"Five that Few Can Stand!!"

Not everyone even cares about athletes. But for those that follow sports and know some of the pro players out there; I have come up with my list of the five athletes that their peers hate. These are guys other guys in the locker room wish would drop dead. They are NOT listed in any specific order.

1. “O” dog or Orlando Hudson, second base for the San Diego Padres. He has been in the majors 8 years and is with his 6th team. That alone is not a good sign and the Padres would love to move him and his 2 million dollar salary but there aren’t any takers. He is a career .278 hitter (only okay) and a pretty good fielder so what’s the problem? Well, he is self-centered and a show boater. For example, last year he muffed a ground ball and it rolled about 15 feet away from him but instead of getting right up to go after it, he just lay there (not hurt) and a runner scored from first base. The same thing happened with a pop up. He openly accuses baseball of being racist and in short he runs his mouth too much for a player long on flash but short on real effort. Players don’t like him.

2. Vicente Padilla, pitcher for Boston. This guy is as mean as a rattlesnake and only plays when he wants to. He led the American League in hit batters in 2009 while with the Rangers and started a bench-clearing brawl against the Angels and A’s by repeatedly hitting batters. When the Rangers released him (2009)they officially said, "he was a disruptive influence in the clubhouse”. Others have used the word toxic. He only started 16 games for the Dodgers in 2010 and 9 games last year. Injured or dogging it? He won’t take showers either and the players hate him.

3. Sean Avery, forward in the National Hockey League. Currently playing minor league hockey after being put on waivers by the New York Rangers in December 2011. Notorious bad boy that takes cheap shots against players, like when he whacked the goalie on the back of the head while skating by (huge no,no in this league) and he runs his mouth. He’s the guy that said Dion Phanuef (a teammate at the time) was having his sloppy seconds because he was dating Sean’s ex-girlfriend. He’s made many racial slurs calling black players black monkeys and has been fined so many times the league lost count. He is the most interesting of the bad boy’s because he works for charities, recorded a video supporting same sex marriages and interned last summer at Vogue magazine. He has talent but is one hostile guy and in an anonymous poll 64% of the players voted him the least liked player.

4. Kobe Bryant, guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. What the payers don’t like is he has to be the show. He ran Shaq out of town because the spotlight was only big enough for one, him. He not only cheated on his wife (assaulted a hotel maid, paid her money to drop charges and essentially got away with it) but even after he bought his wife a huge ring and she took him back, he supposedly wouldn’t stop and now she is divorcing him. On the court he scores a ton and has personally won many games on last second shots. No one denies he is a sure-fire Hall of Fame player but he also loses games by taking impossible shots instead of passing the ball to teammates. Recently after another melt down in which he shot poorly and the team lost, while Kobe was yukking it up in the clubhouse, the Lakers big center Andrew Bynum shouted (in Kobe’s direction) “another fucking loss”. Not one other player came to Kobe’s defense. When Kobe leaves the game there won’t be any weeping players.

5. Alex Rodriguez, third base for the Yankees. Alex is despised by his own teammates as well as many others in baseball. Notice when he hits a homerun (occurring less frequently now that players are tested for steroids) how few players shake his hand and those that do often look down or the other way. Why he is not liked? Partly, it’s jealousy in that he was the first baseball player to get a mega-millions contract in the 250 million + range, years ago with Texas. He dates starlets and models. But it’s not just the money, for years he has had a reputation as a player that wouldn’t play hurt, wouldn’t dive for balls, and wouldn’t risk injury by running into a catcher. Then there is his aloofness, he doesn’t care about teammates, stays to himself and has never been one of the guys. The perception is that instead of bonding with teammates, he’s self-promoting, making Alex a corporation. In other words to him you are so and so just a player but he’s “Alex”.
Like Barry Bonds before him, when he leaves few players will care.

I could have listed many more like: Terrell Owens, Milton Bradley, Ndamukong Suh, Plaxico Burress, Zdeno Chara, Alex Ovetchkin, Serena Williams, Layton Hewitt, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch.

I didn’t even get into the players fans hate.
For example: fans hate Kris Humphries, forward of the New Jersey Nets (NBA) for divorcing Kim Kardashian after 72 days of marriage. He’s booed everywhere, but I think he deserves a Purple Heart for surviving his own version of a 72 day Bataan Death March.