Shredder
From Wiki Gonzalez
Shredder is arguably Baseball Think Factory's best-known poster, though his appearances are much more rare than they once were. An Angels fan and former Southern Californian, Shredder now lives in Chicago with his on-again off-again flame, local news anchor Nancy Pender, and his collection of really disturbing porn.
Besides the Angels, he is a strong supporter of the NHL's Los Angeles Kings (he can't stand the Anaheim Ducks), UCLA (he really can't stand USC), and the University of Illinois basketball team, which was ranked #1 in the nation at the start of the 2005 NCAA tournament, and made it all the way to the championship game.
As far as music, he is a big fan of rock bands from the Manchester scene, particularly the Stone Roses and Charlatans UK. He also thinks that Beulah was a supremely underrated group and that it was a shame they disbanded.
It is impossible to determine the source of Shredder's notoriety, though part of it is simply that he's made so many posts. His style is passionate, literate, and apparently endearing to some, although for a time he was engaged in a bitter rivalry with Chief Wahoo for reasons that no one ever quite figured out.
He is considered by some to be a fanboy, a relentlessly positive booster of his favorite team. However, he is remembered for a fatalistic post in a September 2002 thread (in which the thread intro called him out by name) as the Angels hesitated in taking the 2002 AL Wild Card:
- By the way, I'm rooting for the Mariners now. Its like watching a car wreck. At this point, I'm just a detached observer. I just want to see what happens.
Despite the obvious images recalled by his handle, Shredder claims that he has never seen "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and is unfamiliar with the character who shares his name. He once did work for the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, which is the source of his handle (although he never played any part of the incident, nor does he know anyone who played any role in the incident -- he doesn't even know anyone in audit -- that led to the firm's demise). Shredder also claims no affiliation with the infamous paper shredders of the Enron scandal.
During the 2002 pennant race and postseason, there was an extraordinary number of fake Shredder posts as the Angels kept winning. On Old Primer, there was no registration required to make comments, so posts could be spoofed at will. These were initially done to make Shredder look like an incompetent poster, but we all knew that already.
The high point was probably either a triple-post or the double-posting that Shredder later reported "he" did when he was at the soda machine. There were even posts from a fake hot secretary in Shredder's office, as well as a few from the Executive Secretary of "Local #5714 of the International Brotherhood of Imitation Shredders." After the Angels won the World Series, the impersonators apparently went back to making Piazza jokes.
Shredder's real name was revealed in a Wall Street Journal article sometime in 2003. The article profiled the phenomenon of displaced fans continuing to follow their favorite teams over the Internet, and he was in the lead paragraph. Neither his alias nor his association with Baseball Primer was divulged.
During the Minnyball flamewar, Backlasher accused a large portion of BBTF's members of "using 90% of your bandwidth trying to be like Shredder." It is unclear in what way they were attempting to emulate him.
Also see: List of primates
[edit] References
- Angels still waiting to clinch first playoff berth in 16 years - Shredder post in September 26, 2002 Primer thread
- Minnyball flamewar (post 508) - Backlasher post in Minnyball Primer thread (March 7, 2005)
