Schur: "Requiem For A Hardass"

Michael Schur, aka Ken Tremendous, says good-bye to Kevin Youkilis as only an obsessive Red Sox fan can:

A lot of winning baseball teams have one guy on their team who's kind of a dick. (On the field only, I'm talking — I don't know these people.) They run hard, and play hard, and curse a lot, and get a lot of standing ovations for their "old school" manner of play. They get into fights, sometimes with their own teammates, but that's because they're "passionate." When something bad happens, they make a huge show out of destroying water coolers, because they are super-intense and everyone needs to realize that. There has never been a correctly called third strike on these men, and when the home-plate ump deigns to call that fucking pitch a strike, are you kidding me?, the gentlemen in question don't just get hot and pop off. They act as though their very honor as human beings has been called into question. ...

You wanna know why I love Michael Schur?

One, there was the old blog he ran with a couple of friends, Fire Joe Morgan. (in this Yook piece, he refers to Moneyball as Billy Beane's autobiography, without further explanation). Two, his wife has forbidden him to talk about Infinite Jest in public because once he starts, he will talk about it (and only it) for hours. And three, when he mentions Paul O'Neill, who ably filled the role of the Yankees' raging, immature dick, he adds this footnote:

4 My wife, who does not care about baseball, was once introduced to Paul O'Neill at a restaurant, came home, reported that she thought he was "very handsome," and we got into one of the biggest fights of our entire relationship. I am very mature. (This was pre-2004, though, so that totally explains it.)