Mark Prior

[mreye]

Yeah. Down to earth? How can you be down to earth in a limo?

[CWSGuy406]

I, for one, hope Mark Prior falls flat on his face today. Bastard. :fyou

 

LETS GO PIRATES! LETS GO PIRATES! LETS GO PIRATES!

[southsideirish]

Yeah, I'm sure it was a huge pain in the ass having to sit back and have a drink while some poor schmoe drove his arrogant ass to the signing.  GMAFB Moronotti.  What a freaking asswipe.  I'm not even sure why this pisses me off as much as it does, but it damned well does.  It's too bad Prior is facing the Pirates rather than a higher caliber team.

Probably for the same reason it pisses me off as much as it does. It involves disppointing children.

[southsideirish]

According to the Herald (I think that is what is in lunchroom) there is a debate over when he left  Some employees are trying to claim he left between 7:45 and 8:15 which isn't any better.

THat may be right, that may be the time he left. However, he stopped signing long before that and customers were allowed to pass through and look at him. They should have been able to shake his hand, but he wouldn't even do that. He wouldn't even look at them, he was looking around and paying no attention to the paying customers or children. He is a complete dick.

[Soxfest]

As people have said in this thread JM would of wrote and I can see it " No wonder Sox fans do not show up the way player X acted last night " but it is a Cub player so JM will suck the messiahs ass. :fthecubs

[YASNY]

Kids Cry as Prior Skips Out

 

 

That seems like an appropriate headline to me. It'll probably be on the Trib's front page tomorrow.

[greasywheels121]

Wow, in a follow up Mariotti actually busts Prior out a bit here.....

 

First, vintage Prior; then a fine whine

BY JAY MARIOTTI SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement

 

They could only stand there in the dirt, spikes paralyzed and instincts frozen, left to stare at bending baseballs that broke over home plate for strike three. On other days against other pitchers, Craig Wilson and Rob Mackowiak are dangerous hitters.

 

Friday against Mark Prior, they were victims of filth.

 

So much for concerns about a sore elbow, a delicate Achilles tendon, a cramped hand from signing autographs the night before or an angry psyche after the store owner threatened to sue him. In his urgently awaited return to the Cubs, Prior was dominant as ever, flirting with perfection during a six-inning, 85-pitch symphony in which he allowed two singles and no runs against the potent Pittsburgh Pirates.

 

Still, he is not a savior for a team with problems. Prior or no Prior, the Cubs still have a flim-flam offense and a closer, Joe Borowski, who is lobbing the ball and getting rocked. As long as those issues exist, it doesn't matter if Prior is in the rotation with Roger Clemens, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Walter Johnson. The Cubs won't be going anywhere this season but home on Oct. 3.

 

''I'm very disappointed we didn't pull this one out,'' Prior said after the 2-1 loss, punctuated by Borowski's latest blown save opportunity and a lineup dragged down by the usual suspects.

 

This is a tense ballclub right now, a mood not helped by the ongoing flap between Prior and a Naperville store called Just Ducky Too. As reported by this columnist and broadcast reporters who were at the scene Thursday night, Prior was criticized by the store's part-owner for not signing his contracted allotment of autographs and ripped on radio programs by parents upset about the pitching phenom's attitude at the event. This represents Prior's first public-relations crisis, which could have been avoided if he and agent John Boggs had simply explained their side of the story at the store instead of shooing away reporters like ants. When Prior finally got around to offering his explanation after the game in the Wrigley Field interview room, he came off as forced, arrogant and so long-winded that he seemed to be protesting a bit too much.

 

As someone who has interviewed Prior at length and found him to be a pleasant, decent guy, I can say he looked like a corporately programmed robot angling for sympathy from the media as he rambled on for 15 minutes. Before he was finished, he ripped Just Ducky, made fun of the art community (why?) and lamely blamed those of us who had wasted three hours of our lives covering his stupid non-event. All Prior had to do was apologize to the parents and kids, agree to show up at the store in the future and smooth things over. Instead, he whined like another dude from California, Cade McNown.

 

''If they want to take legal action against me, they can try," Prior declared. ''I have a contract.''

 

Here we thought 2004 was going to be Prior against the baseball world. Instead, it's Prior vs. Just Ducky Too. Only in Cubdom do these things happen, as America chuckles at the absurdity of it all.

 

Not surprisingly, the parties have two separate versions of what is in the contract. Just Ducky part-owner Brandon Donofrio, now backing off on his threat to sue Prior, said Friday that Prior was obligated to sign 300 autographs Thursday but stayed only an hour and 10 minutes. Donofrio said he agreed that Prior could return at a future date to sign 1,000 porcelain replicas of Wrigley Field.

 

''He didn't come close to signing 300 autographs. That's why people were upset,'' Donofrio said. ''All we wanted was for Mark to be cordial to people. But he wasn't nice, and he kept getting up and talking about leaving.''

 

Prior claims he signed his required autograph allotment. He also expressed disgust that the store advertised the event as ''a meet-and-greet'' on radio commercials. ''Bottom line is, they were trying to pull something on me. They lied to the customers,'' Prior said. ''Honestly, I did not sign up to do their work.''

 

Then why show up? If Prior felt in advance that the advertising was misleading, he could have said so publicly, stayed home and rested up on the eve of his triumphant return. Everyone would have understood. The real story here is that he signed a contract months ago for what appeared to be a normal off day -- but turned out to be anything but. Donofrio claims he was willing to reschedule as long as the Prior party shared the expense of the revised advertisements for a new date. ''We were open to a change,'' he said.

 

Mark? ''It was brought to our attention in late April that it was being advertised as a meet-and-greet and a social event. It was not at all what I signed up for,'' said Prior, who says he hasn't been paid for the gig. ''We contacted the store and told them, 'Hey, this isn't a meet-and-greet. This isn't an event where he shakes hands and signs autographs.' They came back and said they had 150 [autographs] they had promised [for a meet-and-greet].

 

''I wasn't going to be in the mood to take pictures and shake hands with 150 people. No one wanted to change the date. I signed up to do something; I was not going to back out of it. I went to business school. I knew what I was legally contracted to do.''

 

So having agreed to go, why not just put on a happy face for a few hours? ''I didn't know a lot of you people were there,'' he explained, referring to the dreaded media. ''I didn't know a charity event was taking place out front. I didn't know; I'd never been to Naperville. And as this event unfolded, the first three or four people went through [the line], taking pictures and saying, 'Hi and how are you doing?' What's going on? I was looking for the so-called owner of the store. He wasn't around. We continued, and I will be honest -- I was upset at some of the reaction of the kids, being dragged through the line. I got up, went outside and regrouped.''

 

True, the store was jammed with too many people. But the line wasn't moving because, according to Donofrio, Prior was signing at a dawdling pace. And the reason Donofrio wasn't tending to Prior was because reporters were asking him to summon Boggs for a statement. ''The agent says he has nothing to say,'' Donofrio said.

 

To Prior's credit, he set aside the silliness to resume his pitching brilliance. In the end, it's all that matters to most fans, with the exception of a few kids who wonder why their hero was in such a bad mood on a goofy night in Naperville.

[chimpy2121]

cubs fans just cant understand, prior doesnt mean anything if they cant score any runs for him :fthecubs ......

[Queen Prawn]

The more and more quotes (and I listened to the whine session yesterday - trying to get a final score) I hear from this pompous ass (Prior), the more I keep hoping he starts to suck on the mound and can't shake it.

 

f*** Prior and f*** his 'I am holier than Thou' attitude. I wish someone would put him in his place.

[Gene Honda Civic]

Someone at the SunTimes must have gotten on Moronotti after his f***ing lovefest fluff piece about Prior yesterday.

 

At least he took his dick out of Prior's ass long enough to write a somewhat objective article. Too bad it took two trys.

[Nokona]

Ever since Schilling (i think it was, cant remember) won 300, and Prior said:

 

"Well, you know, when you have my talent i definately think it's something to strive for"

 

f*** you you 23 year old yuppie

[greasywheels121]

Ever since Schilling (i think it was, cant remember) won 300, and Prior said:

 

"Well, you know, when you have my talent i definately think it's something to strive for"

 

f*** you you 23 year old yuppie

Probably Clemens....

 

Ha these Prior quotes are great. I don't hear many of them, not getting the Chicago newspapers or anything.

[AngelasDaddy0427]

This is three times as bad as anything Rauch did.

If you agree to do something you do it or at least reschedule it.

What an asshole! :fyou