Greg Maddux crafted a Hall of Fame career using pinpoint control, changing pitch speeds and release points, and by out-smarting hitters, among other non-STUFF-based stuff. One can hardly say that he failed to fulfill his promise.
Except when it comes to the Matter of Moustachios.
Whiskers of what could have been.
1. The Rangers outfielder is named Josh Hamilton, not Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton did not have a well-documented struggle with drugs and alcohol, and did not have to provide urine samples three times a week during the baseball season. Also, Josh Hamilton was not killed in a duel. He continues to be on the roster of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and not the Texas Rangers law enforcement agency, which is not the law enforcement agency that first discovered Alexander Hamilton’s body after his duel. In addition, while Josh Hamilton does deposit most of his salary into a bank, he did not found the Bank of New York. That, again, was Alexander Hamilton, who, we have also been notified, had only one tattoo on his body.
2. The Cardinals enjoyed home field advantage in the series, not home fries, as we mistakenly reported. While there are unconfirmed reports that some members of the Cardinals may have enjoyed home fries at the breakfast buffet in the hotel where they stayed in Arlington, we have not been able to verify that the home fries provided any sort of advantage in the games. While the Rangers did not enjoy home field advantage, we should correct our assertion that they do not have a home field, and that many of the Rangers do not have homes. We are told that they do.
Our ongoing quest, in the manner of a noble knight-errant, is to assign cool nicknames to players rather than indulge in the tired paradigm of assigning cool players nicknames. Before we launch the latest installment, however, a trip through our Hall of Honouur, which is so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed “u” is required for proper spelling. …
“Bad Miracle” – Wily Mo Peña
“Captain Black Tobacco” – John Danks
“$45 Couch” – Yuniesky Betancourt
“Liván Hernández” – Liván Hernández
“Frog in the Pot” – Carlos Zambrano
“Aqua Velva Man” – Chase Utley
“Victorian Sex Rebel” – John Axford
“Good, Round Friend” – Prince Fielder
“I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” – Kyle Farnsworth
And the nickname now available for purchase? It’s “Interrobang”!
Denotations, Connotations, Implications, Intimations, and Incriminations:
What, who or why is “Interrobang”? It is the greatest and most neglected of punctuation constructs. It is represented by this: “?!” Or this: “!?” Or, on occasions most special, this:
As you can imagine, the interrobang poses a question — “What?” — followed by an exclamation and or whoop — “Shit, golly!” It is a moment — or a man, or a man and his moments — that is equal parts stupefaction and awe. “Did he just do that? Fuck my idiot face, he just did that!”
Prototypes from Baseball’s Gauzy Past:
Greatness with flair. Greatness in defiance of human limits. Ozzie Smith. Sir Dick Allen. Mike Schmidt. Pedro Martinez. Babe Ruth. Willie Mays. Bob Feller. And it need not be sustained greatness. Bo Jackson. Mark Fidrych. Or the opposite of Rico Brogna.
Guiding, Determinative Query:
What current major-league player should be nicknamed “Interrobang”?!
The convention floor, which is filled with gaping maws and Sans-a-belt slacks pooled around pale, hairy ankles, is open for nominations.
I’m never one to enjoy others laughing behind my back, so when troublemaker Dayn Perry put forth a spurious Pauly Shore quote recently, I determined to find the actual source of the quote. Why? Well, when Carson Cistulli found out I didn’t know Vin Scully’s name, he mocked me publicly for weeks and garnished my wages.
I figured the quote was not indeed that of Pauly Shore, but it seemed old-timey enough to be real and possibly important, so I — as every good investigator does in Step 1 — opened a Google and searched:
“I once thought this game of base ball to be something paltry — a trifling, a merest emanation. Yet, lo, across my years I have learned that the end of the base-ball season is as redolent of death, of foreordained annihilation, as the vicar’s withered corpse.”
Which led me to happen upon this:
It doesn’t take a word wizard to see I had stumbled onto something both very poetic and very frightening.
Obviously I didn’t click on the page — my computer has enough angry, Russian viruses as it is — but I think we can all agree I had seen enough. Slicing in a few words and non-sequiters here and there, and BOOM! we’ve a James Joyce poem:
e-at-- --gry
… ball field ball game
ball of fire
ball overball up ball valve ball-park
where daddy took me tuesdays
… base base 64 base metal base-court
baseball baseball bat baseball player
sign the ball! sign the ball!…… dead dead beat
dead code dead end
dead ground dead hand
dead head dead horse ……
daddy’s gone, season’s gone
…… dead dead beat
dead code dead endyear leaped
leaper leapfrog
lost time with the goldmine
leaping leapt lear learn learnable
learned …daddy never left
he was here at the
… ball field ball game
ball of fire
bawl over
NOTE TO THE READER: My father is fine and well and is neither dead nor haunting a ballpark.
You may not be aware that world famous singer, wrapper, and sous chef Jose Reyes also is a shortstop of great quality and is currently unemployed, all alone, and looking for a new club that can help him mend his aching hamstring and make him whole again. But while he does need a new team, one thing Jose Reyes says he does not need is your friendship.
Indeed, Jose Reyes doesn’t make friends, as he explains while rapping with some passing acquaintances he just happened upon, and for whom he has little regard and almost no emotional investment:
What I love about Twitter is that it’s opened — I mean swung wide open — the lines of communication; it’s put all of us on the same digital page. Have a favorite team? Follow its beat writer. Actually, follow your favorite beat writer. They’re all tweeting; posting lineups, plugging stories and blog posts, and dropping other useful nuggets of information. Twitter’s become part of the job. I work in a newsroom, albeit not a traditional breaking news kind of newsroom, and it’s become part of our jobs, as producers, too. It’s crazy. (And, before I forget, peep this piece by Dave Kindred, at SportsJournalism.org, about beat writing, and how technology — Twitter, iPhones, iPads, and RIM’s BlackBerry — has changed it. It’s fantastic.)
Your Daguerreotype of the Evening is (allegedly) not former major-league catcher Biff Pocoroba …
But I have my doubts about that.
This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.
click to embiggen
Today, a liberally literal interpretation of this fine tweet by Torii Hunter.
Jay Johnstone, Fleer ’84, #495.
Cloudy with a 100% chance of PARTYIN!
DID YOU KNOW…
1. …that Jay Johnstone was a notorious clubhouse prankster?? From his wikipedia page: He pulled off a number of infamous pranks during his playing days, including placing a soggy brownie inside Steve Garvey’s first base mitt, setting teammate’s cleats on fire (known as “hot-footing”), cutting out the crotch area of Rick Sutcliffe’s underwear, locking Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda in his office during spring training, dressing up as a groundskeeper and sweeping the Dodger Stadium infield in between innings, nailing teammate’s cleats to the floor, and replacing the celebrity photos in manager Lasorda’s office with pictures of himself, Jerry Reuss and Don Stanhouse. One time, during pre-game warm ups, he climbed atop the Dodger dugout and, in full game uniform, walked through the field boxes at Dodger Stadium to the concession stand and got a hot dog. He also once dressed up in Lasorda’s uniform (with padding underneath) and ran out to the mound to talk to the pitcher while carrying Lasorda’s book and a can of Slim Fast.
2. …that Lou Brock owns the patent for the umbrella hat (officially called the Brockabrella??
3. …that this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c74eT6MC9co– exists??
THE MORE YOU KNOW!
Mathematics shows us that three apes, hitting keys at random on typewriters for an infinite amount of time, will almost surely produce Hamlet. Reality, however, shows us that a Nokia 8210 left alone in the pea-coat pocket of well-respected baseballing journalist Peter Gammons will produce the above tweet.
