It’s probably best not to look for any symbolism in it, but even if you were to try to buy one of the t-shirts for sale on John Rocker’s website -- “this site may be hacked,” Google warns -- you wouldn’t be able to do it. You probably shouldn’t be buying one of these t-shirts, anyway, because they are just dippy white t-shirts with the words SPEAK ENGLISH on them in big black capital letters. But if you try to do so, you’ll be redirected first in one direction, and then another, and then finally, in my case, to the website for the rustic ski-themed exercise equipment concern NordicTrak. Another attempt turned up a more prosaic red screen warning of Malware. The site may, in fact, be hacked.
John Rocker, survivor
The loudest closer of the late 1990s is still sort of hanging around, and will be on the upcoming season of CBS’ long-running reality series “Survivor.” It makes more sense than you might think.
Kevin Liles-USA TODAY Sports
Which is not to say that you couldn't get the t-shirts if you wanted. Rocker set up a table, brought along former teammate Ryan Klesko, and was selling his SPEAK ENGLISH t-shirts, gothic-font edition, and copies of his book "Scars and Strikes," at this year's Hall of Fame induction ceremonies; a $5 raffle ticket bought you a chance at winning a night of drinking with Rocker himself. That sort of thing is what John Rocker is up to, 11 years after throwing his last big league pitch. Or those things and appearing on season 29 of CBS' unkillable reality bum-out "Survivor," which will begin on Wednesday night with Rocker and his girlfriend Julie McGee in the cast.
If and when Rocker is recognized on "Survivor," it will be for his pitching career, which was short and loud and first very good and then extremely bad, and marked indelibly by his florid, exuberant, and decidedly on-the-record assholery, which was captured by Jeff Pearlman in a 1999 feature for Sports Illustrated. Rocker was 24 when the feature was published, and pitching brilliantly for a Braves team that would go on to lose to the Yankees in the World Series.
John Rocker is never coming back, but that does not mean he is going away.
The next year, Rocker's walk rate nearly doubled to a mighty healthy 8.2 BB/9 and he was briefly sent to the minors. The year after that, he was traded to Cleveland. The year after that, Rocker had a 6.66 ERA for the Texas Rangers in 30 appearances. The year after that, Rocker faced eight batters for the Tampa Bay Rays, and walked three, hit one, and allowed a pair of singles. He was 28 years old, it was 2003, and that was it for Rocker as a big leaguer.
Everything about his public life since then -- and, it seems fair to guess, however many episodes of shirtless scheming and beefy gamesmanship “Survivor” allows him -- has been centered upon a stubborn and unshakeable refusal to let that be the end. John Rocker is never coming back, but that does not mean he is going away.
★★★
Which sounds like an admirable thing, if taken in the abstract that we usually use to process sports stories like this. John Rocker is down, but not out. John Rocker is out, but he's not done. John Rocker is writing a regular column for WorldNetDaily -- a fringe-y right-wing website that has the same relationship to the broader political discourse that a dumpster full of fire-damaged "sexy dictator" Halloween costumes behind a Dollar General has to Paris Fashion Week -- but he is applying himself and doing his level best by columns with headlines like "Water Is NOT A Human Right."
At no point has John Rocker transcended the entitled, bullying, ignorant and generally loathsome character he created for himself in that Sports Illustrated article, the crazy-eyed redneck caricature veering wildly out of his way in conversation to make sure that the man with the tape recorder knew just how he felt about “queers with AIDS.” This may or may not be what Rocker is like, and his admirable work with the charity Save Homeless Veterans suggests that his dedication to kicking down is not a full-time pursuit. But it is the thing he has decided to show the public, and as he tumbles down the ladder, thonking his steamshovel chin squarely on each rung in the descent, Rocker seemingly grows only more determined to keep doing what he does. And so he does it, always and over again, louder and louder as needed to make himself heard over all these conversations that increasingly no longer involve him.
There will, as is generally the case with people that were famous for even a moment, be a place willing to give him a home in hopes of extracting whatever value is left in him. Both Rocker’s book, billed by WND as “a firsthand account of his public battle with the PC thought police,” and a 12-DVD how-to series entitled “Active Shooter Massacre Survival” are for sale in WND’s sprawling online store. This is not the bottom, perhaps, but the bottom doesn’t seem far off from here.
Appearing on “Survivor” is not so much an escape from this as a savvy television producer recognizing the opportunity to cast a once-public figure with a well-rehearsed and polarizing persona, and pick up whatever cheap heat comes with it. For Rocker, the work of being on a reality television show -- that’s “work” in the pro wrestling sense, the crazy-eyed staginess and selling of whatever wants selling -- should come naturally. He has, in the way that the stickiest and most memorable reality television characters do, found the notes he plays best and then found the persistence to keep banging on them. He’s been on reality television for years, in this sense. There will now be a camera rolling near him to capture it.
It’s possible, in reality shows like “Survivor,” to see a cynical and rather ugly anti-human point being made over and over. This point being that people are essentially small and cruel and hungry above all things, and that any and all of the things we count as finer and better are ultimately subsidiary to that hunger, and ultimately subject to the smallness and cruelty that define our desperate pursuit. Rocker speaks this language fluently and well, because he has been speaking it for a long time.
After a generation of being shown all this, we understand some things about reality television -- that they are not really authorless or without a broader intent, and that the thing they show us most clearly about people is how much some of them want to be seen and heard and watched, and the things they’ll give up in order to get that. This is why it’s so jarring, and generally so unpleasant, to meet people in real life that act like people on reality television shows, all big energy and carefully shaded overstatement, the false-bottomed inauthenticity and sudden whipsaw descents into desperation and selfishness.
The only thing that might be called real about these people, really, is their defining determination and need. We don’t need to admire it -- it’s narcissism, mostly, and so we shouldn’t -- but we might as well acknowledge that it’s real enough, too.
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