Great Athletes Who Were Also Total Assholes

I'm torn about whether Ty Cobb or Pete Rose deserves the top spot.

Lol was coming to post Ty Cobb. Tho it’s a long list!

Royston, Georgia proudly advertises itself as Ty Cobb's hometown. They probably downplay the asshole parts.

Michael Jordan has gotta be up there too.

Long list indeed. Jim Brown was a fascinating combination of someone who was genuinely heroic in many ways, and truly awful in others. There are numerous candidates from pre-integration baseball beyond Cobb, some of whom were members of the Klan (Tris Speaker, for one). Rogers Hornsby was reviled by many. Nothing like that, but for current players, Josh Donaldson and Marcus Stroman.

It’s a colossal insult to Marcus Stroman to name him alongside members of the fucking Klan, particularly when Alek Manoah has been called a dickhead as recently as this month! Let alone in comparison with people like Trevor Bauer or the Padres rotation that was openly trying to recruit people to the John Birch society!

Mickey Mantle, although do we give a pass to guys who were assholes because they were alcoholics?

xp he did say "nothing like that"

Yeah, no, I think Mookieproof was otm about his weird Stroman obsession.

I still think that John Rocker interview is one of the worst things I’ve ever read. You could probably add Canseco but he’s kind of a clown??? Idk if that qualifies?

Oh, yeah, Rocker, that's a good one.

DiMaggio was a weirdo, not sure he was an asshole.

Canseco more of a pathetic figure. His partner in crime Mark McGwire might qualify.

Jesus fuck, gyac, can you read?

DiMaggio indeed had many creepy things about him. Your thread title is very broad, and encompasses an entire spectrum of unlikeable athletes. That's probably pretty clear to everyone...almost everyone, anyway.

xp yes I can read that you brought up the mouthy black man itt despite the disclaimer.

xp I was trying to limit it to "total assholes," not simply athletes who were unlikeable, but that's like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

I don’t know all the details of what MM did but my perspective is that alcoholism can be an exacerbating factor but it’s not the cause. I speak from personal experience as the child of someone who behaved appallingly sometimes during the time they were drinking, and afaict drink doesn’t make anyone into a person they aren’t, but it might make their actions less inhibited by shame or whatever. If he was a dickhead drunk, he probably was sober, unless he was actively dealing with the reasons for his behaviour.

SB Nation feature-length about Michael Jordan's most infamous season as Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets owner both demonstrates his assholery but also kind of humanises him in some ways, anyway it's one of the best sports videos I've ever seen (although SB Nation basically spent 2022 continually one-upping themselves on that front)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3_whi6KuLo

okay digression over, let's see if we can talk about some non-American sports. wait until you find out what that one Brazilian goalie did

oh wait, GREAT athletes. okay well, football still has quite a few of these for starters

(soccer)

this thread should just be links to SB Nation videos tbh

Once again, gyac, you're being ridiculous. Why do you limit Stroman's behaviour to his tweets? Did you not see the photo that led off that Jays thread? There one where Stroman treated some dog in a terrible, inhumane manner? You're just going to conveniently ignore that, right?

Your obsession with me is far weirder than what you perceive as mine with Stroman's. I named a couple of Jays who played for my hometown team for years--nothing unusual about that at all.

Speaking of football, some might say Maradona qualifies, for any number of reasons that just as many people will argue show that he was not a total asshole.

Kyrie

Yes, he qualifies. Odious person, terrible teammate.

But an arguably great player, at least as an individual.

Mantle's behaviour was called out by Bouton in Ball Four, and he was absolutely right; as Mantle neared death, he publically apologized for the same things Bouton documented.

I spent a day apiece with Ted Williams and Bobby Hull as a kid because of baseball card shows and they were both incredibly nice grandpa-like figures but Hull definitely qualifies as a monstrous asshole and I gather that Williams was also a mega-dick even aside from his strife with writers as a player.

There one where Stroman treated some dog in a terrible, inhumane manner? You're just going to conveniently ignore that, right?

Williams seemed liked a complicated guy--what you said, and also the guy who advocated for Jackie Robinson to go into the HOF.

The Wikipedia page on cropping dogs' ears, popular pastime of thoughtful people everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cropping_(animal)

xp LOL yeah, Bobby Hull was the poster child for this thread. "Hitler had some good ideas, he just went a little too far."

Interestingly, a colleague of mine (who is from Chicago and a hockey player) has a signed picture of BH in his office, showing him with a bloody nose, being restrained by a referee. This is not someone I would think would normally countenance such views.

The priority might be with the law to prioritise outlawing this so people realise it’s a problem.

Great point. As long as its legal, how would Marcus Stroman ever know that needlessly cutting off part of a dog's ears is inhumane?

Hull even came off badly in a book I just finished on the '67 Leafs.

This is kind of what inspired this thread. Bobby Hull was a wife beater and a Nazi sympathizer, and yet a colleague whom I respect has a signed photo of him in his office. It's almost as though the patina of their athletic greatness makes us overlook their . . . "flaws."

If you want a nuanced view of Williams, I very much recommend David Halberstram's The Teammates, about his friendship with Pesky, Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio as he neared death.

wait until you find out what that one Brazilian goalie did

Easier to name the top Brazilian athletes who were Bolsonaristas.

weren't*

I don’t know if Conor McGregor counts but he and his whole family should be put on a rocket to the sun. Absolutely despicable character.

Speaking of alcohol.

I don't know where this lies on the spectrum, but, as Curt Flood took on the baseball owners in 1969, and Marvin Miller was working to strengthen the union, most every superstar of the day, out of self-interest--sometimes passively, sometimes actively--fought them. Many of them did the owners' bidding for them.

Xp oh I think it’s more than that.

Clearly, but the yacht incident surely involved heavy drinking.

I was a big Roberto Alomar fan once upon a time (he signed a ball for me before Nolan Ryan's 7th no hitter - he struck out to end the game) then came the spitting at an ump incident and everything that's come out about him in the last two decades has been even worse.

Karl Malone - statutory rapist, NRA board member

OJ

Can pro wrestlers count? Because New Jack and Hulk Hogan surely make the list, as well as the actual murderers.

I guess New Jack wasn’t a great athlete, he was just an arsehole. Sun in a million other names.

Kobe Bryant.

Hope Solo.

is it too soon to say ja morant

From what I hear, Christian Pulisic

Phil Taylor ahahaha

(is he an asshole? he must be an asshole. must be)

― imago, Thursday, April 20, 2023 10:41 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1306433.stm

I used to think Alex Higgins was a renegade hero when I was a kid. But he was a truly awful spithead

stupid funking autocorrect

I would like to extend the olive branch of peace to our American posters

Earl Strickland
Bobby Fischer

Again:

Stop this

― Everybody's gonna get what they got coming (gyac), Thursday, 20 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

ancelotti, del bosque

― oscar bravo,

Surely not Carlo? What did he do?

nothing afaik it was in response to this

A companion thread might be Great Coaches Who Were Not Also Total Assholes.

― henry s, Sunday, April 16, 2023 3:14 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

ancelotti, del bosque

― oscar bravo, Sunday, April 16, 2023 3:21 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Bochy 😊

since it’s the first post in the thread, I feel sort of obligated to defend ty cobb, about whom the current informed consensus is that the racism allegations are mostly fictional or embellished.

Posnanski partially makes that case in The Baseball 100, but he says that some of the attempts to be fairer to Cobb have over-corrected in the other direction and portrayed him as better than he actually was:

Leerhsen and others do not convincingly remove racism from Cobb, but they have brought balance to his story.

The only trouble is: Does anyone even want balance in Ty Cobb’s story?

Does he make any sense to us if he isn’t a monster or a fallen angel? Does he make any sense to us as flesh and blood?

will apologize to Ty asap

name a zillion American domestic sportsmen and ignore maybe the single most blatant, shining, magnificent example of this currently around

Enlighten us, please, that's what we're here for.

I think maybe they are referring to that bass fisherman who breakdances on the boat when he catches a big one?

Mason Greenwood presumably?

I can’t believe a bunch of Americans were naming mostly American athletes. Galling.

eh it was striking that djoker wasn't named in like the first 5 posts but afaik people can post in this thread regardless of nationality so not sure why it's the fault of the usilxors

The fact that the first 500 people mentioned were baseball players (I assume) should have suggested to imago that this was not the thread he imagined it to be.

No need to do a US/UK thing for engagement. Name your guy and go.

To be honest I assumed this thread had been started because of Chris Eubank on Scared Of The Dark.

Don Bradman

(enjoy the commonwealth content, imago)

the first 500 people mentioned were baseball players (I assume)

the third person mentioned in this thread is Michael Jordan, and although he did play baseball for a minute, my guess is that you have heard of him for something other than that

It’s very stupid, sorry for letting the side down for talking about baseball players? Just post your own dickheads and enjoy slagging them off.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/AyCPGfECMAAeIC1.jpg

Daley Thompson (of the joystick wrecking ocean software Daley Thompson's Decathlon fame) wore a homophobic Carl Lewis goading t-shirt to the '84 LA olympics, total arsehole.

Speaking of the Olympics, maybe someone my age can clarify: wasn't Dwight Stones, the American high jumper who held the world record for a while in the '70s, widely disliked for reasons I've forgotten? I found this, but I thought there was more.

At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montréal, he was a heavy favorite to win the gold medal. Earlier, he finished second at the U.S. Olympic Trials, then had to settle for another Olympic bronze behind Jacek Wszoła and local favorite Greg Joy when his jumping ability was hampered by the competition being struck by heavy rain. A few days later, he raised the world record to 2.32 m (7 ft 7+1⁄2 in) in dry conditions at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

His participation at the Montreal Games sparked a heated debate: he had allegedly said that he hated French Canadians (Montréal-Matin Newspaper, July 29, 1976, pages 5 and 8) when he criticised the organization of the Games in a media interview. Consequently, Stones was subject to raucous booing and hissing during the competition.

The debate became so inflamed that he decided on a new tee-shirt for the day of the final, the back of the shirt reading "I love French Canadians", which officials asked him to take off. The Americans in the audience responded to the treatment of Stones by booing Claude Ferragne, a French-Canadian jumper, during the event.

(Last Olympics I watched, so maybe this is just very selective memory.)

"Don Bradman"

This is a pretty good shout! I was reading the wiki and Bradman was an arsehole not because of bigoted views, or because he doped or threw games for betting or cheated or beat his wife but because he was really fucking ruthless with the game and would pretty much rule with iron for the "greater good".

I only knew of his astonishing feats as a batsman without going much further till now.

Jeremy Roenick ticks all the boxes as the extensive Controversies section on his Wikipedia page attests to. Possibly most famed for being wildly OP in the video game NHL 93. Last seen trying to sue NBC sports for discrimination as a white male Trump supporter after he was fired for making a bunch of gross sexist comments about his female coworkers on a podcast.

Which Djokovic? Novak? I confess I don't follow tennis closely enough to know. The only tennis player who came to my mind was Boris Becker.

Not sure Boris was a total asshole, tbf.

Sally Gunnell: gold medals at the Olympics, European and pretty much everything else. Tory and a terf.

I never thought it myself but for many people (at least in France), Thierry Henry would belong in this thread.

... a few in Ireland too.

I never hated him for that. Xp what did he do?

Trezeguet was the guy I hated.

le main of frog incident was not good, but Henry is sort of likable. Well, much more likable than Maradona. But at least 90 odd % of footballers are total dicks so it is a low bar

Which Djokovic? Novak? I confess I don't follow tennis closely enough to know. The only tennis player who came to my mind was Boris Becker.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 21 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Now look up Court.

Which Djokovic? Novak? I confess I don't follow tennis closely enough to know. The only tennis player who came to my mind was Boris Becker.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 21 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

No, he only cheated in one game. Rest of time he was a saint.

I never thought it myself but for many people (at least in France), Thierry Henry would belong in this thread.

― AlXTC from Paris, Friday, 21 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Sorry the above was about Henry. Paste didn't work

I figured if it were Novak Djokovic it was for his antivax antics, like Aaron Rodgers.

No, he only cheated in one game. Rest of time he was a saint.

I already admitted my ignorance. I guess I'll take y'all's word for it, although I think the Nazi sympathizers, Klan members and domestic abusers may have him beat.

Davor Šuker, Golden Boot winner of France 1998.

In 1996, in the company of two well-known criminals, Šuker posed for a picture at the grave of Croatian fascist dictator and genocide perpetrator, Poglavnik Ante Pavelić.

In 2011, Šuker was fined for stealing antique coins left over by another passenger on an airplane. Instead of reporting his findings and handing the coins in, he decided to give them to his girlfriend, who tried to sell them.

In 2015, Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) accused Šuker of preventing freedom of information and for physically blocking journalists from reporting and doing their work.

I assumed that was sarcasm from xyzzzz__ re Nova, cos his politics are fucking appalling

"Court" is, I assume, Margaret Court, one of the greats of the game and a right-wing Christian fanatic.

Sorry no it was a mistake. I meant to post that about Henry (was referring to his handball against Ireland as the 'cheat'). I don't know why else he would be listed here.

Novak is a cunt.

xp: yes!

If we are gonna bring up Henry for a handball, seems like Luis Suarez's manifold biting incidents and Cristiano Ronaldo's multiple sexual assault allegations warrant mention.

CR7 has been (belatedly) brought up above. He's quite the complete package eh

Ah did not think to ctrl + f his nickname, but yes

We need more female antiheroes itt!

― imago

i'll say it, i'm allowed to

caitlyn jenner

Sharron Davies

having recently finished the australian true-crime podcast series "the teacher's pet," i'll submit former newtown jets superstar/p.e. teacher chris dawson! add his twin brother paul for good measure.