Tom Powers, who apparently has a history of being an idiot, decided to make recently demoted Tsuyoshi Nishioka his punching bag recently. Of course, that would be completely fine, as Nishioka’s been a terrible player for the Minnesota Twins thus far and deserves to be criticized. However, what irked me was the direction in which Powers took the criticism.

Nishioka also is a bit of a diva who big-times the Japanese media, basically refusing to acknowledge their existence except for the designated postgame snippet session in the clubhouse. He just doesn’t treat people very well. His trusty interpreter, Ryo Shinkawa, rarely smiles.

I can’t testify to whether this is true or not, but I do know Ichiro Suzuki and Yu Darvish aren’t exactly friendly with the Japanese media (Hideki Matsui is), though I suppose nobody mentions that because they’re good.

I bring this up because Powers comes off like a sportswriter scorned, and it’s as if he feels that Nishioka has been playing bad enough where he can use the fact that Nishioka’s allegedly not nice to the media to earn points with a Twins fanbase that will inevitably agree with anything negative he writes.

Standard asshole sportswriter troll stuff so far, but then he decides to go with insults in haiku.

In case you haven’t noticed, we had a little Nishi Haiku contest on Twitter the other night. I’m sprinkling in a few of the better ones today and with virtually no editing. Haiku is an ancient and beautiful form of Japanese poetry that consists of three lines of verse and a syllable count of five, seven, five. For example:

“OMG, LOLOL, GUYZ GUYZ GUYZ, GREAT IDEA! NISHIOKA IS JAPANESE AND HAIKU IS JAPANESE, SO LET’S MAKE FUN OF HIM IN THAT FORMAT! GONNA BE AWESOMELY CLEVER!”

Nishi from Far East
plays like a fourth grade kiddie
God we miss Hardy

@chadstenzel

Our Japanese friends
have abandoned Fort Myers
following Darvish

@shipleykid

Grounder through wickets
bad leg and sprained pinkie
Japan ball must rot

@TomPowersPP

Haiku? Really? Wonderful.

So is Powers going to do write rap verses for black players or country tunes for white players? I’m guessing no.

Apparently, Asians are the only athletes who can’t just be bad at sports. No, they have to be Asian athletes who are bad at sports.

Powers made sure to remind us of that every step of the way.

Tom Powers, Subtle
Lucky Subject Is Asian
Else, People Be Mad

@ChadMoriyama