He’s just a weirdo. The first time I ever met him (Spring Training 2008) I asked him to sign a few cards and he gives me this nasty look and says, “Didn’t I sign for you yesterday?” I’m like, “No, I’ve never met you before.” His entire mood changes and he’s like, “Oh, Ok, no problem” and signs 4 cards for me.

I see him later in the year when he’s playing AA and I ask him for his autograph (keep in mind he never remembers anyone, he just doesn’t care about other people enough to bother) and he says, “Why?” I’ve never heard that one before so after a pause I reply, “Because I collect autographs.” He replies, “If I have to,” and trudges over and grudgingly signs one card for me. He says, “So are you going to sell this?” I say, “No, I’ve never sold a card in my life. I just like baseball and I like coming to the games and getting the cards signed and talking with the players.” Again, he has a novel retort, “Then why do you need to get the cards signed if you just like talking to people?” Again, I was caught off guard, but after a second I replied, “If I said ‘Hey Lars, will you come over here and chat for a minute’ would you have come over.” I finally got him on one cause he just sulked, muttered something and walked away.

The next time I see him (ST 2009) I’m just leery of him because he’s creepy, but my buddy I’m with has never gotten his autograph so he’s all about it. Lars comes out of the clubhouse and my buddy asks him and Lars says, “Why do you want my autograph? Wouldn’t you rather just have a handshake?” My buddy says something to the effect that he collects and he’s never gotten his autograph and yes he’d love a handshake but he’d also like an autograph. Lars, muttering to himself the whole time, finally signs a card for my friend, but my friend was dumb enough to hand him 2 cards. Lars scribbles his slop autograph on the top one and more or less throws the 2 cards back at my friend, who manages to catch the signed one but misses the other one, which lands on the ground, irrevocably dinging the corner of the card. I wasn’t going to bother with him, but since he was there and had signed something I thought why not and handed him a card. He’s got the card and pen in his hand and I, trying to engender a bit of humanity and familiarity in him, say, quite disingenuously, “Good to see you again Lars.” Just as he’s touching the pen to the card he stops and looks up at me. “Have I signed something for you before?” “Yeah,” I replied, “you signed a card for me last year.” “Oh, then you’re good,” he says, and drops my pen and card, also irrevocably dinging its corner, on the ground. “You can have a handshake though,” he says, shoving his hand at mine, more or less karate chopping the webbing, then walks off.

My friend and I were talking to another guy there in ST 09 who had seen Lars in a few places and had plenty of similar stories. He said the day before he was just trying to be polite, to make small talk; he said, “Hey Lars, how’s it going?” and Lars replied, “As good as can be expected.” Pressing on, the guy asked, “How’s your spring been?” “Relative to what?” Lars asks him. The guy was, as most seem to be, surprised by this response to his banal question (seriously, it’s like saying ’what’s up’ when you’re down there, ’how’s your spring going?‘). Finally he replies, exasperated, “Relative to your expectations?” Lars says, "I don’t have any expectations," and trudges off.

The big thing to keep in mind is that he has this monotone, ponderous kind of speech that makes him seem immensely bored with everything. I see the Red Sox Minor Leaguers a lot (kind of a happenstance of good positioning of their affiliates and a great Minor League Spring Training complex) so I know a few of the players fairly well and most all of them can’t stand the guy. What it comes down to is he’s this spoiled rich hippie from Berkley who thinks he’s better than everyone and everything, he thinks he’s smarter and more talented and more interesting than everyone.

So that’s why my general rule is “Fuck Lars Anderson!”

Yeah, that’s the only reason I could think of. Considering Law works for Baseball America I was hoping that wouldn’t be a factor, but I can’t think of any other good reason.

I wasn’t trying to attack you or anything so I hope it didn’t come off that way. I was just trying to flesh out the issue and make it clear for pretty much anyone to see that there’s just no way Lars should be higher than, or really even close to, Freddie.