Goose Gossage already made headlines once this week with his controversial thoughts on the current state of baseball. Among other things, he called Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista a “f-ing disgrace to the game,” called GMs and executives “A bunch of f—ing nerds running the game,” and said that Brewers star Ryan Braun “is a f—ing steroid user. He gets a standing ovation on Opening Day in Milwaukee. How do you explain that to your kid after throwing people under the bus and lying through his f-ing teeth?”
If you thought Gossage was done ranting and raving about the good ol’ days where players were at higher risk of getting intentionally hit in the head with a fastball or getting their legs broken from a takeout slide at second base, think again.
On the same day that Gossage’s remarks went viral, Bryce Harper was in the news for basically saying the complete opposite of what Gossage said. Harper went on a bit of a rant of his own about how the game of baseball is still backwards compared to other sports and refuses to embrace fun and showmanship, saying “Baseball’s tired. It’s a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do.”
Gossage decided to respond to Harper’s comments on the radio show Waddle and Silvy. You’re not going to believe this, but Gossage thinks that the reigning NL MVP has no respect for the game.
“What does this kid know? This kid doesn’t know squat about the game, and [has] no respect for it. Here he is making millions of frickin’ dollars; that’s great. I’m happy for all the players and all the money that they’re making, because it’s hard-earned by all the players that came before these guys. Ninety percent of these guys never went through a strike, a work stoppage. They don’t know the blood sweat and tears that has been spent on what these guys are making. All we wanted was a piece of the pie. Marvin Miller did that, Curt Flood, from on up. My career started out on the first strike in 1972, and it ended in the last one in 1994, when we lost a World Series, which should have never happened, but it did. … We fought for everything these players are getting. So let me tell Bryce Harper something: go look at the history, figure it out and quit acting like a fool.”
Goose, man, maybe it’s time to calm down a little.
