Serious Research Findings on Hockey vs. Baseball Players

I've been doing some "research" on Twitter, following various professional athletes who are either:

1. On my teams
2. Goalies
3. Funny or otherwise interesting, as in potentially a trainwreck, or 
4. Just plain good at Twitter

This includes both hockey and baseball players, though the baseball players are limited to Blue Jays because all the other baseball players are lame, except Lyle Overbay.

So I follow all these guys and they tweet crap about the fish they're catching or how cute their dog is or whatever, but they also are performance machines. And naturally, with any performance machine, fuel is a big source of interest to them. 

As such, we get lots of pictures of whatever they're eating or tweets like one from Mark Dekanich last night telling us what he had for dinner:

Taking Romeo for a nice, long walk then having dinner. Jerk chicken with broccoli and asparagus tonight.

Broccoli and asparagus, y'all. For a SIDE. And there wasn't even a tweet after that saying, "Chocolate ice cream for dessert to make up for only having broccoli and asparagus with my chicken!"

I love hockey players but I could not fucking live with one. Mix in a goddamn potato. Also, asparagus is nasty, I don't care how you cook it.

Now, it appears Dex is one of the more... um... uptight about his eating habits but it does seem like hockey players in general are pretty obsessed with body fat and too often really act like girls (of the annoying, princessy variety) about their eating habits and their lean figures.

All the more reason I love guys who don't fit that mold. They seem like you could have a meal with them and you wouldn't have to sit there and watch them pick the 8 pieces of shredded cheese and all the croutons out of the salad with fat free dressing on the side. For christ's sake, be a man. You'll burn that shit off in your sleep tonight with all that muscle.

Baseball players, on the other hand, (and mind you, the Blue Jays are my only research sample), seem to eat like relatively sane people. They have pancakes for breakfast! Breakfast sandwiches from Starbucks! STEAK and lots of it, if you're Travis Snider.

And they seem to feel no guilt about it whatsoever. I think in hundreds of food related tweets from my Jays, I've seen two where a less interesting, more hockey-player-esque diet was mentioned (and in those cases, I assumed the account had been hacked).

If you're not sold yet, look at what Ricky Romero's girlfriend (*ahem* MISS USA) made him for dinner. Meat and heart-shaped potatoes, baby. And did he panic about his ass getting bigger? No. He chowed down and then went to bed with MISS USA (who probably had lean meat, broccoli, and asparagus for dinner).

On the flip side, however, baseball players don't ever seem to knock back the booze with quite as much abandon, on as quite a regular basis, as hockey players.

Maybe my Jays are just more discreet about it, but even the well-behaved hockey players talk about the occasional night out. And having been around hockey more, I hear some pretty great stories and have seen a bit of it myself. It's no surprise to me that the Flyers' "Dry Island" scheme didn't work.

And really, who'd want it to? Drunk hockey boys are pure fun. And the Flyers sucking is also fun.

Drunk baseball players evoke visions of a nasty gongshow of chew and sunflower seeds in places you don't want them.

The conclusion I draw is that if I'm looking to drink myself into oblivion, gimme a hockey player. But if I want to break bread, give me a baseball player every time.

It's not a "who's better" or "who's worse" kinda judgement really. Just a "if I had a choice, here's my choice" judgement.

Naturally, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to eat with hockey players or drink with baseball players, and maybe my little theory here would be proven quite wrong. In fact, I'm happily accepting all offers to drink and/or eat with any pro hockey and/or pro baseball players. SCIENCE!