Littman: Advice for Mariners’ Bradley to become baseball’s best bad boy

Don’t be surprised if you see the Seattle Mariners’ Milton Bradley playing… Don’t be surprised if you see the Seattle Mariners’ Milton Bradley playing outfield on a sunny day this season wearing glasses that look more like Venetian blinds than your typical pair of shades.

According to Bradley, who’s about to play for his eighth team in 11 years, he’s baseball’s version of everyone’s favorite — or least favorite — rapper who popularized a very ridiculous-looking pair of glasses.

“If I was a musician, I’d be Kanye West. If I was in the NBA, I’d be Ron Artest,” Bradley told the Associated Press last week. “In baseball, they’ve got Milton Bradley. I’m that guy. You need people like me, so you can point your finger and go, ‘There goes the bad guy.’”

First off, kudos to Bradley for knowing exactly how to play this role: There is no easier way to figure out who the bad guy is than to listen for someone talking about themselves in third person. Unless it’s The Rock, who was a bad guy on occasion but is still kind of awesome thanks to that eyebrow thing he did.

There are plenty of reasons some might think Bradley is baseball’s bad guy. For starters, he was ejected from two spring training games last week. While that’s quite impressive to some — spring training really doesn’t count for anything, and it’s ridiculous to argue over calls in an exhibition game — others see that as being overly aggressive.

In an interview with The New York Times earlier in the spring, Bradley blamed his poor play last season, in his first year with the Cubs, on the city of Chicago. The Cubs also suspended Bradley for the last few weeks of the season last year after he was scratched from the starting lineup with a sore knee. After this, he said to a newspaper, “You understand why they haven’t won in 100 years here.” The last time the Cubs won the World Series was 1908.

There were other incidents too, like the time in 2008 when Bradley tried to chase down a Kansas City Royals announcer after a game because the announcer said some unflattering things about Bradley, according to ESPN. Or the time in the season before that when Bradley was so adamant that an umpire made a wrong call that he had to be held back by his manager, then tripped and tore his ACL, ending his season. And then there has been broken bats, battered water coolers and other little slip-ups.

While all of that is great, Bradley isn’t approaching Artest’s level. Artest is unparalleled. Fans don’t like Artest because one time he ran into the stands and punched a guy. Like, during a game, ran into the stands and fought people. It was amazing. The chances of that happening again are slim, if existent at all, but you really only have to fight a fan once to make your point. So in my estimation, Artest is a bit of a stretch.

But does that really make Bradley baseball’s Kanye West? Let’s not crown him yet, but he’s certainly in the lead. According to my standings, Hideki Matsui is currently in second, followed by David Eckstein.

So if Bradley really wants to earn his self-declared comparison, he’s got some work to do. Luckily, The Pitt News is here to show him the way.

First, West got his break as a producer. Bradley’s already well known, so this can’t be how he gets his break, but if he wanted to sit out part of the season to coach, that’d be step one.

Next, West first caught attention as a rapper after getting in a car accident and recording a song with his jaw wired shut. Since Bradley being unable to talk might actually benefit him in the public eye but wouldn’t be impressive on the baseball field, he should play a few games with one of his arms in a sling.

During an interview, Bradley should say that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig doesn’t care about right fielders. It wouldn’t be the first time he made such a remark.

Bradley, then with the Dodgers, criticized teammate Jeff Kent of being a bad team leader because Kent “doesn’t know how to deal with African-American people,” as he told the Associated Press. Of course, Bradley’s comments were made a couple of months before West’s, so perhaps West is the Bradley of music.

While Taylor Swift is accepting the National League MVP award, Bradley has to barge on stage, steal a microphone and say, “Albert Pujols had one of the best seasons of all time.” Then he has to humorously shrug.

Maybe Bradley can get really upset after losing a few games and only do interviews in Auto-Tune, as well.

If Bradley wants to say “fam” a lot during conversations and see if he can get Louis Vuitton Mariners uniforms, that could only help.

So there you have it, Milton Bradley, your “Become Kanye West Starter Kit.”

Perhaps just one more piece of advice for Bradley, this one courtesy of his kindred spirit, Mr. West:

“You need to pump your brakes and drive slow, homie.”