Hi, Chop Country nerds—um, friends. AJ here, figured I should pop by and shed some light on things for my online fans.
First and foremost, AJ does not blog. If you guys hadn't noticed, balance has been restored to the universe and AJ is once again a starting catcher on a major league team. I don't have time for that blogging ****. I barely have time to post here, since I'm spending all my time prepping for games and making sure the parade of immigrants in our starting rotation comprendes enough English to understand when I'm telling them how to get with my program. The Colombian kid just grumbles and mean-mugs me, and the new guy looks pretty good but I swear he was running a leafblower at Pierzynski Manor last fall. The Miller kid is coming along nicely even though he apparently lacks the mental toughness to finish a no-no, but it's a long season. Anyways, it's a full-time job. My agent told me I need to enhance my brand with an active social media presence, and I'd definitely rather do it online than in person (unless you're a hot chick or a dude who will shut up, step off, and buy a round) but I just haven't had the time, 'cause I'm too busy
being this team's MVP.
Still, I feel the need to clear the air about some things.
Like I've said before, I know there's a lot of misinformation floating around about me. I'm a winner, and some people can't handle that. That hatchet job in Boston last year? Look where those goobs are now. You come at the king, you best not miss. They're in last place, and I'm headed back to the playoffs. I mean, maybe not with the Braves, but come August 1 I'm pretty sure that's gonna be the case. I think they thought that Ivy League schoolboy LavarnwAAAy was going to step up and fill my jock, and look where he is now (just kidding, buddy, you're a damn good backup). There are a lot of guys who can't hack it in the bigs, but I can mostly put them into three categories: guys who don't play the game the right way, guys who don't want to put in the work, guys who try to take AJ's job, and Christian Bethancourt. OK, four categories.
making rookies go buy his fourth inning beers from a vendor, banging teammates wives, showing up hungover
Like I said, a lot of misinformation. I have not technically banged a teammates wife.
As for that article, it's pretty much true, but it's not the whole story. I'll bet y'all want to know the inside scoop on how ol' AJ and Gomes worked out exactly who was going to be the lead dog on this sled. Well, have you ever seen one of those nature documentaries where two big ol' bull elephants go after each other, battling for turf? Well, it was kinda like that, just imagine that one of those elephants is in his physical prime, has a beautiful lefty stroke, and is pretty as all hell, and the other one is kind of old and busted out and maybe missing a tusk or something, and couldn't hit right-handed elephant pitching if his life depended on it.
See, there really was what you call a leadership vacuum when this season started. The closest thing to veteran leadership in the clubhouse was this mostly-Canadian goof whose idea of motivation was a hug (not gonna mention names). So here comes AJ, Gomes, Markakis, and KJ. Well, let's break it down:
Kelly Johnson is, like, an easygoing family guy, so . . . not exactly leadership material. Markakis doesn't say **** to anyone, just sits at his locker with this creepy thousand-yard stare. I handled that in our first BP session, where I bet him that I could hit the ball further right-handed than he could lefty. Done and done.
Which left Gomes. So, somebody wrote that they'd be surprised if he didn't take a poke at me? What makes you think he didn't? You don't kiss and tell in AJ's clubhouse. We spent a while circling each other—arm wrestling in the clubhouse, doing mezcal shots at the bars, maybe ending up with someone getting choked out in the mens' room . . . anyway, we went on like that for a while, but when I really grabbed the reins of this team was that off-day trip to the 9/11 memorial in New York.
There we were, contemplating life, death, and man's inhumanity to man. We saw how you could be on top of the world one day, then see it all snatched away in the blink of an eye. This really got everyone in a mood to contemplate their own mortality and put things in perspective. I asked everyone, guys, doesn't this make you want to stop and think about what's really important in life? That's right: winning baseball games.
So in light of that, you've got to perform in order to win. I'll let Jonny speak for me here:
“The A.J. Pierzynski we see, from the first day in Orlando, is the same. So I think that’s where things sometimes get a little grey. You have to adjust around people, and when you start asking people to adjust around you, that’s when things start to get grey. I mean, he’s the same personality when I played with him in Boston.
But personality and attitude is not very high on the list of things I’m looking for to try to win a ballgame. This is a results-driven industry. Results. And they’re definitely there with him behind the plate.”
Results. It's that simple. Winning. A to the J gets the J-O-B D-O-N-E. That's why I'm in the lineup, that's why I'm the leader of this club, and that's why I should be heading to Cincinnati for the All-Star Game. By the way, nice job with the ASG voting, assholes.
