In an effort to provide a full spectrum of feelings about my beloved Oakland A's, I feel that it's only fair that I also point out the Athletics that I hated in addition to praising the ones I have loved over the years. In the first installment of A-Holes, allow me to introduce you to the ball of dick that was Storm Davis...
To be fair, I hated Storm Davis even before he was A. My dad and I collected baseball cards, and I distinctly remember opening up a back of 1985 Topps and sneering as the first card featured his malformed mug. He broke in with the Baltimore Orioles, where he was the prototypical 4th or 5th starter. He walked a lot of people, gave up a lot of hits and didn't miss many bats. In 1987 he was traded to the A's and instantly benefited from their potent (steroid fueled) lineup and posted records of 16-7 and 19-7 in '88 and '89. He did this despite not being a good pitcher. His ERA of 3.70 in '88 and 4.36 in '89 weren't impressive in the least, but it's his WHIP of 1.498 and 1.506 in those two seasons that tell a more accurate story. He was an inning eater who pitched behind a steady defense and was regularly staked to 3-4 run leads. In fact, the only time he ever did anything extraordinary was in '88 when he lead the league in wild pitches with 16. During his two year run with A's he managed to pitch all of 2 complete games. His real defining moments with A's came during the '88 World Series when the LA Dodgers absolutely raped him to the tune of 14 hits, 10 runs (all earned) and 3 homers in 8 innings over two terrible starts where he took the loss in both. After '89 season he took his act to Kansas City, who promptly regretted paying him over $1,000,000.00 a year to be not very good at baseball. He bounced around until '94, when he ended his career with Neil's Tigers. Storm even managed to spend part of the '93 season with A's, sucking it up as usual. Apparently, he's now a low level pitching coach in A ball for the Rangers, preparing the next wave of future not-so-good pitchers. The funny thing is, if you heard Storm talk about himself you would've thought he was Nolan Ryan or Jim Palmer. He had a really, REALLY overinflated self opinion. He was also a dick to kids on the regular. In fact, I distinctly remember my friend Phillip's mom (who was a tad tipsy) grabbing him by the shirt and calling him a dick after he walked right past us after a game without so much as a wave or even a "fuck you". All of that aside, I think the thing I hated most about Storm Davis is that, even at age 11, I was able to see through his bullshit and realized that he wasn't good. Back in the pre-Metrics days, all you could really judge a player by was the back of his baseball card. There weren't mountains and mountains of ancillary stats being made available to the public. Storm Davis was the first pitcher who made me realize that wins and losses didn't tell the whole story. Very shitty pitchers used to be able to get lucky or have enough run support to trick people into thinking they aren't shitty pitchers. The Nerd Revolution has put an end to such shenanigans. Semper nerds.
