Hi again, my name is Eric Sim, a salty, Korean-Canadian, ex-minor leaguer, who spent most of his career in the lowest of A’s. If you are not familiar with who I am (most of you are not going to be), that’s completely normal because I am a so-called “nobody” who just happened to spend six years in the minor leagues without ever making it to the big leagues. In fact, I wasn’t even all that close to making it.
The thing you should know about me though is that I use vulgar words a lot (on an hourly basis, really) and I fucking love it. But if you’re not OK with that, you’re probably not going to like my writing.
Anyway, I am here to share some of the stories and experiences from my 20-year, washed-up baseball career (started at age seven, hung up the cleats at age 27, should’ve hung them up at age 23, though), and the only good thing about that is I have a shit-ton of stories and experiences to share with you.
I also am quite active on Twitter, as I am retired from baseball now and have nothing better to do. If you would like to follow, troll, or whatever the fuck else your heart desires, you can do so at @esim3400.
Anyways it’s August already, and I felt like writing about the “August-ass.”
The term August-ass defines the majority of (if not all) minor league baseball players, as they become super salty during the month of August. Whether it’s from being away from home too long; playing glorious minor league baseball 28-30 days a month since March; seeing shitty stats of yourself hitting .069 every day on the Jumbotron and realizing it’s getting close to the end of season so you are most likely going to have to wear it this year and prepare to possibly be released at the end of the season; facing little injuries, like sprained wrists, to bigger injuries, like every time you throw a baseball it feels like your UCL is about to rip into 420 pieces; taking 12-hour, overnight bus rides after a 7 p.m. game that lasted 3 1⁄2 hours with 25 other testosterone- and odor-filled men, then waking up after sleeping three hours from the not-so Super 8 Motel and playing the same day; trying to get on the same page with your coaches but they just tell you to work hard and it’ll be fine; having a stupid roommate wherever the team sends you, even though you are a grown-ass man at 25 years old; surviving daily with a healthy dose of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches; losing eight pounds of water from catching a game in Georgia heat, then getting muscle cramps walking up the stairs trying go to your apartment, only to find out your roommate didn’t do the dishes nor threw the trash out so you have to do it; or checking your bank account to see if somehow the team made a mistake and deposited an extra paycheck, but finding out they paid you the right amount and even withdrew the right amount of state taxes out from the three different states you played for this season.
No one really knows the exact reason for August-ass, and it’s practically incurable.
Now, when you get the August-ass, you, sir, and the rest of your teammates, are totally fucked. You become so extremely sensitive about everything that even the smallest little things will make you go completely berserk, like that one time when my shitty roommate farted out of nowhere. I was totally chill until then, and when that fart broke loose the amount of anger that flowed through my body was incomprehensible. We actually got into an intense argument for hours about who farts more and whose stink more, and by the end of the argument we were already too in too deep attacking each other’s best kept secrets and family members for any kind of solution — so we just didn’t talk to each other for a month.
Sometimes, in my experience, August-ass has a direct correlation to an actual ass, where farts occur.
FYI, I like memes too.
As I mentioned above, there are a lot of ways you can get the August-ass. So the question is: What can you do to fix it?
The answer is: Pay all minor leaguers more.
Problem solved.
Eric Sim played six seasons in the minors and touched Triple-A ball in 2012 (owns a career average of .500 ... 2-for-4, oops). He’s the first Korean-Canadian ever drafted, and he doesn’t care if you’re not impressed by that, because he doesn’t really care about anything. He operates a hilarious and thought-provoking Twitter feed @ESim3400, so follow, if you want. When not dropping wisdom about his glorious days in the minor leagues, Sim currently manages a bar in small-town Canada, and makes a lot more money than he made playing baseball.