The Mystery of “Saturn Nuts” — Solved!

As the learned reader will already know, there exists in life two kinds of mystery: a mystery, and then a Mystery. The main difference between them, as anyone can see, is that the latter one has a capital-M.

It’s hard to say exactly upon which kind — a mystery or a Mystery — Phillies beat writer Ryan Lawrence stumbled yesterday, but that he did stumble upon one is as obvious as the nose above Steve Lake’s mustache.

For it was yesterday that Lawrence submitted the tweet you see skillfully embedded (and embiggen-able by clicking) at the top of this post. Nor, as the photographic evidence directly below these words indicates, was Lawrence lying even one bit.

Regard, from Bronson Arroyo’s Baseball Reference page:

In fact, Lawrence is entirely accurate: the words “Saturn Nuts” are written here, plain as day. The real question, however, is why those words appear there.

For that kind of information, I turned to the wild frontier of the internet. It was there that I learned, via the Sons of Sam Horn (SOSH) Wiki, that the sobriquet was assigned to Arroyo in a SOSH game thread by then-teammate Curt Schilling during the 2004 ALDS. Even more research brought me to the primary source.

Regard, Schilling’s own words, under the pseudonym of gehrig38 (a common handle for the former pitcher):

The reader can click on that image to embiggen both (a) the image itself and (b) the joie de vivre on all of Earth.