The One and Only Rage Thread.

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

Hey profit, is there cum in your mouth?

 

no?

 

then quit bitchin'.

[Guest Flyboy]

Whoo-hoo.

 

It has caught on!

[Guest EricMM]

That has to join NO POBO! as a new smark term.

 

Like, when a heel keeps whining, we can say "Hey, Christian's got a mouthful of sperm, cuz he be bitching!"

 

Or would that be dirty.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Um, what'll you say to me when I'm 25 and still like her legitimately? Sheesh dude.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest cynicalprofit]

No you're not

I notice...

 

Excuse me, are you in my profession, no. Shut your mouth. You have no idea. SHEEP!

(Are you even out of highschool?)

 

Hey profit, is there cum in your mouth?

no?

then quit bitchin'.

 

Hey are there advertisements everywhere I go hawking shit I don’t need....yes. FUCK YOU! (More rage I love it.)And isnt this about rage. I feel like theres cannon ball sized cumballs being shot in my mouth everytime I walk down the street and people are shoving shit at me, trying to sell me something. Besides, girls drink cum, and men get all bitchy about doing it, if you expect your girl to swallow, expect to do the same. And sides, every shake hands with a man, willing to be he's jerked off with that very hand. Sorry swollowing a little cum, that will probably do you no harm what so ever, isnt a big deal. When you kiss your mom, rememebr she probably sucked your dads dick at some point. ALL GIRlS GIVE HEAD SO WHEN YOU KISS THEM THERES PROBABLY ALREADY BEEN A DICK IN THERE. Little cum, big deal. When you touch a doornob or handle, you probably dont even want to know who else has touched it. You people should know by now, girls=evil and guys=scum.

 

Um, what'll you say to me when I'm 25 and still like her legitimately? Sheesh dude.

 

I'll ask you if you know where she is cause no one else will know cause she'll be history. Dude I see women who are tons more beautiful every day. I know people that met her and even they stopped giving a shit after seeing her upclose because she’s not that good looking when you get up to her, or so it was told to me by a guy who used to like her till he met her face to face backstage at a show.(And yes this is true, he used to get backstage all the time making fake passes and stuff, hell he even sold bracelets that get you to the open area at concerts because he order from the same people the venue ordered from, smart fellow Dave was, even without a highschool education.)

 

Britney just gets targeted by me because she is the poster child of what I hate, mediocrity called greatness...hello its not. I am apparently the only one on the planet who is sick and tired of being told ok is good. Ok is not good, its just ok. Its not greatness, yet everyone is an accepting sheep to whatever is marketed at them. The top 40 keeps selling desipte alot of those bands having little real talent, or being able to make more then 3 albums. Yet Saind has been hailed like a second comming of chirst, they are not. Britney Spears is called an idol, why, becaus she dances like a stripper? These are the rolemodels parents let their kdis have and they wonder why children do stupid shit. Britney Spears influences girls to dress provocative, like madonna did, Im sorry but seeing a 9-year old in a midriff is fucking sick and disturbing, and its probably some psychos fantasy. Eminem is a sex symbol, why because he does drugs and sings about killing his wife? I'm sorry that doesnt make you a sex symbol, that makes you a criminal by law. The Dixies Chicks are crusaders for womens rights because they write a song about killing an abusive husband, ummm how? Everyone is so fucking accepting to whatever is marketed to them it makes me want to puke.

 

And didnt the RIAAC, or whatever its called, have celebrities tell you pirateing music is stealing, how in the hell am i suppose to feel guilty for people who live better then 90% of the population? (Puff you drive a benz, I feel NOTHING for you what so ever, Britney you have a chaufer, bite me) Am i suppose to feel bad for stealing their music? Why, because record lables charge 15+ for a cd which has maybe 3 good songs on it?

(they relases singles based on the two ideas, which song is most marketable, and that if they like that song they will buy the whole album, despite some singles being nothing like the rest of the album, see chubthummping, by chumbawomba).

Because record executives dont make 15 million dollars this year? Because the artist is getting ripped off, well its not my fault they signed away their rights to do recording deals, its called reading a contract, maybe they should do it. TLC went broke because their record lable screwed them over big time, not because people pirated their music. Yet I am suppose to feel bad for doing it? I would feel bad if I take from Ani Difranco because she does it mainly be herself, which is why I dont downlaod her stuff, that's stealing. Taking from record labels isnt stealing, its fighting back, its sending the message of, it sucks, were not gonna pay for it. Yet they dont listen. It hits them where it hurts most, their pocket book, and they dont bother to think about why we do it, their only intrest is to make us pay money when we obviously dont want to. (Sides artist make more money off concerts then CD's atleast when you're a good preformer and people are willing to pay to see it. No Barbra and Whitney, you're not worth $100 for 2 hours, no artist is, unless they are comming back from the dead, and I mean out of the grave, not digitally like they did with Elvis.)

 

Dre and metallic lost alot fo respect from thier fans because, they drive fancy cars, live the good life, and then complain because we dont want to shell out 15 more dollars for another CD which has maybe 3 songs we like. And they wonder why we backlash against them. Telling us to give you money when you have more then we do will not win you any brownie points. Sorry Dre, seeing you drive a benz and talk about your bitches and hoes and how good you got it makes me want to slap you, not buy your record. Metallica, live from their mansion, telling me stealing their music is bad, while they sip drinks from $9000 couches doesnt make me feel sympathetic in the least.

 

Im sick and tired of being told, shut up and do what we tell you. Notice how the VCR is being put out of business? Its for 2 reasons, one the technology is better, and to stop bootlegging. They will soon replace your dvds with new technology, which means you once again have to buy new equipment, ever notice how the econmy goes up when new standard technology happens. When they upgrade it you once again have to update your old stuff if you wish to enjoy it, or to get new stuff you must buy the new technology. Soon their will be no vcr relases, it will be only dvd, which means over the last 20 years you've been buying tape has been pretty much worthless, since they are no longer being used and they will stop making vcrs. One day, in the future, there will trash heaps FILLED with VHS tapes because no one uses them anymore, many of them will be WCW PPVS that were never sold.

 

The RIAAC has been trying to get congress to pass new laws that will require new technology to be made so they can combat burning cds, you know what that means, you're cds are gonna be even bigger worthless pieces of plastic and you will have to buy a new music player, and if you want to enjoy new recrods they will only be available in that new format.

 

Sure many wont update their technology, they will keep what they have, and they will be left behind by marketers and no new products will be made for them. Technology has always been an update or get nothing new from it way of existance. NES games are no longer made, PS1 games are no longer bing made, tapes vhs and audio, are still being made, but not on the same level they once were and in 5 years or so, they will be gone completely, the technology will have made them obsoulte(sp).

 

Take HHH for example, months of hype for his return, adds, videos, etc, and what does he get, a huge reaction for his return, Benoit gets nothing and comes back to little reaction in comparison, why, HHH was marketed right, and people bought it. And look at the inring results, HHH is now a horribly worker and Benoit owns it. But HHH is still king shit because he's marketed that way. People buy whats sold to them, no questions ask.

 

Rant over.

 

(*hope this doesnt become "they think they got them" all over again.*)

[Guest SP-1]

I hate being weird, how other people have such closed minds and the romantic is dead as far as the world is concerned. I hate being so creative that I wind up locked inside my head most of the time because there's simply not enough outlets to get it all out.

 

I hate people. No, I don't mean a specific person, I hate people in general, and I hate myself because that's opposite of how my romantic nature demands I feel. People are stupid, unfeeling bodies that could care less about truth or justice, or the simple greatness of watching a sunrise with someone. Girls in general don't know a good thing when they have it willing to give everything, but snag up the bad ones as quick as they can and complain because they had their hearts broken a month later. Too bad, and you know what? You deserve it. Learn to give a damn about the nice guy, the guy that UNDERSTANDS love and people, and appreciates and lives OUT OF the wonderful things in life. That is when there isn't so much bullshit running through his mind because of PEOPLE that his core nature is put in a stranglehold.

 

And then, THEN, people come out of the woodwork, I tell you. "Dude, you're usually so caring and loving. Anybody would be happy to be with you, and lucky, too!" Yeah, like you were. And men who claim to follow one thing but do opposite things in the name of truth.

 

But those of us who fight merely to exist, with our imaginations and simple, loving hearts, with our complex minds that are bursting at the seams with the life and death of imaginary worlds, where a string of thought is the DNA code of a living, breathing story to be told, of a notion of the heart that demands voice, but can find none . . .

 

I hate people. But I love them more than they may ever know, and more than I may ever be able to make it known. And I hate myself for being forced into this duality by the very emotional thickness that I embrace in the pursuit of who I am.

 

. . .

 

That felt nice.

 

SP

[Guest godthedog]

Hey profit, is there cum in your mouth?

 

no?

 

then quit bitchin'.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

that was great.

[Guest cynicalprofit]

spiderpoet is now my god

[Guest SP-1]

LOL, while I appreciate the sentiment, I'm far from God.

 

Though, a Cynical "Prophet" proclaiming a God is kinda funny.

 

That is all.

 

SP

[Guest EricMM]

No no no, Cynical Profit proclaiming ANYTHING is pretty funny (Whats with all this rage??)

 

Girls in general don't know a good thing when they have it willing to give everything, but snag up the bad ones as quick as they can and complain because they had their hearts broken a month later. Too bad, and you know what? You deserve it. Learn to give a damn about the nice guy, the guy that UNDERSTANDS love and people, and appreciates and lives OUT OF the wonderful things in life.

"Dude, you're usually so caring and loving. Anybody would be happy to be with you, and lucky, too!" Yeah, like you were.

 

Hey hey hey, nice guys finish last because they open their mouths last. Thats it. Love cannot be silent you must be as loud as the assholes or you will leave every party alone

[Guest LaParkaMarka]

Hey hey hey, nice guys finish last because they open their mouths last. Thats it. Love cannot be silent you must be as loud as the assholes or you will leave every party alone

I disagree...I can be just as outgoing as the asshole-types, and yet I also get the whole "Wow, you're going to make some girl so lucky" line a lot. At first, I really believed it, now I'm just getting really annoyed by it. I mean, I think I'd rather just have a girl say "You're not my type" or "I like dating guys who treat me like garbage" because at least they'd be honest.

 

Women use nice guys as doormats. So all of you nice guys that are lusting after some hottie who always comes to you as a shoulder to cry on inbetween loser boyfriends, walk away. Trust me, you won't get anywhere.

Not that there aren't quality girls out there...there are a few. But being a girl's "best friend" or whatever is not the right way to go. This might seem like really obvious advice, but sometimes it's hard for us nice guys to see the obvious.

[Guest Incandenza]

I find it very difficult to read cynicalprofit's posts.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

I can't really read them either, even though he was disputing my like for Ms. Spears, which honestly has nothing to do with her appearance.

 

I'm personally in the stage right now where I don't understand why females don't want anything to do with me. I don't know if this is better than the self-esteem black hole of before, but at least now I have a sense of entitlement, and isn't that what really counts in the end?

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest cynicalprofit]

Why do you like someone who is obviously so talentless. I can hear her backup singers more then i can hear her when she sings.

 

My rage comes from the mindless acceptance everyone seems to have.

 

To sum it up, people with money telling me stealing is wrong because i'm suppose to feel bad for them is stupid. Technology is only used to take your money from you, not help you or make life better. All music is pretty much crap and Im tired of pirateing being blamed for bad music sales when its the lack of talent and price that are really doing it. And when people just agree to whatever is feed to them by TV and media, I get offended.

[Guest Incandenza]

I'm personally in the stage right now where I don't understand why females don't want anything to do with me. I don't know if this is better than the self-esteem black hole of before, but at least now I have a sense of entitlement, and isn't that what really counts in the end?

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

dood girlz r stoopid n r ppl who dont no whut they wunt they say they wunt the nice guy but lik u better as a freend n i hat them fukkin bitches i hat them all[/cynicalprofit]

 

Seriously, it's difficult to fully ascertain why women don't want to have anything to do with you, or any other guy who complains about their shitty social life. We only know as much as you're telling us; you ever consider that it's something you're doing, and not them?

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

I don't like the most talented people, I like what appeals to me the most. She's catchy and addictive, inoffensive to the ears, and that appeals to me. Sure I like things that take talent also, but I'm not going to discriminate.

 

That goes for anything. I can enjoy 2001 just as much as I enjoyed XXX in the world of movies. I can switch between a History Channel documentary and Raw at will and enjoy each an equal amount. Just because things aren't highbrow or artsy-fartsy doesn't mean I'll look down on it.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest cynicalprofit]

I dont hate girls, I dont hate women, I just find it so stupid that people constanly expect relationships to always be perfect when human history shows they arent. My girlfriend cheated on me, big deal, move on, she obviously wasnt the one.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

I'm personally in the stage right now where I don't understand why females don't want anything to do with me. I don't know if this is better than the self-esteem black hole of before, but at least now I have a sense of entitlement, and isn't that what really counts in the end?

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

dood girlz r stoopid n r ppl who dont no whut they wunt they say they wunt the nice guy but lik u better as a freend n i hat them fukkin bitches i hat them all[/cynicalprofit]

 

Seriously, it's difficult to fully ascertain why women don't want to have anything to do with you, or any other guy who complains about their shitty social life. We only know as much as you're telling us; you ever consider that it's something you're doing, and not them?

You know about as much as I do, because I've been trying to figure out what the problem is, and I think I've figured it out: DON'T TRY.

 

Seriously, I happen across more females and they almost seem to fall into my lap when I'm not trying. But the moment I start making an effort, you can hear the wind blow and see the tumbleweeds.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest cynicalprofit]

Inoffensive, singing hit me baby, or Im a slave 4 u, you dont find that obvious double meaning offensive.

 

Im not saying everything has tp be artsy, I like wrestling as much as everyone else aroud here, but im tired of being told this whatever is great, when if you really look at, you'll see that its not.

 

That and when muscians use their image to sell products, their integrity is gone, except for Willie Nelson, cause he owed the IRS like 10mill or something.

[Guest cynicalprofit]

Seriously, I happen across more females and they almost seem to fall into my lap when I'm not trying. But the moment I start making an effort, you can hear the wind blow and see the tumbleweeds.

 

Thats how you do it. If you go running after it, you never catch it.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

I don't find the double meaning offensive because I don't give a shit what lyrics say. I don't look for deep meanings in ANY lyrics, from ANY band, group, or musician. To look for offensive connotations where they usually don't exist is also a fairly conservative, panties-in-a-bunch tendency, and I think it's a fairly well-known fact around here that I am NOT conservative.

 

I also use different words for different kinds of things. I'll call a Radiohead album "brilliant," but I'll use "delightful" or "uber-cool" to describe the Sophie album, with no cerebral words used. They're obviously made for different reasons, and I honor that in how I speak of them.

 

I would also like to add that my happiness has greatly increased since I just dropped my old attitude towards the popular things and just allowed myself to accept and enjoy mainstream things while still enjoying things not in the mainstream. I used to have the exact same arguments you have, and I was MISERABLE, but one day I just said "You know what? Fuck it, I'll like what I want to like and stop complaining" and the rest has been relative bliss.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest cynicalprofit]

I don't find the double meaning offensive because I don't give a shit what lyrics say.

 

You should, its what the children listen to. Its what they will grow up with the image of. And its the image she promtes that is given to kids as an acceptable way to dress. Sorry 9yrolds in midriffs is wrong.

 

I would also like to add that my happiness has greatly increased since I just dropped my old attitude towards the popular things and just allowed myself to accept and enjoy mainstream things while still enjoying things not in the mainstream. I used to have the exact same arguments you have, and I was MISERABLE, but one day I just said "You know what? Fuck it, I'll like what I want to like and stop complaining" and the rest has been relative bliss.

 

Isnt that just acceptance? What about fighting for what you honeslty believe in? My misery keeps me going, it makes me want to make a difference, now you say you give up and just accept, so they got you too. You siad its all been bliss, Id call that acceptance and not fighting anymore. I'm sorry man, but I cant do that. Id rather fight for a better society then just say, fuck it its all ok when i can look around and easily say no its not. I tired that whole acceptance thing once, didnt work to well.

 

Im not trying to offend your personal beliefs, Kot, but this is something I strongly oppose, just setting back and accepting when you know things are broken and can be fixed. Its said ignorance is bliss and thats pretty much what you did.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

Yeah, but I was constantly rationalizing liking this stuff. I eventually ran out of ways to equivocate it, so I stopped fighting my own tastes.

 

Something that helped was not looking at my personal tastes as a holy crusade.

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest godthedog]

LOL, while I appreciate the sentiment, I'm far from God.

of course you're far from god.

 

because i'm god.

[Guest Kotzenjunge]

And the stallion, mang!

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

[Guest SP-1]

My rant had more to do with people not listening to themselves at all more than commercialization. Alot of it is just flat out lack of intelligence, and I don't so much mean book smarts there.

 

What pisses me off is someone that falls into the shallow pit and just allows themselves to wallow there for the joy of instant gratification in their relationships. In my experience, females do that. It's insanely difficult to come across a girl that lives from her true inner core and is in tune with the world in some fashion. Alot of my anger is also centered on myself for allowing myself to climb out of said shallow pit and start living from that deep artistic romanticism that drives me, thus the duality I spoke of. When you start living from passion in a mostly passionless world (true passion, not what most people merely settle for), you so often find yourself in the extreme minority, and it is an insanely lonely place.

 

I wasn't complaining about my social life, I was angry that my own levels of self-discovery. If anyone deserves the blame for my lack of a romantic life, it's myself for being a romantic in the first place. The world feeds that settling for someone that's hot or that will screw you will bring happiness, but my inherent belief in the bigger picture, and the passionate possibilities of living with the heart prevent me from seeking that instant gratification.

 

My own refusal to be gratified now forces me t wait and build upon a deep relationship with someone in the future. I am the only one to blame for my present, instant rage and loneliness. Not one other soul on this planet. I don't say it depressed or down, I say it angry, and rightfully so. But not with anyone else. Ultimately, with reality, and with myself for finding it. The innocent bystanders that are named or focused upon are merely that.

 

I have only myself to blame. That's the way it should be.

 

SP

[Guest godthedog]

And the stallion, mang!

 

Fo sheez,

Kotzenjunge

^my new favorite poster on this board.

[Guest Sandman9000]

You want rage? I'll give you motherfucking rage.

 

Taken from ESPN The Magazine. I knew for years that I focused better when I was angry, I just never knew why. Then, one day, I bought a magazine for something to read on a trip, and it answered everything I had questions over.

 

I threw shotput and discus in high school. Two hours before I threw, I was in the locker room, reading the article, listen to loud, angry music, feeding the flames inside to the point where they were ready to burst. There were only two reasons people bothered me: it was time to throw, and coach wanted to see me, and there had better be a damn good reason that coach wanted to see me when he knew how I prepared.

 

This is my favorite magazine article of all time.

 

PLAYING WITH FIRE

IS JOHN ROCKER FUELED BY RAGE--OR CONSUMED BY IT?

By Dan Le Batard

 

This is what it feels like to walk on the edge of the volcano—or sprint on it, if you prefer: John Rocker bursts out of the bullpen as if uncaged, a rockslide about to gather momentum. He has worked himself into quite the frothing fury, screaming and grunting and throwing every pitch as hard as he possibly can, his spittle and sweat flying everywhere. This is just him warming up, mind you, figuratively and literally. He’ll have to climb higher to reach the flames.

So when the bullpen door swings open, the tranquil game of baseballs turns into something out of the rodeo. Twitching and spasming, a convulsion in cleats, Rocker runs full-throttle toward center stage, scorching the earth en route, a lit fuse looking for a place to explode. It’s hard to say whether Rocker can see straight or even clearly at this moment, the pupils of his eyes bouncing around like two light-blue marbles in a shaking glass jar.

Rocker himself won’t let you look into his soul—he isn’t saying much of anything these days, scarred and charred as he is by the last time the rage got out of his grip. Suffice to say that, blister or no blister, when he has squeezed that baseball to punctuate his maniacal sprints this season, he has left it covered in blood.

Even Rocker’s lifelong friends—the people who have known his temper, desire, and competitive insanity ever since he walked into a new school as a third-grader and demanded a race with whomever was considered the fastest—have asked him if he makes this kind of entrance into games for flamboyant show, as if he were a professional wrestler trapped in a reliever’s body. They don’t understand. Not at all. A polite Rocker, who scored 1270 on his SAT’s and had an 3.8 grade-point average at Mercer University before choosing baseball’s rush, explains himself to his friends patiently and honestly: He is merely in a major league hurry to get to that mound, the place in the world where he feels most alive. “Something is wrong with him,” Mets pitcher Al Leiter says with a shrug. But, then again, Leiter doesn’t have to go to the same deep, dark place to find his high-octant fuel—a place Rocker apparently feels the need to visit even when he is hunting in the off-season with a reporter there to hear his every word.

This is what it feels to walk on the edge of the volcano—or sprint, if you prefer: Rob Dibble, who was Rocker before Rocker, ate a cheeseburger at 2 p.m. on game days, but the bubbling volatility in his stomach wouldn’t allow him to eat anything else for the next nine hours. “I felt so physically ill,” he says today. Dibble would push the pedal to the heavy metal during games, listening to Megadeth to fill his head with angry noise, and there were a lot of times he wasn’t controlling his emotions as much as his emotions were controlling him.

Dibble still can’t explain, for example, why it was that after one unspectacular, regular-season game—it’s not like he entered with bases loaded and nobody out, not like he broke a record or saved the season, not like it was the first time he was doing any of this—he sat down and started sobbing so hard his shoulders shook. He can’t explain why he threw a ball from the mound over the centerfield fence after giving up a home run, why he barely had the strength to hold a cigarette after games, why he once told good friend Barry Larkin to get the bleep back to his position and never come near his mound again. But Dibble can explain this: He has searched all over to find something that elevates him as high as that mound did—weightlifting, karate, religion, Harleys, tattoos—and he hasn’t found anything that comes even close.

“It’s the unleashing of your inner id,” Dibble says. “When I was closing games, I didn’t know who or what I was, but I could have been an axe murderer. I don’t recognize that guy when I look back. You get possessed by the adrenaline, euphoria, power. I was very scary to be around, like a lion that hadn’t eaten in a month. I went to an evil place, man. I was everything that scares people at night, but I felt three times as strong as normal. It gave me ulcers. I started throwing up blood in Dodger stadium one time…”

Dibble pauses here. “Man,” he says, “I miss it.”

Michael Jordan, the ultimate closer, had plenty of extreme in him. He frolicked with cartoon characters and packaged himself perfectly in cuddly commercials, but that’s not who he is. He revealed himself to us, teeth bared, when Chris Childs threw a basketball at him once. What came over Jordan’s face at the moment he realized what this nobody had done was like George Brett flying out of the dugout in a pine-tar boil and Bryan Cox challenging the entire Bengals bench to a fight and a young Mike Tyson making his bad-self march down to the ring. It was real, it was raw, and it was most assuredly not something brought to you by Nike.

And then it was gone, just like that, in less time it took you to read this sentence. On his own, against his instinct, Jordan suddenly jumped away from Childs as if he had been pulled off by all his teammates. “A killer in control,” Pat Riley calls him with profound admiration, because he knows what Jordan figured out on the way to all those rings: It’s impossible to master your rage if you make it possible for your rage to be your master.

This isn’t an easy walk, the one on the side of the volcano. Eleanor Roosevelt warned that “anger is just one letter short of danger,” but Eleanor didn’t know spit about throwing 100 mph or winning something as violent as a football collision. Sometimes athletes have to reach deep into that gurgling lava to extract what they need—deep down, as Colonel Jessep thundered in A Few Good Man, in places you don’t talk about at parties.

That’s why former linebacker Chris Spielman envisioned such horrific images of violence befalling his wife and kids that he would actually come to the line of scrimmage crying. That’s why Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis talks to his murdered college roommate minutes before every game, remembering the way his roommate’s face was bludgeoned more than 20 times by the BUTT of a rifle, and then stares icily into the backfield in search of revenge. That’s why veteran boxing trainer Lou Duva will grab his weary fighter’s face with both hands between rounds, reminding him of the way the overflowing toilet in the apartment above keeps leaking all over the fighter’s family and shout, “Do you love your son? Do you? Then fight for him!”

This kind of insanity makes some sense in a rabid sport like football, where the object is to win collisions. Heck, Dolphins defensive end Trace Armstrong, as deep a man as you’ll find in the NFL, hears about Spielman conjuring visions of rape and making tackles in tears, and he shrugs it off without any reaction whatsoever, as if you just informed him Spielman uses protein supplements. Told he is reacting to this as if it were the world’s most normal thing, Armstrong says, “No, it’s not normal or healthy at all. But the game we plat isn’t normal or healthy either.”

Jets linebacker Bryan Cox knows. Do you understand everything he brings into that backfield with him? The father who dealt drugs? The poverty-ravaged childhood spent gathering trash? The legs made strong through workouts that involved pushing cars through a junkyard’s stink? None of it is enough. Cox needs more. And more. So when the kids at school ask Cox’s daughter if he crazy daddy has been smoking cocaine, he takes that with him, too. Cox has no explanation for his wife when she asks what the hell he becomes on game days, but whatever he is might be hitting running backs with a wrath concocted from pretending she is cheating on him.

“It’s not always mentally fit to want to ram your body into people, so you have to manufacture stuff,” Cox says. “You personalize it. You can always do something better when you have more of a passion. You just manufacture something in your mind, so that you can be pissed off and ready. I used to get real close to the edge. I used to get real bad, because I would be right at the breaking point of being committed. I wanted people to be afraid.”

Cox routinely went flying over said edge, actually, perpetually leading the league in fines, doing such things as leaving Buffalo’s field with his middle fingers ablaze because he couldn’t always control that fire he had in his hands. But what in the name of Cal Ripken Jr. is Bryan Cox’s lava doing seeping into a game as pastoral and pristine as baseball, possessing John Rocker like something out of The Exorcist? Isn’t baseball all about keeping your emotions in check, about taking deep breaths before getting in the batter’s box, about stepping off the mound and gathering yourself in times of trouble? Every time Rocker sprints out of that bullpen, it feels as if someone has dropped a live electrical wire on a Sunday picnic, but there he was in last year’s playoffs nonetheless, flipping off Mets fans and spitting at them and, not coincidentally, pitching more dominantly than he ever has.

Rocker needs the edge of the volcano. The edge gives him an edge. He wants the crowd’s hissing and says the worse thing he can be greeted with is indifference. Boos are his gas in more way than one, the angry sound helping him distill and distill and distill his world until it is so small that it fits exactly into the place where the catcher has put his mitt.

Rocker, like Dibble, is at his professional best when returning hate, or using it as his foundation. That’s why his first statement seeking penance for his now-infamous racist rant included him saying, “I want everyone to understand that my emotions fuel my competitive desire. They are a source of energy for me.” As much apologizing for his comments, he was explaining where they come from—namely, a dark place he has not learned to control but loves to visit, an emotional crack house.

Rocker, for example, told his teammates that he very badly wanted to hear the boos when venturing into New York in late June, and that he was excited about getting his command back in that hostile an environment (he’d lost it to the tune of an absurd 33 walks in 22 1/3 innings). The Braves laughed this off as false bravado, shortstop Walt Weiss admitting that “we all thought the wheels were going to come off” when Rocker, doubting his control and surrounded by a stadium of police, made his maniacal sprint into that Mets game, not knowing whether there was some lunatic in the stands intending to shoot him.

“How do you pitch and concentrate under those conditions?” Weiss asks now, but Rocker gave him the answer emphatically, mowing through the middle of the Mets order 1-2-3, striking out two and not allowing a ball out of the infield. Rocker’s veteran teammates, no strangers to success, were flatly awed. Rocker wasn’t. He walked off the mound slowly after that inning, staring into the crowd with a look that resembled defiance, the lava bubbling at its very highest temperature. Chipper Jones, scared of that might come next—from Rocker, not from others—shouted at him to please, please get the hell in the dugout.

It is a unique job, putting the punctuation on baseball games, the closer’s role being as much about attitude as arm, because you have to be perfectly comfortable with the pressure that comes with every one of your teammates quite literally placing the game in your hands. Rocker wasn’t much of a starting pitcher—he was incapable of pacing himself, unable to let a bad inning go—but he became overwhelming when he could pour nine innings’ worth of intensity into just three outs. Closers tend to be different animals—all of them wired differently, many of them wired, period—but you’ll find plenty who reach down from that edge and immerse more than just their pitching hand in the lava.

San Francisco’s Robb Nen throws his last bullpen pitch as hard as a human can, not caring where it goes, trying to put his mind, not the ball, in the right place. Nen says he gets angrier and angrier with every step towards that mound—“putting wood on the fire”—and adds, “Some guys don’t need anger, but I do. It’s an intensity that’s hard to explain, but it takes me a while to come down from it. It’ll be 10 to 15 minutes after a game before I can smile.” On more than one occasion, long after a game is done, Nen has tried to drink bottled water and seen it dribbling down his chin because his hand was still trembling.

Florida’s Antonio Alfonseca, baseball’s save leader, is the same way. He says, “I’m always angry in the ninth inning, very angry. I’m like a snorting bull. When I strike someone out, that’s when I feel most like a man.” Alfonseca has infuriated many baseball veterans with his fist-pumping after strikeouts and his screaming at the sky after finishing games. But Marlins manager John Boles says Alfonseca must let the emotion spill out the same way a too-tight valve must finally loosen to release hissing steam. If he didn’t let some of that go, Boles says, Alfonseca would undoubtedly suffer migraines.

Not all hard-throwing closers are like this, of course. Lee Smith ambled in from the bullpen with a studied nonchalance, making the game wait for him. Dennis Eckersley, very vulnerable, admitted he was petrified before and during his appearances—and that he was going to miss that fear terribly when he retired. But Armando Benitez of the Mets says that the closer’s role is “a grand job of grand emotion and grand responsibility and grand results, and a lot of people summon grand discord to complete it.”

Joe Sambito can tell you. He’s Rocker’s agent, and he closed major league game once upon a time too. He doesn’t want Rocker to get incinerated by all his smoldering, fried at 25, which is why Sambito preaches to him the benefits of channeling all that hear. Good emotion will put three or four miles on your fastball, see? Bad emotion will send it sailing right out of the strike zone.

“You want to use adrenaline, but you don’t want it to spill all over the place,” Sambito says. “It’s like a golf swing. If you swing too hard, you aren’t going to hit it as far. You can’t muscle your way through pitching. You’ve got to remember, John is 25 years old. I didn’t know who I was at 25 either. There’s an evolution. John has tremendous highs and lows. He has to learn to harness that. Has to. That’s difficult, but he’s learning.”

Weiss wonders: “Controlled rage? Can there be such a thing?”

It would be nice to have Rocker explain all this, but he isn’t much in the mood. Asked if there’d be a good time, any time, over the course of a few days to ask him baseball questions, only baseball questions, Rocker politely says, “probably not,” and then sits down in the clubhouse to watch a movie. Everyone around him has been scalded, clearly—friends declining interviews or not returning calls, Sambito asking that his words be read back or faxed to him, and Rocker’s father, Jake, declining to talk while adding, “It’s almost as if the media aren’t going to stop until they destroy my son,” and, “Our comments right now are being recorded. I’ve recorded all of my telephone conversations since January.”

Clearly, through, oxymorons be damned, Rocker had controlled rage last year, when he saved 38 games. Kerry Ligtenberg, the man who has taken his job for the moment, would marvel at how Rocker could get himself so angry, feeding off the loud pop of the glove in the dugout, going higher and higher and higher emotionally while putting those 98 mph fastballs where he wanted.

“In control, while being out of control,” says Ligtenberg, Rocker’s teammate since 1996. “He’s high-tempered, short-tempered, and he’s always been on that borderline between in and out of control. Last year, he tapped into that rage because he wanted to get the job done so badly. Now he feels like he needs to get the job done, and that’s totally different. He’s tapping into that rage toward you guys in the media because he feels he was wronged. He’s trying to prove a point, and it’s working against him, because he’s trying to be superhuman, trying to throw each pitch harder than the last one. You keep reaching for more, more, more, more until you can’t reach up that high anymore, you know?”

That’s how it can be as you climb towards the pinnacle in sports, higher and higher and higher, right to the edge of the volcano. Sometimes you can dip into all that energy and heat and power, consuming it. Or sometimes everything erupts, consuming you.

[Guest SP-1]

I skimmed the article, and from the gist I got from it, I would agree that rage and anger can be harnessed. Before I learned to harness it and drive myself further in my creative endeavors with it as a means of getting it out of my system, forcing it to be tangible if you will, it manifested itself in unhealthy ways.

 

Forcing your weaknesses to become strength is the key to dealing with rage, I think. It's the only way you'll be healed, eventually. A wound has to bleed in order to scab over and knit itself into normality. It's when you forcefully tap into it, however, that it becomes bad for you. Throws you off because you're concentrating on it, more than letting it . . . flow, for lack of a better term to come to mind.

 

If I missed the point of the article, forgive me, I simply don't have it in my tired eyes to read all of it at one time right now.

 

SP

[Guest Sandman9000]

Basically. It says it can be harnessed, but be careful of what happens if it gets out of control.

 

I know your tired, but read it sometime. It's incredibly good.