A brief episode observed by the author this afternoon, during the pre-game hours at Fenway Park.
Artwork by the actual Pedro Martinez himself, courtesy Nick Taveras.
Generationally talented and now retired right-hander Pedro Martinez, in town for a local fundraising event, is giving an interview to an elderly reporter in the loge boxes on Fenway Park’s first-base side.
“I want to sit in right field because that’s where Dioner Navarro is going to hit a home run.”
That was me, your humble author. I made this pronouncement on August 19, 2013, around 6:48 p.m. Then, at approximately 8:23 p.m. that same evening, Dioner Navarro did this:
Do you doubt my powers?
I encountered the following video-film while trying to figure out who exactly Ron Kittle is. Kittle made his debut in 1981, six years before my humble birth.
VIDEO GREATNESS CHECKLIST:
* Mention of Dick Allen? ✓
* Harold Baines with a magnificent afro? ✓
* Bill Veeck complaining? ✓
* Plattitudes and “happy talk”? ✓
* Current Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf asking “What are we doing here?” ✓
* Superb White Sox uniforms that look homemade? ✓
* Prison puns? ✓
* Rudyard Kipling allusions? ✓
* Disney-esque closing music? ✓
If you will, please regard the following post that was emblazoned upon to the Facebook page of CBSSports.com’s Eye On Baseball — the home for all baseball fans …
Pete Rise! The accidental genius of auto-correct or inspired creation? It matters not. For Pete Rise now walks among us.
Regard:
The Rays 2013 pregame clubhouse entertainment now includes at least:
• A DJ.
• A magician.
• A meringue band.
• A flock of penguins.
• A cockatoo.
• Bushels of plantains hanging from the lockers.
• A 20-foot python.
I may be forgetting one or two.
My mama jus said to me you had 3 strikeouts tonight.. Do you even see the ball?
— Desmond Jennings (@d_jennings8) August 3, 2013
Smh I love that woman
— Desmond Jennings (@d_jennings8) August 3, 2013
Many MLB players have ego problems. Something tells me — not “something”; I can be more specific — a close analysis of recent Desmond Jennings tweets informs me Desmond Jennings probably does not have an ego problem.
Frankly, I don’t think I’m daring enough to risk saying “Are you blind?” to a professional athlete — a lean 6-foot-2 athlete who swings a large stick for a living — when said athlete knows my home address.
See results.
Jeeves and Wooten, the new short story collection by the reanimated corpse of British humorist P.G. Wodehouse, follows the hilarious antics of newly recalled Milwaukee reliever Rob Wooten and his gentleman’s personal gentleman, Jeeves. Not unlike his original Jeeves stories for all their breezy humor — but also quite different because they largely concern baseball and are also written by a deceased person — Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooten collection is full of that accomplished author’s singular prose style.
I set up an interview with Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo to figure out how much of a Mets fan he was. If you know the story of the band’s name, you know that there’s a link to the team. And there are a few other clues that link the band to the hapless Mets. But every fan has a different level of engagement with the sport.
It’s not really important how events conspired to have me stumble upon and examine like a jewelry appraiser this seemingly valueless 1990 Fleer Johnny Ray card …
Johnny Damn Ray! Since tradition demands that you can liken a player only to another player of similar ethnic extraction, I’ll point out that Johnny Ray was Ray Durham before there was any such thing as Ray Durham.
But here’s the point of all this. Take a look at the flip-side …
Please do note the “Vital Signs” section at the bottom. That, friends, is OBP and SLG — the good two-thirds of our cherished triple slash! The miracle is that this happened, as implied above, in 1990, when everyone was stupid.
I like to think it was Hermes Fleer himself who insisted on deviating from the de rigueur AVG-HR-RBI trinity that prevailed in his industry.
And you can tell as much by the silences as by the words he uses.