Gary Gaetti, Victim of Time

Gollum’s riddle:

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

-Gollum, The Hobbit

Answer: Time

Illustration:

Gary Gaetti’s senior High School picture, 1975

Gary Gaetti, the early 1980s

Gary Gaetti in the 90s.

Gaetti today, as the manager of the Sugar Land Skeeters

Revelation: Time, you are awful. How long until we are all thus broken by the cruelty of your lash?

Notes on sources: Some men are born to lead. Other men are born to follow. Still others are born to refuse the opportunity to lead, don’t want to follow, and mostly sit around playing and replaying the Mass Effect Trilogy on their PS3s, and hoping to find all the possible outcomes for Commander Sheppard and the crew of the Normandy.

But some men, some very few men, are born to inspire others to greatness. One such man is Gary Joseph Gaetti, who played 20 years in the majors primarily as a third baseman. Gaetti won four Gold Gloves, was an All Star twice, hit 360 homers (80^th of all time), won an ALCS MVP award, and was a prime contributor to the Twins 1987 World Series win.

By far his greatest accomplishment, however, is in providing some lonely man in North Dakota the inspiration to create what is indisputedly the greatest Angelfyre website of all time: The Gary Gaetti Cült of Grand Forks, ND.

I will not bother trying to do the Gary Gaetti Cült justice, for it is indescribably thorough in its chronicling the important images of Gaetti and his career. But I got the first image from there. You are encouraged to check it out in all of its glory.