Athlete Run-Ins: Roddick's Rabbit Phobia

After a pretty darned controversial and debated story about Tim Duncan yesterday, we've got a nice amusing, safe one today, about tennis star Andy Roddick and his unusual, somewhat inexplicable fear. This one comes from Steve in Houston:

Andy Roddick, in Houston for the Davis Cup in 2002, then at least 18 or 19, was forced to attend an Easter morning brunch at the St. Regis Hotel, where the players were sequestered. Seems that the hotel had hired a bunch of mascots in training to wear various costumes of loveable Easter icons to wander around the brunch, giving gifts to the kiddies (no recollection of a Jesus type character working the room, but that would have been perfect).

Seems Andy (who was fresh off of his allegedly celibate fling with THE Jessica Simpson and had moved on to another, hotter woman named Jessica Simpson, whom no doubt put out) is petrified of the Easter Bunny. Not just the munchkin in the costume, apparently. He s Easter Bunny-phobic, in general. He got all sorts of agitated when he saw the bunny frolicking about. To the point of asking us to make sure we kept the bunny far, far away from him. And acting all freaky about it. This show of manliness no doubt concerned Jessica v.2, but she then remembered that Andy was 19, stupid and loaded, and all was well, once again.

The mental image of Roddick cowering from the Easter Bunny is going to stick with us, we think. By the way, much to our surprise, there doesn't appear to be an official name for the fear of rabbits. ( We checked.)

Athlete Run-Ins: The Angry Tim Duncan. Grrr! [Deadspin]

(Update: There is a word for the fear of rabbits. We knew it! It's "Leporiphobia;" supposedly it was once considered unlucky to have rabbits aboard ships. Which makes sense, we guess.)