My Nemesis - Scott Brosius

First of all, I'm a fan of the San Diego Padres (63-99 this year with a strong 5-5 stretch at the end to avoid 100 losses, nice). It's no secret that the Padres are usually garbage (and we'll remain terrrible as long as Brian Giles continues to reject trades, thanks buddy). Once and a while the Padres do produce something respectable. And twice in our 39 year history we produced something special. That would be two World Series runs, 1984 and 1998. 1998 brings me to my main point, Scott Brosius.

Scott Brosius is not good. Actually he was quite horrible. Check out this website http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/valueadd_art.htm which evaluates batting performance with a value added calculation. According to the site Scott Brosius' 1997 campaign with the Oakland Athletics was the 2nd worst performance by a hitter from 1960-2004.

Here's the situation for Scott Brosius after 1997. He's had one of the worst hitting seasons ever and he's 30 years old. Career over. But not so fast my friends (last part with John McCain voice), here come the New York Yankees. They inexplicably bring Brosius aboard to start at third base. Why would the Yankees do this? After investigation it turns out that the Yankees underwent a GM change after the 1997 season. Bob Watson retired as GM and Brian Cashman was named GM in February 1998. So it had to be during this transition that Brosius was able to sneak his way onto the team.

So the Yankees end up playing my Padres in the 1998 World Series. And that was a damn good Yankee team (114-48), so I'm a little scared (but not too scared, we did have Sterling Hitchcock). The Yankees pitching was good (Rivera, Pettitte, El Duque, Cone, Wells, Irabu - okay Irabu kind of sucked). The hitting was good (Jeter, Bernie, Paul O'Neill, Darryl Strawberry, Knoblauch).

Skip over the ugly details and the Yankees win the Series 4-0. World Series MVP: Scott Brosius, who goes 8 for 17, .471 avg. , 2 hrs, 6 rbi in the Series. And to make things worse, he singlehandedly wins Game 3 (score was 5-4) by going 3-4, with 2 hrs, and 4 rbi.

And now forever you'll hear Yankee fans say, "Hey remember Scott Brosius, that guy was the man." NO HE WASN'T. Scott, why didn't you just retire after 1997 like you were supposed to? Damn you Scott Brosius, damn you.