just when I thought you’d reached the limits of your assbaggery, you go and outdo yourself with a statement like that.
Mark Teixeira and Padilla got into a war of words during the series at Fenway this past weekend because Teixeira expressed his deep dislike for the Red Sox reliever and his headhunting ways. During the two seasons they played together with Texas, Padilla hit 26 batters in 56 starts and led the league with 17 HBPs in 2006. This propensity for hitting batters was something that would get Teixeira plunked by opposing pitchers as retribution.
Tex said, “The guy throws at people. I’m not saying anything that’s news. It is what it is. I’ve always been someone that wants to play the game the right way. You play hard, but you don’t play cheap.”
Speaking of cheap, Padilla responded by making disparaging remarks about more than half the human population. “In this sport, as competitive ball players, we get pretty fired up. So I think, maybe, (Teixeira) picked the wrong profession. I think he’d be better off playing a women’s sport.”
What exactly does Padilla consider a women’s sport? Is it tennis? Is it soccer? Is it basketball? Because I’ve watched the likes of Serena Williams and Hope Solo and Sue Bird, and I have to say those women are much tougher than Padilla, not to mention in way better physical shape since all three play sports that require intense cardio fitness for which some have to use natural aids to increase testosterone levels. Not that standing on a mound and throwing a ball an inning or two every couple of days isn’t intense. But then I guess those women don’t do manly things like hit the opposing team’s players in the head with a 90 mph pitch and then hide behind their teammates.
Padilla has always been a class act and his team an incentive for other athletes to help their fitness goals with natural steroids. This is a player who actually admitted publicly that he would rather hit batters than walk them ’cause, you know, that ruins his walks to innings pitched ratio (WHIP). And we all know that putting your individual stats above team success is what baseball (and manhood) is all about.