A 39-year-old professional athlete threw a hissy fit on television Wednesday night, and you idiots praised him for it.

 

I did not watch the Wednesday baseball matchup between the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals, so I missed Torii Hunter’s eighth inning meltdown after home plate umpire Mark Ripperger called what was roughly a ball a strike, ringing up Torii for the second time that night. I’m not sorry I missed it.

 

But I do wish I could have missed the praise Hunter got that night and the following day. Fans at Target Field cheered as Hunter, this year’s “team leader” by popular vote, barked at umps and proceeded to rip his jersey from his torso and toss it onto the field in disgust.

 

You know, like I used to do as a child when I didn’t want to put on my winter coat to go play outside.

 

Some in the media defended Hunter’s outburst, too. Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio wrote that the pitch was probably too close to take.

 

“But that wasn’t really the point,” Collins said in his NewsCut blog, in which he describes Hunter’s hot-headed eruption as “needed leadership.”

 

“Sometimes, a man just has to stand up for something,” Collins wrote.

 

If you truly believe Hunter was attempting to “stand up for something,” or motivate his teammates by putting on that utterly childish display, your opinion is garbage, and I’d ask you to please take it to the berm for pickup.

 

Hunter, irreplaceable team savior and noted clubhouse culture superhero, didn’t get a single hit and struck out three times in that pivotal three-game series against the Royals, division rivals who ended up stealing the first place division crown from the Twins after sweeping them in the series, which ended Wednesday.

 

Hey, Torii, want to motivate your team? Try getting a hit.

 

Hunter later told the media he believed the strike was the ump getting “revenge” on him for something that Hunter had said earlier in the at-bat.

 

"It was definitely a ball,” Hunter said, as reported by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “You have bad days, all of us, as hitters, pitchers. Even umpires have bad days -- and he had one.”

 

Hunter went on to lament how he’s getting paid $10.5 million this year, but he can’t talk back to his mom for making him wear a coat outside in the winter.  

 

"What can you do? Can't do nothing about it,” Hunter said, again as reported by the Pioneer Press. “Can't talk about them (the umpires). Can't do anything about them. We get in trouble for it. All you need to do is just look at the video and decide for yourself."

 

I’ve watched the video, and I see a grown man removing his clothing because he’s mad that the store is all out of Peanut Butter Crunch. The removal of the jersey is actually the juiciest irony of the entire event. Hunter removed the Twins jersey from his back, and thus symbolically disassociated himself with the team he is purported to lead. Nice work, champ. That’s the calling card of a true leader.

 

In the same article detailing the event, Pioneer Press reporter Mike Berardino calls Hunter the “veteran clubhouse leader,” and that’s been the popular narrative this year. MPR’s Collins writes the tantrum “was salve for fans who’ve had to watch four years of Twins players meekly accepting their fate.”

 

You know what’s a better salve for a woeful team? Winning games.

 

And despite my initial misgivings following his offseason signing, the aging Hunter has actually done well at the plate this year. He has eight home runs and a 110 OPS+.

 

Still, fans, the media, and Lord knows the Twins announcing booth, seem to care more about praising him for that certain “intangible” he brings to the team. Ah yes, the passion! Torii holds dance parties in the clubhouse and gets real fired up about balls and strikes. That’s exactly the salve the doc ordered for the Twins, who have lost 90+ games over roughly the past 76 seasons.

 

This isn’t the first time Hunter has blown up. He was suspended for four games in 2010 after he tossed a bag of baseballs onto the field following his ejection over – you guessed it – a strike three call. So we’ll just repeat history here until Hunter retires.

 

I, for one, refuse to accept the narrative that this is just “Torii being Torii.” If the Twins media and fans are so dead set on making Hunter the messiah of Twins clubhouse culture, then hold him to a higher standard, on and off the field.

 

Otherwise, if all it takes to be a clubhouse leader is to go 0-10 with three strikeouts, give me a damn bat and a jersey to rip off.