Baseball’s John Rocker really doesn’t care what people think. But he’s certainly not afraid to tell them what’s on his mind. Even to the point of being over-the-top offensive with his remarks. I found this quote of his on Wikipedia, made during an interview with Sports Illustrated:

“I’d retire first. It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing… The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”

Whoa…where does this guy get off? Talk about being a real xenophobe. Sounds like no one is good enough for him.

That interview was held in 2000, but don’t think 9 years will mellow John. Just this past January he made the news again:

Former Atlanta Braves player John Rocker was ejected from the W Buckhead hotel’s grand opening late Thursday night after verbally assaulting local sports talker Steak Shapiro.

Hotel security guards escorted Rocker from the premises after he got into a screaming match and hurled ethnic slurs at 790 the Zone’s Shapiro upstairs in the hotel’s Whiskey Blue nightclub, a spokeswoman said.

According to witnesses at the party, Rocker insulted Shapiro repeatedly during the altercation, using various vulgarisms.

Over the years, Shapiro on his show has publicly taken Rocker to task numerous times for his behavior. Read on…

Rocker really needs to learn how to keep his mouth shut. What was that old adage we all learned in grade school? Something about “if we don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Yeah, that sounds about right.