Men's Journal

August 7, 1956: Ted Williams spits at the crowd at Fenway Park, the culmination of sports’ first great whining career. Williams had stopped tipping his cap to fans after being booed in 1940. He added later: “They’re a bunch of sheep.… Every time I look at them I feel like vomiting.” Eventually he throws a bat into the crowd by “mistake” one day, braining a fan who happened to be manager Joe Cronin’s housekeeper. In his last game fans cheer wildly when he is replaced in the field; he blows them off by still refusing to tip his cap before disappearing into the dugout forever.

February 3, 1968: Vlade Divac born in Prijepolje, Serbia.

March 1979: Publication of The Bronx Zoo. Instantly popular for its raucous insider view of the Yankees clubhouse, relief ace Sparky Lyle’s book (with Peter Golenbock) would also have a major impact on the genre of literary sports whining. What you remember most is that Lyle spent 250 pages moaning about George Steinbrenner signing Goose Gossage after Lyle won the Cy Young award. An ancestor of chest-beating, “I don’t get my due” sports autobiographies such as Keyshawn Johnson’s Just Give Me the Damn Ball! and soporific “weepy misunderstood jock” confessionals like Pete Rose’s awesomely pretentious My Prison Without Bars.

November 25, 1980: Louisiana Superdome, Leonard–Duran II, the “No Más” fight. Little known fact: The full text of Roberto Duran’s famous whine is actually No boxeo con el payaso (“I’m not fighting this clown”) and then No más! No más! (“No more! No more!”). Also, in keeping with a great boxing tradition — one that dates all the way back to Jim Jeffries claiming he was drugged before his savage ass-whupping at the hands of Jack Johnson — Duran later deflects credit from his clearly superior opponent, blaming the loss on having overeaten before the fight. Future heavyweight whining champion Andrew Golota, 12 years old and living behind the iron curtain in Warsaw, does not watch the bout.

September 14, 1981: Brash, clown-haired young jerk John McEnroe whips brooding Euro-introvert Bjorn Borg in the U.S. Open final, officially ending Borg’s reign as the number one player in the world and sending him into one of the first great utterly self-indulgent early retirements in sports history. It was Borg who was the rotten sport that day, stalking off the court before the awards ceremony and immediately plunging into a multiyear “What’s it all about, Alfie?” funk. All his subsequent moves were made strictly according to standard early-midlife-crisis male-athlete playbook: He divorced his devoted first wife, fathered an out-of-wedlock child, remarried an Italian singer, nearly went bankrupt, and then resurfaced a year later to launch a clothing line named after himself that was advertised in his native country with the slogan “Fuck For the Future.”

June 5, 1986: Game five of the NBA finals. Seven-foot-four Rockets center Ralph Sampson punches 6-foot-1 supergeek Jerry Sichting of the Celtics while Sichting is backing up. He is quickly tackled by ponderous hippie Bill Walton (who had worn a T-shirt reading dance for disarmament to practice that day), gets ejected, and storms off, screaming about the “bullshit call” on live national television, then spends what’s left of his utterly disappointing career complaining that the Rockets never got him (a) a good enough point guard or (b) a coach who would “let go of the reins.” His NBA whining legacy would quickly be overshadowed by the likes of Isiah Thomas and Scottie Pippen, but throughout the ’80s no one came up bigger in meaningless situations or pointed the finger after baffling losses more consistently than Sampson. He also represented the ideal whining physique: immensely tall, grapefruit-size head, pencil mustache.

April 21, 1989: Field of Dreams is released, becomes a huge hit, and untold millions of men learn to get unashamedly sniffly about the game of catch they never had with the supportive father figure they never had. Iron John, perhaps inevitably, is published within a year.

July 15, 1995: Through surrogates, former star running back O.J. Simpson complains about his arthritis while on trial for the bloody massacre of two healthy human beings. The accused nods somberly as a defense witness doctor testifies that while O.J. might be able to swing a bat, “he would essentially have to lope or walk to first base.” World instantly feels terrible for previous ignorance of his sufferings.

April 22, 2004: Ole Miss star quarterback Eli Manning informs the Chargers that he’d rather not play in San Diego, even though they have the number one pick. Manning is actually not the first prima donna QB to pull this stunt — John Elway dissed the Colts in 1983 — but it sounds much more like whining this time around, particularly since the message reaches the Chargers thirdhand, via agent Tom Condon, who got it from dad Archie Manning. The whining-until-you-get-to-the-team-you-
really-want-to-play-for tactic soon becomes routine and would ultimately be perfected by Miami Dolphins star Jason Taylor, who, four years later, forces a trade to the Washington Redskins by dancing on television until Bill Parcells vomits.

February 20, 2006: Alex Rodriguez complains that no one loves him because he has a $252 million contract. “From the day I signed that contract, I’ve felt like if everything I did wasn’t at the top of my game, I was going to get ripped,” he moans. “But not everybody doesn’t like me; some people out there like me.” The spring training complaining session — in which the star player lays out a comprehensive whining leitmotif for the upcoming season — had actually been pioneered the year before by Barry Bonds, who lashed out at the media, fans, Jose Canseco, and white people. Chest and arms exploding against his uniform, Bonds told reporters: “I’m not going to allow you guys to ruin my joy.”

May 30, 2007: Kobe Bryant retracts trade request (“I don’t want to go anyplace”) three hours after making it (“I would like to be traded, yeah”), beginning a sequence of events that ends with Memphis Grizzlies fans spending all spring watching Kwame Brown miss four-foot jumpers. Kobe pledges support for coach Phil Jackson, who immediately flies home to his Montana ranch to spend the summer preparing his complaints about the next season’s playoff officiating.

July 27, 2008: Manny Ramirez, upset that the Boston Red Sox have not given him a new $100 million contract, announces that he is ready to play “in Iraq” if need be. Disappointingly, Iraq is not interested in taking on his salary, and the Red Sox have to settle for sending him to Los Angeles. Manny’s place in the history of sports whining cannot be understated; he is the first pro athlete to be rewarded for a regression to preadolescence.

August 14, 2008: Philadelphia Phillies star shortstop Jimmy Rollins, his feelings hurt, blasts booing hometown fans as “front-runners”; wishes he were in St. Louis. Controversy dies down when rest of country decides it agrees with him, except for the St. Louis part.

September 14, 2008: Following the Patriots’ 21st consecutive regular-season win (19–10 over the Jets) and just a week removed from a preseason in which the whole world picked his team to go back to the Super Bowl, Randy Moss explodes at the unappreciative media: “All you haters, keep hatin’. We coming.”

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