Rob Dibble has always been a bit of a DB, too. My high school calculus teacher, who interestingly enough played with Dibble in the bus leagues, used to tell us stories between problem sets. Trust me. Then, when Dibble pitched for the Reds, he was known as one of the “Nasty Boys.” (I mean, just look at how “nasty” he looks above, with that mullet and bangs protruding from his hat). For as “nasty” as he’s been in the past, though, the Nationals’ second-year color man has managed to outdo himself (twice) in the past month.
First, on August 11, Dibble made sexist comments on-air about two women sitting in the front row behind home plate. Dibble, flustered with the chatty cathys, circled them on the telestrator and assumed that, because they’re women and it’s the only thing women could possibly be talking about at a baseball game, there just had to be some kind of a sale tomorrow.
Whoops.
“I mean, excuse me. There’s guys I played with that had screws holding their elbows together. Chris Sabo played two weeks on a broken ankle. I put a steel plate in my wrist so I could be back in five weeks instead of three months. So, this is your choice. You can either suck it up and be a man at 22 making $2 million a year [with] a $15 million contract, or every time you get an ache and pain you can go out of the game and say I’m gonna let down the other 24 guys right here and possibly end up forfeiting the game.”
As you already know, Strasburg later had an MRI, found out he has a significant tear in his UCL and will need Tommy John surgery, forcing him to miss the next 12-18 months.
Whoops.
For as tough as Dibble talks, he’s actually not such a tough guy. Dibble may have felt like he was criticized too harshly for his comments about the two talkative women, but Dibble messing with Strasmas, Washington’s wonder boy, instantly made him Ebenezer Scrooge. In response, Dibble, unable to “suck it up,” opted to ask for a few days off, which the Nationals happily granted him. The vaca has now carried over into a six-game road trip and Aaron Gleeman seems to think Dibble won’t be calling Nationals games anytime soon.
Dibble’s inability to “suck it up,” isn’t even the real hypocrisy, though. When Rob Dibble was hired by MASN to fill in for Don Sutton in 2009, he vowed to be patient with the Nationals’ young arms (emphasis mine):
“I’ve heard guys that think, once they retire, they never got out as a hitter and struck out everyone as a pitcher,” he said. “I’m not that way. I know I had my faults as a player, and I put that into the equation. These kids may not have the experience or the knowledge, but I give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Whoops.
