It’s true that baseball’s popularity is at an all-time high, and both fans and players are enjoying an age of prosperity. Though no one in the press will actually come out and admit it, I’d like to think I had something to do with that. Since my inglorious exit from the Major Leagues, the Powers-That-Be have gone above and beyond in order to make it seem as if I never existed. In the 1990s, baseball was looking for superstar sluggers to shine a light into the darkness in which they found themselves, and I helped fill that void. I was one of only four players to have eight straight seasons with 30 home runs and 100 runs batted in, back during a time when the game wasn’t regularly stained with things like steroids and corked bats. Baseball was able to convince the Fox network and ESPN to pay billions of dollars for broadcast rights in no small part because of me. Baseball is now a truly international game in no small part because of me. Baseball is a multimedia sensation on par with the Super Bowl and Hollywood. You’re welcome.

But even with all the uncredited good I’ve done, there’s been some inadvertent bad as well. In a way, I helped set the performance level bar at a height that other players (whose names I won’t name) could only reach using the help of pharmaceuticals. Now, as everyone with half a brain knows, it’s the fault of baseball that they couldn’t prevent drugs I never took from entering the picture. Of course, if the press had their way, they would blame me alone for steroids and amphetamines and other stimulants, just as they blamed me for everything bad that happened during my career. It was my fault Cleveland couldn’t win a World Series, despite having no-talent jarheads like Charles Nagy and Orel Hershiser losing games. It was my fault I had a clause in my White Sox contract to make me money, since I was the one that forced Chicago to put that in the contract. It was my fault an arthritic hip kept me from playing for the Orioles, just as it was Bo Jackson’s fault he was saddled with a hip pointer in the prime of his career. Nothing I did for the good of the game was ever given proper credit, which, as history shows, is completely wrong. As Julius Caesar said, to the victors go the spoils and the history that they can write as they see fit. And, as I like to say, to the spoiled goes the oil to keep their squeaky wheels nice and greased so they can keep on running me over.

Even the folks that hated me so much they were jealous know I outplayed Mo Vaughn in 1995, and was the first player ever to have 50 doubles and 50 home runs in one season. But Mo Vaughn won the MVP. People that really know me know I’m not the sort of person to lose my temper – I don’t get mad, I get even. Don’t believe all those stories about me; they’re lies. But let me ask you a question: if a man accidentally crashed my car through the front of a Denny’s in downtown Shreveport when I found out about losing the MVP to a lazy fat no-talent DH like Mo Vaughn, after a night full of drinking and strip clubbing, would you blame him? When a man with my resume falls off of the Hall of Fame ballot after only two years, but tiny singles hitters like Dave Concepcion almost get voted in, can you really say there is any justice? Can you say that you wouldn’t have yelled at that liquor store cashier when he asked for some identification? There are only so many insults a man can endure before he’s forced to act. Ted Williams went to Korea. Nas wrote “Ether.” Oedipus killed his dad. And I accidentally kicked my neighbor’s dog off the 3rd floor balcony into oncoming traffic. It’s a matter of degrees.

I bring all this up because I want to set the record straight about yet another slight. Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about these player / fan confrontations involving Ken Griffey Jr. and Vernon Wells throwing funny things into the stands after dealing with some taunts. When I was a young player, throwing things at fans was frowned upon, especially in response to someone’s heckling. There’s a story about me that, in 1990, a fan was yelling things at me regarding my alcohol abuse, and calling me that name I don’t like to be called. Supposedly, I responded by hitting the heckler right in the middle of his fat flabby chest. What I was actually doing was turning the other cheek. I was trying to show this fan that I wasn’t such a bad guy. I wanted to give him a souvenir that he would remember. Can I help it if the guy can’t catch? Can I be at fault for having a powerful and deadly accurate throwing arm? Is it just a coincidence that now you have those T-shirt shooting rockets at every sports game everywhere?

When it comes down to everything, I am an entertainer first and foremost. It’s my job to perform for the fans, day in and day out. They come to see me hit monstrous home runs, and to see me flex my bicep and yell across the field at that chickenshit bitch Kevin Kennedy when the opposing team claims I used a doctored bat to hit that home run. That’s real entertainment. And what better way is there to entertain than to involve the audience? Some of the best works of art out there, like Moonlighting and The Last Action Hero, broke through what critics call the “fourth wall,” to talk to folks in the audience and make them part of the story. That’s what I was trying to do with my toss into a stands. I was trying to engage with people on a primal, instinctual level, because that’s the only way you’re going to reach people, especially if they’re yelling fuck-ass nonsense at you from the left-field bleachers.

My real point is that if it weren’t for me, these Griffey and Vernon Wells incidents wouldn’t be laughed at. They would be seen as some sort of terroristic attempt to scare fans. They would be threatened with lawsuits, and harassed by reporters, and shunned by teammates. If I didn’t give that fan a baseball right between his saggy mantits, I don’t think anyone would be able to interact with the fans in this unprecedented way. I broke the fan / player barrier, much in the same way that the Beastie Boys broke the “white people can’t rap” barrier. And it would be nice if, for once, someone gave me the goddamn credit I fucking deserve without me having to choke a bitch.

Please. Do it for the fans.

In 1997, Albert Belle lead the AL in Grounded Into Double Plays, with 26.