Jayson Werthless

There was a time not too long ago when I was sitting with my brother in the bleacher seats at Yankee Stadium listening to chants of "Werthless" directed toward right field. My brother is a Yankee lover despite the fact that he has no problem matching the baseball cap of any AL or NL team to whatever color polo shirt he's wearing. I will never understand this phenomenon in bro fashion, but I have to admit that while morally questionable, his wall of caps is pretty impressive. His bedroom is just like Lids if Lids smelled like Axe and had a bed in the center of it. My brother wisely chose to go with one of his many Yankees caps that day while I donned my beat-up Phillies cap. I felt like Elaine Benes at Yankee Stadium, booed as much as Jayson Werth while returning to my seat with a birthday Bud Lite for my favorite Yankee bro.

While Phillies fans are infamous booers and will probably greet the new Natty beau (heh, see what I did there?) with louder rounds of boos than the Yankees did, they have their reasons. The Yankees fans that surrounded me that day were itching to boo anything that wasn't branded with a Yankee symbol. This included Jayson Werth, me, and could have included my Yankee brother had he chosen a different shirt/hat combo. The bleacher creatures of Yankee Stadium do not discriminate. Their chants of "Werthless" upset me, and not because I was a Phillies fan, but because they were unfocused and followed by chants of "you suck" at all things non-Yankee. That said, I don't think that Werth will be received kindly when Philadelphia takes over Nationals Park today, but at least there will be a method to the Phillies fan's madness.

I used to like Werth. I was sad to see him go. I almost cried when he talked about noticing the change in leaves for the first time after returning from 2010's loss to the Giants in the NLCS, and that whole "this is definitely not the same game I played in my grandparents' backyard as a kid" bit. Then the man chose money over baseball while his buddy Cliff did the opposite, and went on to pout for months about how he was on one of the worst teams in baseball. Werth was then caught swinging a bat while saying, "I hate the fucking Phillies." Of course the fans are going to turn. To quote Nadine's own father: "I have a bounty on Jayson Werth's head. 500 bucks to the first person to hit him with a battery."

Werth's obviously not over us either. In his first game with the Nationals, he chose "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses as his at-bat music:

Cause nothin' lasts forever and we both know hearts can change

It's hard not to read more into that. It's like watching John Cusack hold up a boombox outside a window in Say Anything. Werth's trying to tell us something. "November Rain" is an epic ballad about the misery of a former rock star reminiscing over a past relationship that ends in suicide—a newly married bride's gunshot to the head. In the music video, she kind of reminds you of newly married to the Nationals Werth, but then again, so does the down and out Axl Rose and the lost in the desert Slash wailing on guitar. After all, November was when the Phillies gave Werth an offer that he turned down to become a free agent. Either way, it will be interesting to see how this soap opera plays out. I know that Charlie's ready for Werth, as he was recently quoted saying, "I’ll be on him. I’ll be getting on him. I’ll be getting on J-Dub. I’ll be hollering at him."

As for me, I'm just happy that Ben Francisco's been doing such a great job in right field since we lost Werth, who truly wasn't worthless to the Phillies at all. He played great baseball here—hit home runs, dove for balls, had interesting facial hair. However, one area where Benny excels and is continuing to excel compared to Werth is hitting with runners in scoring position (RISP).

So the real question is, to boo or not to boo Werth in the April rain? It's hard to hate Werth all that much. Maybe Axl Rose is right: "everybody needs some time on their own."