Totally Unaltered Player News:
Doug Fister Looks at Prescient Baseball Art

ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Prior to making his first rehab start on Sunday with the Nationals’ high-A affiliate, starting pitcher Doug Fister was spotted in a Woodbridge, Virginia art gallery looking at Sunday rehab start, an oil painting by German artist Emile Probst, finished 2007. The painting, along with another by Probst — Sunday rehab start (study) from 2005 — upon which Fister also looked, bore a strange resemblance to Fister himself.

Doug Fister looks at Sunday rehab start by Emil Probst

“In 2005, when Probst made that first painting, I was still in college,” Fister noted. “Nine years later, here I am looking at the thing, ready to don a uniform very similar to the one depicted. And it will be a ‘Sunday rehab start’, just like the titles.”

Asked if he was disturbed at all by the resemblance, Fister said, “Yes. A little. I hope I don’t end up in pieces like the one painting shows. Or blurry, for that matter. Being blurry like that would be bad, too — even the intact one has no face. It’s creepier than something out of Münch’s basement.”

All the same, Fister liked the pieces: “I’d like to commission Probst to do something that feels a little happier.”

Sunday rehab start (study), Emil Probst, oil on canvas, 2005, Germany