Jays Alex Rios Is Clearly Not In The Mood To Sign Autographs
Total Pro Sports - When a big leaguer turns down an autograph request from an older man, it is often understandable. They do not want him to go and sell it (like he probably will) in order to make a profit. After all, the only ones who should be making the big bucks are the players, right (sense the sarcasm)? But what happens when an MLB player turns down a young kid who has waited to get the piece of cherished memorabilia. Then it's heckling time!
Alex Rios found that out the hard way. Following a day game against the Angels (Blue Jays Hotdog Shooter Girls Were Not Present), in which Rios went 0 for 5 striking out all five at bats, a fan (who must have been lost because no one waits outside somewhere for Rios' autograph) asked the struggling outfielder for a quick signature as he left a charity event. When Alex rejected, a man let him know what he thought: "The way you played tonight Alex you should be lucky someone wants your autograph. You're a bum!"
What better way to sum up a disappointing day at the plate. Rios had a few choice words of his own for the heckler, but the question remains, who was right?
Perhaps Rios did not want to be bothered, but as a professional athlete, if he expects to have his fans stick by him in this tough time, he may want to reconsider his stance on signing balls for young kids (please don't take that statement out of context). While his reaction to the situation was not the right one, the heckler should also rethink his involvement in the whole ordeal. If he thought Rios was such a bum, what was he doing out there waiting for him?
One things for sure. For a bum, Rios sure does have some nice wheels.
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regardless of whether or not you’re a sports fan, is it REALLY that difficult for an athlete to autograph a card/ball/hat/t-shirt/whatever else? NO. i think all these stuck-up athletes need to get the hell over themselves, because the day WILL come when nobody will want their autograph, or their time, and they won’t be the big “bad ass” they once thought they were. what’s really so terrible about asking for someone’s autograph? when i was in the navy, and i went to japan, there were all kinds of kids surrounding me that wanted my autograph. why? because i’m an american, and they haven’t seen too many americans in their small fishing village. did i let it go to my head? NO. i took it all in stride, and it was a fun experience. to those kids, i was a celebrity, and i didn’t act like an asshole about it.
Wow! I think I quit reading after two sentences!
LOL!
Thanks Sa & Dan!
LOL!
Yep, I live in my million dollar house and drive my 50K dollar car, and live in my very sheltered life and Yep, I have been asked for money leaving Starbucks and instead of giving a dollar I buy them a meal… I love my sheltered life and wouldn’t trade it for your jaded one.
LOL!
I’m glad I was worth so much of your time.
Again Thanks, I as well as all of my sheltered friends, have had a good laugh!
haha i love it when heinous bitches don’t have a rebuttal statement and falls back on the non nonchalant approach and say shit like “my friends had a good laugh” when really, they suck at proving their point and are weak minded, sheltered women. the best part is saying she dint read past two sentences yet replying to statements made on later parts of the rebuttal. F-F-F-FAAAAAAAILTASTIC! but on the plus side i did post this on facebook so ppl could talk shit about the heinous, probably fat crazy mother bitch that can’t argue for a shit and bring up inane points. awesome. i know your fatass is reading this =) and there u go talking about money like it brought you shit for brains. money don’t mean shit if you can’t thinking logically and argue for shit. if you did have the money, i bet you slept your way into it lol. haha, dumb bitch.
I bet it’s million dollar house with 900 mortgage and a leased 50k car HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Based on her former argument, there’s no way that dumb broad made that money herself, probably sucked down a lot of man chowder to get there IF she’s even there. HAHA GO DAN AND SA!
haha. i like how it suddenly stopped being about the rios thing. sounds like sandra is a wee bit wounded, or she realized her argument wasn’t running on anything other than self-righteous bullshit. could be both.
To Dan, Jake
Man I really hope you both are no older than 16. This woman was talking about ideas and you go straight for the personal attacks. Straight to the Bitch comment and the sex put downs. No wonder she’s laughing at you both. This is why women think that overall we’re just stupid. As soon as most guys feel like they can’t hold their own they go for those insults. Dude seriously these are the kind of come backs I heard when I was in high school. I never saw her slinging personal insults and it was below a true man to go there. Comebacks like that shows the measure of a man and his mind. As a man I’m embarrassed that you couldn’t come up with something better or at least keep it about ideas. I’m thinking at least Mandy didn’t bother to read the rest of the thread and the deal with her girl. So back to what the blog is about. I’m just wondering if the dad was there, because if I was that girls Dad celebrity or not I would have told him where he could shove his autograph. To see a little cry for hours like that only says one thing about this Duncan guy but Ill leave it to the imagination I don’t think taking 5 seconds out of 4 hours to sign whatever she had would hurt. No these people don’t owe anybody anything but maybe as a decent person knowing you could make some kids day especially a little girl, you would want to and whether kids hear cussing or not it doesn’t make it right and that’s never a good excuse. As public people we know were held to a higher standard and that’s something we k ow and choose when we sign the contract and no its not in the contract but its understood. So what Rios did at the end of it all its just wrong. Wrong for his image, and bad for the team and I’m glad he was man enough to apologize.
Dan seriously I didn’t mean any disrespect to you about your age. My 14 year old kid always says failtacular so just figured you were the same age.
no, i read it all. i just don’t see how that’s relevant to the argument. why do people feel they should apply each personal case to rios’s life and living and make expectations for him to fulfill? people go and be assuming jerks, and then scrutinize his every response.
it’s not like rios cussed the kid out. he was obviously heading somewhere and if he doesn’t want to sign an autograph, what are you going to do? apparently, most of you think you should take the matters into your own hand, because it’s oh-so moral and heroic of you. here’s something: don’t be an asshole when he turns down an autograph and he won’t cuss in front of a kid. quit with the ponyland crap. seriously. it’s stupid.
sandra ran out of arguments and rebuttals to dan and sapincher. then she says some stupid shit about her wealth, which has nothing to do with anything. way to make it not personal. don’t wonder why people call you out for being a self-important, self-righteous snob of a person.
“Wow! I think I quit reading after two sentences!
LOL!”
Impressive.
“Wow! I think I have an impossibly short attention span and use it as an excuse to get out of rather sticky situations!
LOL!”
And then you post again “rebutting” me, so obviously you did read it. Do you think acting like an ignorant bitch looks good for you?
Look what this has done to me. I hate baseball, and I’m here on a basebally website. I know nothing about Alex Rios, yet I am here writing about how I support him. I hate Sandra, she’s a dumb bitch. I hate arguing on the internet, but here I am.
Oh well, I had fun. And now I will probably be the last one to comment on this fleeting story.
I am late to the party, but to keep the guy above from being the one to cap it off, I want to remind many of the readers here the cultural differences between Americans and the rest of the world. I am an American, and every fucking day I see entitlement. It appears to never end. I go into a store and every fucking kid “I and this I want that give me this give me that” and they get it because, really, the parent just wants the kid to shut up, it isn’t about the gift.
Back to sports. Contracts in sports are very complicated, especially for a player with a little bit of fame, no matter how little. If they have fans, that is really the litmus test. These contracts are very specific about a lot of things. Behavior is one, on and off the field, as well as a role in sponsership, the job of not just PLAYING the sport, but preserving the image of the sport. Baseball is not like the NFL, or the NBA. Ballplayers can drink, they can party, they don’t have to wear a suit and tie every time they go out, and there is no clause that states every kid gets a signature. It is closer to this with regard to signatures: Some ballplayers DO have a clause about signatures, but it nothing to do with children. One, these signed balls are worth money, and often, a star player will be tasted to sign a bunch of them for auction, generally this is for charity, so non profit. The second, is related to sponsership. If you are sponsered by Reebok, you don’t get a fucking tattoo of a Nike logo on your ankle in a way that is more prominant than the sponser’s product. In my example’s case it would be the shoes. Since pro footware usually doesn’t have a bunch of bullshit written all over it, the logo that everyone that looks down at his feet is going to be a Nike logo. That is just something you don’t do. Contracts are binding, and tyou are obligated to actually comply with them.
Someone stated the entire story is not known. Damn right. The person holding the camera, other people milling around, the before and the after, do we see any of that in detail? The kid that is 15, which is freshman highschool age, got denied a signature. It happens ALL THE TIME. It happened well before douchebags began using ebay to sell their wares. What if Tiger Woods signed his name all over Titleist? You thinik Nike is going to be happy with what may come of it? I doubt Nike is encouraging such things. For all you know, the TEENAGER was asking the player to sign some shit that would piss of the guys that do have his contract, we don’t know.
I am an American, and I am often ashamed that more people are not objective. This is what I saw: Teen asks for autograph, player says no and moves on, some other guy calls him names and instagates a man that could beat him senseless if he wanted to with is bare hands (only in pro sports can you usually heckle a guy that could literally kill you with a few blows from a fist), then, since he can’t go kick said ass, he tells him to fuck off. He doesn’t tell the teen to fuck off, he tells the guy causing the commotion to fuck off. I would do the same and why? Fuck is just an arrangement of 4 letters. Why is this combination of letters a problem with frak, frick, F (procounced “Eff”), screw, scram, bug, slag, (hell, even SEX, or make love, if it was used in that way) or any other combination of letters that MEAN THE EXACT SAME THING… why is that ok, but FUCK is not? Someone explain this to me. Why? Apply it to the other words people apply this logic to. It makes no sense, but going back to when I was a freshman in high school, it is not possible to avoid the word. A smart kid, by the end of middle school, already knows every damn one, how to use them, and on top of that, they know how to kill people, what do do when it comes to foreplay and how to fuck. They have been around the bases, or at least, know what those bases are and what fucking words to use that mean exactly the same thing.
Protecting children? From what, exactly? A combination of letters that he already knows anyway? The fact that athletes are not role models, but people like you and I, and so they have shitty days like the rest of us, and on a bad day we just want to get home and decompress to be ready for the next day, or, in his case, the next game.
Barry Bonds won’t sign shit, takes massive amounts of roids, and people still idolized him. It isn’t about memorablelia, it is about being at the ball park and watching a game. The father, in my opinion, should be standing outside somewhere to meet someone that actually contributes something tangible to our lives, making them better. Wait outside the NASA space center to get the signature of Buzz Aldren, get Stephen hawking to tap out a robotic message of appreciation, as these men actually did things worthwhile to the entire globe. Find Al Gore and ask for his Autograph, hell, Barack Obama took his time in the middle of a conference to write a note to a kid’s teacher on why she skipped class that day to see him speak.
Rois walked out after doing his Jay Oh Bee, his JOB. Not a very good one that day, but it is still what he is paid to do, and to sign random products that could clash with his OTHER contractual agreements because he doesn’t know from where said product came from, is fine. Not wishing to be the role model for a teen is fine. The person with the highest IQ on the planet will personally write you an e-mail to answer a question you might have on just about any topic, and even publish them in her column if the questions are interesting. Is Rois in the process of solving any of the global issues we face? I am not bashing ballplayers, and I am not even bashing their money. (hey, if it there, I would take it too). I am trying to say that he had every RIGHT t osay no. He may have even been obligated to do so.
Ever seen a book signing, or even a comic writer’s signing? To use the “Twilight” example above, what if Tim Duncan doesn’t want to be associated with the author? More to the point, you do not walk up to Stephen King with a copy of the latest Danelle Steele novel and ask for his john hanckock.
Usually, a sports star has a contractual obligaction to sign so many things as they are often used at charitable events in auctions or contests. They can sign a kid’s ball if he wants to, or he can say no. The kid didn’t take it any further because the kid was 15, and he probably shrugged it off, but as usual some PC dick has to step in and take things further. If the kid was really that pissed he would say something himself. Why, in effect, put words in his mouth? Why be the represenitive of a kid you don’t know? Did the kid ask the guy to call him a bum? No!
At 15, the kid is old enough to stand on his own, but also old enough to defend himself verbally. He was not pissed enough to say anything, so the wishes of the kid should have been respected. Period. Both parties DIRECTLY involved parted ways without an issue, it was someone else that brought in the shit. You want to teach a kid about the real world, its not going to happen if the guy stopped to sign or not. It is going to be done by the actions of those around him, those he is, most likely, going to be more like as an adult since so few ever even make it to the minor leagues.
If it was me, and he didn’t sign, I would simply say “fuckyou very much” and walk away, allowing him to wonder if he heard fuck you or thank you, then look for someone else that is more willing to sign my chunk of pro sporting gear.
I still can’t stop laughing at the idea that a 15 year old kid still needs protection from a combination of letters, and that FUCK is worse than any of the other words that mean the exact same thing in every context. Hypocrate parents allow this all the time. Say fucking and you are yelled at, say “effing” and no big deal. That is smart parenting right there *rolls eyes*. The practical solution would be to teach the kid that the word is not obcene, or at least, any more than the 20 substitution words used without issue. If more people were educated in this way, the fucking superbowl wouldn’t be ruined by 2 frames out of 29.7 FPS that show a blurry nipple.
i like what he said better than what i said. I STILL WANNA CAP IT OFF! WHOOOOOOO!
i totally agree with you on the americans and entitlement thing.
huh, i hadn’t thought about the contract keeping them from signing autographs. good point.
you’re not late to the party. join the winner’s circle. lol.
When i ever i go down to the jays games i sit in rightfield and yell at rios
First off, we have no idea how the real moment went down. Tone and context are impossible to convey and for all we know it was some super demanding kid or some weird context. I’ve seen both before.
Second of all, athletes and all famous people don’t OWE everyone anything. Fans pay to support the sport but that is true about absolutely every one or our jobs. “people” pay us to do them. Does that mean they own us? Does that mean we should have to make ourselves available to them for whatever they want, whenever they want it? Even if it’s flattering, don’t most of you have moments in your life, say, after a fight with your spouse or something, where you wouldn’t want someone to come up and ask you for something?
So stop judging this dude. And stop acting like anyone with success owes everyone in the world. They don’t. They’re just people. You don’t know them or what goes on in their lives so stay out of it.
Fuck this has-been queer..