He just can't help himself

We talked about Luke Scott a couple of years ago, when he was still with the Orioles and was in the habit of saying really stupid things.  The gun totin' ballplayer insisted on bringing a gun to the locker room with him, and he insisted that our president was not really the president because he "does not represent America, nor does he represent anything that our forefathers stood for."

Such as slingin' guns and talkin' stupidly, we suppose.

Well, the Orioles wisely chose not to sign Luke to a new contract after last season, so he wound up in his native Florida playing for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Over the weekend, the Rays played in Boston as the Red Sox prepared for the centennial anniversary of Fenway Park, dedicated in 1912 and home to luminaries such as Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.

The great writer John Updike described Fenway as a "lyric little bandbox of a ballpark."  Many other writers have been moved to wax similarly rhapsodic about the place.

Then along comes Jethro Bodine  Luke Scott, to say

he thinks Fenway is "a dump" as the Sox prepare to kick off their 100th season in the ballpark.

"As a baseball player, going there to work, it's a dump," said Scott. "I mean, it's old. It does have a great feel and nostalgia, but at the end of the day, I'd rather be at a good facility where I can get my work in. A place where I can go hit in the cage, where I have space and it's a little more comfortable to come to work."

"You're packed in like sardines there. It's hard to get your work in. ... You have to go to their weight room if you want to lift. From a fan's perspective, it's probably pretty cool to go see a game at a historic park. But from a player's point of view, it's not a place where you want to go to work."

It's a place that sells every seat for every game, and the fans love it there, and it's like a baseball shrine to most people who love the game, but let's feel sorry for Luke Scott, because he has to walk all the way over to the Red Sox weight room if he wants to do his bench presses.  

Oh well now, I mean really, with the sideburns

This is classic Luke Scott, a man blessed with a certain ability to hit a baseball (but not a lot when it comes to throwing one or catching one), a man who said this past February, "You don't have to worry about me unless you're a criminal or a communist."

Whoa Nellie! Somewhere, John Dillinger and Nikita Khrushchev are trembling in fear of the mighty mind of Luke Scott.