Which One of These Goose Gossage Takes is the Hottest?

Yankees Hall of Famer Goose Gossage gave an absolutely scorching interview to ESPN's Andrew Marchand on the state of baseball today; pardon my spoiler, but Goose isn't that pleased with it. The entire interview is so fucking spicy, in fact, that it's almost impossible to choose which is the hottest take. But we have to try.

So strap in dweebs: on the same day reigning NL MVP Bryce Harper took baseball to task for being a "tired sport", a 64-year-old man named Goose is gonna tell you why Jose Bautista is a "fucking disgrace to the game." Let's start there, shall we?

• "Bautista is a fucking disgrace to the game," Gossage told ESPN. "He's embarrassing to all the Latin players, whoever played before him. Throwing his bat and acting like a fool, like all those guys in Toronto. [Yoenis] Cespedes, same thing."

This is the first quote of the piece and it is a doozy. Gossage was a reliever in his day, so he's certainly sensitive to home run pimping. Still, he is owning this take, and deserves some credit for it. Also deserving some credit is Bautista himself, who refused to engage Gossage when alerted to his comments. Still, in two sentences Gossage called Bautista a "fucking disgrace" and "embarrassing." I give it four fire emoji.

Goose Gossage is so fucking mad about nerds that he is cursing like the saltiest sailor that ever sailed the open seas. Without the cursing, though, this is a pretty pedestrian garbage-take. It amounts to little more than sending that GIF of Ogre yelling about nerds in Animal House: two fire emoji take.

OK, things were getting a little tepid there for a second, but luckily Goose is back on track. This is the good stuff: Fucking steroids. Explaining shit to your fucking kids. A random, sort of indecipherable rhetorical question about torches being passed. Back in my day, we beat the shit out of each other. This is four-fire strong.

This one might be my favorite, though I admit it's not the hottest. What makes it work for me is that Goose Gossage knows for a fact that the first thing some nameless pitcher, and perhaps all pitchers, would ask upon leaving the mound is how many pitches he has. Like it's just common knowledge that all pitchers explicitly pitch to a pitch count and only care about that. And the genius here is that Goose turns around and straight up bludgeons these straw men to death and then flicks a burning cigarette on them. When was the last time Goose Gossage was in the dugout during an actual game? Doesn't matter! You don't ask questions, you get your ass back out there like the Goose. Three fire emoji heat, here.

This is the hottest take of them all. Goose flawlessly weaves the rampant nerdery of modern baseball into an argument about rules improving player safety, players not knowing how to play their positions, and another callback to the good old days when men were men and pitchers threw a heater up your ass if you looked at them funny. Imagine being this upset about sliding into second base. Poor Buster Posey even gets called out for getting his leg broken. Buster Posey has never done anything offensive in his life except wear a Giants uniform, and even he isn't safe from the Wrath of Goose. Four fire emojis. If we had eleven, we'd give it eleven.

[ESPN]