Hire Jim Essian

If I ever come back in a new life as an astonishingly bad baseball player, remind me to get myself a gig as the personal catcher for a Hall of Fame pitcher. That’s what Gabor Paul II Bako, a man who is so bad at baseball that he won’t even use his first name, did. Bako put together a 10-year career and made nearly $5M from the game of baseball because Greg Maddux wrote him a nice letter of recommendation. Oh, and if I come back as a Hall of Fame pitcher, remind me not to be so silly as to handicap myself by demanding that there be an automatic out in my team’s lineup on the days that I pitch.

When it comes to pure baseball ability, of all the players who have made an appearance on The Bottom 126 to this point and who have seen any significant amount of playing time, Bako is the worst.

A “power surge” for Bako equates to a 4-homer, 30 RBI season. He strikes out about 25% of the time he takes the plate (more than Corey Patterson). I don’t care if Bako is the greatest defensive catcher in the history of the game (SPOILER: He isn’t). When you’re that impotent with the bat, the only way you should be allowed to make a Major League roster is if you’re the guy who provides clean urine to the other guys on the roster during random drug testing.

Prior to the 2003 season, the Cubs actually traded a living, breathing human being to the Milwaukee Brewers for Bako. For two years, backing up Damian Miller and later Michael Barrett, Bako was everything the Cubs should have expected. Awful.

Remember how sweet the clinching game of the 2003 NL Central was? Remember when the final out was recorded, how excited you were to watch Dave Veres jump into the waiting arms of Paul Bako? Remember how it was Alex Gonzalez who started the game-ending double play? Hopefully you were blind drunk at that moment, so you didn’t have to notice the game-ending battery of suck.

Bako was granted free agency after the 2004 season to make room for Henry Blanco, Maddux’s other personal catcher. Except this one played good defense and actually had some power.

Since being released, Bako has become a notorious team-jumper. Thanks to Joe from Desipio for pointing out the link.

Low Point: As someone pointed out earlier up The Bottom 126, Bako went over 2 years (139 games) between home runs from 2002 to 2004. In comparison, even Tom Goodwin showed more power during that time. Goodwin’s homerless streak was only about 1 2/3 year (120 games) in comparison.

Did You Know? Bako is currently the lowest-ranked player in Yahoo Fantasy Baseball (1015 out of 1015 players). Basically, if you’re in a fantasy league with full, 25-man rosters, and there are 40 teams in your league, and you have the last pick of the draft, you’re going to have Gabor on your team. Just keep him on your bench, and you’ll be fine.