The New Odd Couple....Carl Everett and John Rocker

A pretty funny article here:



This chemistry experiment likely to blow up on Rangers

December 19, 2001 Print it


Ron Borges
NBCSports.com



New Texas Rangers general manager John Hart says he believes in second chances. He better believe in psychotherapy too, because he's going to need it by the end of next season.

When Hart announced Tuesday that he had traded minor league pitcher Dave Elder to the Cleveland Indians for lefthanded reliever John Rocker, he brought together two of the most explosive personalities in baseball -- "Off His'' Rocker and mercurial outfielder C. Everett Kook, known to some in baseball as Carl Everett. It's a match made in Hades.

These moves have insured Hart and the Rangers of two things. They will make headlines in Texas next season and they will be a regular feature on ESPN's "SportsCenter." They might even win a few games, but that will have little to do with their newsmaking capabilities. The two sticks of dynamite with tongues Hart just added to a team that has lost 90 games each of the past two seasons will handle the headline making.

In 2000, Rocker was suspended by Major League Baseball for two weeks and forced to undergo psychological evaluation after being quoted in a national magazine story in a way that insulted every minority group known to man. Rocker covered the racial, ethnic and sexual bases faster than Ricky Henderson used to round the bases. He left no group unstoned.

This is also a guy, Everett will be happy to learn, who once called an overweight black teammate in Atlanta a "fat monkey," but added, "I'm not a racist or prejudice person, but certain people bother me."

Yeah, living ones.

After all this became public, the Macon, Ga., native had a simple response.

"So what's the problem?"

Now by his side will stand Everett, who spent the last two years in Boston headbutting umpires, arguing with one of his managers about everything from being on time to being in the lineup. He took longer to recover from a sore knee last summer than most people do from triple bypass surgery and ended up calling his second manager a racist during an ugly confrontation in September that finally got him shipped out of town.

Well, if Everett thinks Joe Kerrigan is a racist ...

If Hart had a sense of humor, he'd put their lockers next to each other and have them room together on the road. If he had any sense, he'd hire Sigmund Freud to manage them.

"My locker is next to his, so I try not to get into a long conversation with him," Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra once said of Everett, who has now been traded five times and lost once in the expansion draft.

And that's not including getting kicked out of winter ball in 1996.

So when these two get into a beef -- which shouldn't take long considering that one of them doesn't believe multiculturalism exists while the other doesn't believe dinosaurs existed -- the choice of weapons will be the most interesting part of the story.

Rocker, backwoods hunter by inclination, will go for the shotgun and Bowie knife to be sure. Carl? Samurai swords seem likely.

Of the two, Everett is the deep thinker. What else could you conclude after hearing dissertations like this one?

"The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs," he once said. "You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Someone actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw tyrannosaurus rex."

OK.

"Part of what you do when you put together a championship club is get players who are emotional, intense, driven performers," Hart explained.

That's true, but the idea is to add players who will drive you to a pennant, not to distraction, isn't it?

"We certainly aren't going into this blind," Hart said, despite some evidence to the contrary. "We know there are going to be issues."

You think?

Like calling your manager a racist?

Like saying dinosaurs never existed?

Like headbutting an umpire as if you were working for Vince McMahon?

Like making racist and sexist statements to a national magazine and then saying two years later, "I don't think there was a need for maturity. It was a complete fluke. I don't think I was given a fair shake. I'm the same person."

That's what John Hart has to worry about. That C. Everett Kook and Off His Rocker are just that. The same people they've always been.

Hateful (and hate-filled) ones.

Ron Borges is a contributing writer for NBCSports.com.