The UnManny Valley

From The Rogue's Baseball Index

The UnManny Valley tracks the emotional cycle of a baseball fan as he/she reacts to the erratic behavior of a superstar player. As said player’s behavior crosses the threshold from normal, to borderline fictional, to so consistently insane that it becomes normal again, the fan’s emotions track from neutral, to disgusted and unnerved by the behavior, to ultimately, a state of numbed acceptance.

The term is derived from Masahiro Mori’s robotics hypothesis the Uncanny Valley, which holds that people are repulsed by robots and other reproductions of humans, and that this repulsion can be traced with a graph showing a dip in positive human reaction. The UnManny valley is named for Manny Ramirez, whose emergence on its far end of led to that famed catchphrase of bemused tolerance, “Manny being Manny."