By George! He Was My Most-Hated Athlete When I was 10

 

John Nash threw down the gauntlet.

"Hey Rob Adams -- The ball is in your court!" he wrote.

Damn you, good sir.

Plus he went with an excellent choice: Roger Staubach.

My God how I loathed "Roger the Dodger." You know, the quarterback of "America's Team."

I can already feel the bile building. 

But that disgust was taught to me. I had no real reason to dislike Roger Staubach and time has mellowed me. Sure, I did detest Staubach and Landry and Tony Dorsett and Cliff Harris and everything and everyone associated with "The Star."

Screw you, Dallas Cowboys.

However, two Super Bowl wins against Dallas laid the foundation of a 40-year affair with the black and gold of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Mean Joe and Lambert and LC and Mel Blount defensively knocked Roger around enough.

Nah. Time marches on. I'm good.

I still hate the Cowboys.

But...

The Yankees made their first playoff appearance of my lifetime in 1976.

Still stinging over the departure of Bobby Murcer (46 years ago tomorrow, not that I'm counting), the Bombers won their first American League Eastern Division title and were looking to go to the World Series for the first time since 1964.

They squared off against the Kansas City Royals, led by George Brett, who paced the Royals with a league-leading .333 batting average. He'd also finish second in the Most Valuable Player voting to...

...

a Mr. Thurman Lee Munson. Mwa ha ha.

But Brett would dazzle and personally torment the Yankees at every turn in his career. In that '76 ALCS, Brett hit .444 and hit an 8th inning three-run homer off Grant Jackson to tie fifth and (at that time) deciding Game 5 at 6.

Of course, Chris Chambliss made it all right in the bottom of the ninth with a home run on the first pitch off Mark Littell that sent New York into insanity.

(Incidentally, those 70s ABC broadcasts featured a plethora of people speaking over the play-by-play guy, led of course by Howard Cosell. Drove me nuts then...and now.)

But the die was now cast for my hatred of Brett. 

That series was, of course, simply the warm up act. The Yankees and Royals would meet again in the ALCS three more times, with the Bombers taking 1977 and 1978 and the Royals sweeping New York in 1980, capped off with a three-run moonshot off Goose Gossage in Game 3 in The Bronx.

He also homered three times in Game 3 of the 1978 ALCS in New York.

In those four ALCS against the Yankees, Brett hit .352 with six home runs and 14 RBIs (forgive my use of such "outdated statistics").

Oh yeah. I hated him. I hated him because he was so damn great and especially great against my favorite team. I hated him because he continues to hate the Yankees to this day, going so far as to making sure he wouldn't acknowledge any of the Yankees items that his hitting coach Charley Lau's son gave him at his Hall of Fame induction.

In truth, I now respect it, but again, that's the wisdom of time.

But I hated Brett enough that I admittedly reveled in his troubles in the 1980 World Series, a true "pain in the butt" for sure, and I especially enjoyed the Phillies knocking off the Royals in six games.

Then, of course, there was July 24, 1983.

"The Pine Tar Game."

I have not the energy or bandwidth to express how it still bothers me.

In short, Brett did it again, hitting a monster home run off of Gossage in the ninth inning to give the Royals a one-run lead.

Billy Martin, encouraged by Graig Nettles, said that Brett's bat violated a rule about too much pine tar. The umpires agreed and ruled Brett out, thus handing the game to the Yankees and nearly causing a riot as Brett went after the men in blue.

American League president Lee McPhail overruled the umpires, upholding the Royals' protest of the outcome. McPhail cited the spirit of the rule.

I took the news well, of course.

I was apoplectic then and it's still stirs me up.

My hatred -- or respect, if you will -- of Brett reached a point where Sean's mother wouldn't go to Royals/Yankees games with me and, I have to say, she was probably right.

He drove the Yankees -- and me -- nuts.

It's all long in the past of course, but I can still feel some of those old emotions.

Today, few realize that the Yankees and Royals were such bitter rivals, but it was pretty heated for the length of Brett's career.

In truth, he's an all-time great.

In the mind of a ten-year-old, he was the worst.

Roger and George. Quite the duo.