With the notable exception of Tom Brady, Boston is a bastion of butt-ugly athletes. And that – believe it or not – is a good thing!
So says Men’s Journal maggie, which trots out an Ugly Athletes Hall of Shame in its April issue. And apparently, the Hub has been home to a pack of jocks who fell out the ugly tree – and hit every branch on the way down!
Kevin Youkilis, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, David Wells, Sam Cassell, Julian Tavares, Stephen Neal and the Celtics teams of the entire 1980s – “The Rosetta Stone of Sports Ugly” – all received places of honor in Matt Taibbi’s piece called “The Upside of Ugly.”
Youk fares the worst. According to Taibbi, the Red Sox slugger has “only three body parts, all hideously oversized: an enormous set of gnomish, bushy forearms, a massive casaba melon-size white head; and a cauldronlike belly.”
It goes on, but you get the drift . . . .
The writer contends that Youkilis’ lack of looks is why “he doesn’t sell cereal and why you can sign him relatively cheap.”
That would be $41 million for four years.
As opposed, to say, the rather attractive Mark Teixeira, another hard-hitting first-baseman who scored $180 million from the Yankees .
Taibbi breaks down the uglies into several “divisions.”
There’s the “Too Many Chromosomes Division,” which features “prototypical gland freak” Kevin McHale and “lip-fuzz redneck” Larry Bird.
“The Fat Reeking Whale Division” has David Wells as its president. (“Not many athletes achieve David Wells fatness and live to tell about it,” the writer opines.)
“The Big Donkey Division” – a “huge hulking, slow, fee, fi, fo, fum ugly” – features ex-Celtic Rick Robey, while the “Swamp Thing” set – “your tough, defense-oriented athlete whose appearance is a physical deterrent” – stars Youk and late Celts great Dennis Johnson.
Johnson’s teammate, Robert Parish is president of “The Methuselah Division” – “looking prematurely 600 years old” while former Celtic Sam Cassell heads up “The Area 51 Division” – “They don’t look like human beings at all” – winning “by a tentacle” over Julian Tavares.
Finally, Boston puts two jocks in the “The B.C. Comics Division for Sports Cavemen”: ex-Bruin Adam Oates and current Patriot Steven Neal.
But all that ugliness adds up to some beautiful players, says Men’s Journal, because the looks-challenged athletes “are far more likely to play with the right rage than your pretty-boy QB who gets triple-cowgirled by the Swedish bikini team no matter how many interceptions he throws.”
Brady, the maggie, admits, is “the exception that proves the rule.”
File Under: Skin Deep.
