I was staying late at work last night like the devoted worker I am, and like usual, checked out my Tweeter feed to see what was going on in the world of Padres. With Adrian Peterson in the news for beating his child with a stick, I was flooded with NFL blowhards. Then I came across this:

What could it mean? So cryptic. Like, did Rico Noel, a Padres prospect that I knew was just filling space in El Paso actually dead? Couldn’t be, right?! I then scrolled up and saw this:

Some great parenting advice from Rico, amirite?! So basically, Rico had a series of Tweets defending Adrian Peterson’s disciplinary strategy where he went above and beyond by saying the only real problem with this whole physical abuse of children thing was that Peterson left marks on his 4 year old. In this day and age of social media, any player with a basic level of intelligence should know not to make comments like this publicly. Not when every media outlet is in the process of crucifying Peterson, Goodell and the NFL ad nauseum. Clearly Rico Noel does not possess this basic level, as he continued the Twitter barrage once the Tweets started coming in – way beyond the point where most competent teams have a team official call the player to tell him to start deleting Tweets before Deadspin gets a hold of them. I decided to jump in and really start patronizing Rico and grinding his gears. As a fairly new dad of my 7 month old, I wanted to get some parenting advice from the apparent expert:

So if you’re following at home, if your little child acts up, don’t use a belt, use a switch. A belt can leave a mark, and that’s really what we’re trying to avoid here folks: visual evidence. You don’t want some nosy teacher, family member or member of the media to notice those open wounds, bruising and other visual injuries like a ninny. You want to keep that “discipline” under wraps so the beatings education can continue under wraps.  Also, when you’ve got that switch ready, don’t just step up to the plate like Will Venable and swing for the fences (bad example, if you’re like Will Venable, you’ll completely whiff your child’s butt).  Rico says to go with a more controlled swing.  After all, you want to hurt the kid, but not leave marks.  That’s the key to all of this according to Rico: DON’T LEAVE MARKS.

At this point, noted buffoon Rico Noel started backing off his ridiculous and dangerous stance on abusing your child.  I have to assume some Padres brass called him up and told him to shut it up.

So, I guess it was all a great joke!  We all had a good laugh.  Unfortunately, Rico is still at it this morning, this time citing fairy tales and magic stories from thousands of years ago to justify abusing children physically:

So there you go, more quality advice from Rico.  In all truth, Rico should probably look into getting into counseling parents on how to be better parents and how to more effectively abuse your children while staying under law enforcement’s radar.  Looking at his .658 OPS in hitter’s paradise El Paso, where even Jeff Francoeur can excel, it isn’t far off for ol’ Rico to be looking for a new line of work.  As a marginal prospect with little to no chance of ever making the Padres (he can’t even make it onto the roster of the PADRES!), it at least won’t be a big hit to the minor league system as Rico is just filling space in AAA until better prospects come along to take his place.  He tried to issue a semi-apology last night:

It’s a classic tactic of apologizing but not really apologizing.  After all, he’s not sorry that he is advocating for beating your children, nor is he sorry for sharing methods of beating your kid but keeping it under the radar.  He’s just mad that we’re offended.  Speaking for me, I am not easily offended, and I was not offended.  I just think Rico Noel is a total moron that we can only hope has a narrow urethra and can never apply these methods to his own children.