Hooray, Hammer Hands!

[NOTE: I composed this on Tuesday, May 10th, but didn't post it until Wednesday, May 11th. All "yesterdays" should read as "day-before-yesterdays." What? I'm lazy, and I take two days to post, what can I say?]

When my wife asked about a Nats outfielder a few years back, I told her he didn't have a great bat, but he played very good defense. She then said, "What's his name?"
"Ryan Langerhans," was my reply.
"Oh, so that's why he's good defensively. He has longer hands than others."
Skip to a few years later, and Joel Hanrahan is moved to the bullpen. He turns out to be a really fan friendly guy, and always had a smile and a wave for us at games. Somehow, playing off the Langerhans/Longer Hands thing, I did what I always do... drag things out way too far until they no longer resemble anything that is even remotely funny/charming/chuckle-worthy, etc. Yes, I actually tried to play "Hanrahan" into "Hammer Hands." (Ah, this reeks of deja vu, as I can see every single person reading this scrunching up their foreheads and mouthing, "Hammer Hands? What the fuck...??") You see, he threw super hard, so I tried to play his name into something witty about his hands, like my wife did with Ryan's name years earlier, hence "Hammer Hands."
Well, when I excitedly yelled it to Joel, it went over as well as... well... Ryan Church in Israel. But, dammit, I made it up, and I was gonna stick with it. To this very day, I always call Joel Hanrahan "Joel Hammer Hands."
Do I have a point here? You best believe I do. You see, Joel won the Pittsburgh Pirates closer gig this year, and I always make a point to check in on him and how he's doing. So, imagine my delight when MLB network cut to their game last night versus the Dodgers. Joel was in for the 9th, a save situation. He ended up with the save after their third baseman, Pedro Alvarez, made a great diving stop and throw to first for the third out. I then noticed that Pedro's hat looked weird.

Yeah... dude wears his ears inside his hat. Now, I thought it was odd, and shook my head while saying something to myself about "kids" and "get of my lawn," but I wanted to see if I was in the minority on this. So... I took the opportunity to call the visitors clubhouse in Atlanta today to see if it was something baseball kids (Alvarez is 24) were doing, and if I should just shrug it off and accept it. Well, who was the first person to pick up?
 

Yup, it was good ol' Matty Stairs. So I dove right in there. "Matt," I said, "Have you seen th..."
"It's Mr. Stairs."
"What?"
"Mr. Stairs. You should show some respect for your elders, and call me Mr. Stairs."
"But, I'm 35-years-..."
"Do I look like I give a shit, son? 35? I got bats older than that."
"Well, maybe if you swung them during your plate appearances, you might make contact with the ball, and wear your bats out sooner."
"Oh, you're a God damn funny man, huh? How would you like it if I rap you upside your skull with one of my Louisville Sluggers you were just making fun of? Huh, Buster Brown?"
"I wouldn't like that at all, Sir."
"Good. Hang on a second, whipper-snapper."
At this point his voice got muffled as it sounded like he was putting his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. I couldn't make out the entire conversation, but it sounded something like: "Don't you dare turn off NCIS, you no respect having punk. What? For shit's sake, LaRoche... don't make me put you over my knee and whoop you like the bratty snot-nosed kid you are. Do I make myself clear, boy? Good, now go get me my prune juice and leave the T.V. the fuck alone. CBS has quality programming!"
"Alright, what the hell did you want again?" he asked.
"Well, Mr. Stairs, have you seen Pedro Alvarez in Pittsburgh? If so, do you have any comment on how he wears his hat?"
"Pedro who now? No, don't know him. Hang on one second as I get one of the kids around here to pull up a picture of him on that portable picture machines they all have these days."
The phone gets muffled a bit again, but I can hear the majority of the conversation, and it went a little something like this: "Hey, Stankiel! Yeah, you, Ricky. You got one of those i paddle thingies on you? What? Okay, okay... whatever... iPad/i paddle. Pull up a picture of that Alvarez kid on the Pirates. You got it? Good, lemme see that picture now, son... HOLY HELL!"
Matt's voice came back on the line with a terse "You still there, kid?"
"Yes, sir... Still here, Mr. Stairs."
"Listen, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Now, I need to book a  flight to Pittsburgh ASAP. Gotta go."
"You're going to Pittsburgh right this instant? Over how a kid wears his hat?"
"No, son. Shoot, I don't care how the youngsters wear their stuff.  I've become numb over the years with all their backwards hats, eye black, flat brims, and pajama pants. No, I just remembered that I need to go to Pittsburgh to see my accountant. My Social Security payments are about to kick in, and I wanna make sure he's got my first payment for my R.V. all ready to go."
---CLICK---

So, Mr. Worley... Tell me more about yourself.

So, the Nats lost to this dude last night.

 Which is cool. He's embracing the goggles, just like Tyler Clippard. And, hey, he seems to be a cool gu.... jumping Jehosaphat on Jesus' pogostick! What is this monstrosity of a nickname he has for himself on his glove!?

Vanimal? VANIMAL!?!

Christ. I can just feel how he talks to women at bars after the games.

 "Hey, hey, pretty lady! What say you and the Vanimal here [gives a double gun w/clicking sounds to himself] hop in the Van-mobile and get on over to Casa de Vanster? If you play your cards right, you can even see what's in Vance's pantses. YEAH-HEH!"

Ugh. I need to go take a shower to get that slime off of me. Blech!

Jayson Werth's reception was... irritating to my 4th grade teacher.

So, Jayson Werth made his return to Philly yesterday for the first time since being shown the door. Many people wondered how his reception would go... Would he be booed? Cheered? A mix of both? So, what was the answer?

Well, he was welcomed with horrible, teacher-assassinating, language-butchering, God awful grammar.

I'd like to address those sign folks for a minute. Guys, here are two links for proper comma usage. The first is a link to an English Basics worksheet designed for elementary school children. I'll show the rule here, but you may want to click on the link to learn other proper usages for the comma.

Commas in Direct Address

 

Use a comma to separate the name of someone who is being addressed from the message.

Examples:

Karen, you are my favorite cousin.

I made this soup for you, Mom.

The second is a link to the book English Grammar for DUMMIES. In particular, it's to the section called "Placing Proper Punctuation." I'm going to, again, post the rule here, as I've looked up the history of the book at all the Philly libraries, and no copies have ever been checked out. Ever.

Commas: In direct address, use commas to separate the name from the rest of the sentence.

Read more: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/placing-proper-punctuation0.html#ixzz1LOXffyLJ

So, after this brief tutorial, allow me to correctly punctuate your signage.

There you go, guys. The tutelage was my treat. I love helping the needy, after all.

But my favorite moment of the entire Werth return certainly had to be the following animated gif I made of a mother scolding her son for daring to boo the man that is Jayson Werth.

Yay! Some families in CBP actually have good values! It's obvious they were bussed in from Cherry Hill, NJ.

The day that Tyler Clippard stomped on my heart.

Last Sunday's game started great. I had a good BBQ sandwich at the Red Loft, accompanied by a Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre to wash it down with. (What?? Are you calling me a beer snob? It was the same price as everything else! Let's see, should I take the Miller Lite for $8 or the delicious mahogany Belgian-style brown ale brewed with beet sugar, raisins, and Belgian-style yeas... okay, okay. You got me. I do love me some Dogfish Head, but it was the exact same $8, folks. It's a no brainer.) We then wandered around a bit, and even ran into Ben Goessling from MASN. I took that time to look like an idiot by screaming, "Hey, Ben! Embrace the shark!" while holding my hand on my head like a dorsal fin. To Ben's credit, he didn't ask to have me removed from the premises. Instead, he just shook his head and said, "I just don't understand where it comes from."* I guess it's gonna take Roger Bernadina going up to him during locker room interviews and biting a chunk out of his torso to get him on board. Let's see if we can get this done folks. (I'm assuming Tyler and Terry over at the official Sharkadina blog can maybe take the place of Roger, since he's in Syracuse? Someone get them on the horn stat, and make it happen. Just be prepared to supply Goessling's blood type to the EMTs.)
We (myself, my wife, my daughter, and my friend) then settled down in our usual seats to watch a great game. And what a great game it was. Well, except for this part... This was not great.

Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. You've taken the hearts from all us "Peaches" fans and stomped on them. You ripped them from our chests, crystallized them, and shattered them into millions of itty-bitty pieces with a Daniel-Son style crane kick. The millions, hundreds, tens of us "Peaches" fans will not relinquish our pursuit of getting you to change your music back, though! Did you think we'd forget about January, Tyler? Did you forget about January, Tyler? Well then, allow me to refresh your memory. Back then, Drew Storen linked to a poll that allowed fans to vote on your walk-up (Walk-out? Warm-up? Entrance?) music. It gave us two choices... your (then) current "Peaches" and your (now) current "Ready or something something blah blah." This is how the vote ended, sir.

(Excuse me while I channel my inner Walter Sobchak for a second...)

Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?!  

Sigh. I guess Tyler doesn't, as 62% of folks voted to keep "Peaches." If anyone would like to join me on Sunday, May 15th, I'll be hurling fully loaded peach baskets into the bullpen towards Clipp. Please bring copious amounts of alcohol, money, and Kleenex. I'll need them to work up the courage, bail myself out of jail, and sop up my tears as I'm being dragged handcuffed from the stadium crying out, "Why, Tyler! Why?!?! Peaches was our jam, man!!! I thought we had a connection!"

Other than that one teeny incident (that I'm obviously not dwelling on, nor obsessed with), the game was grand. We saw a great pitching performance from ZNN and the bullpen that ended in a curly W. I also got to see Drew Storen's fur face in person, and witnessed Todd Coffey performing the shoe-shine Sunday routine. Allow me to rip-off Natsgrl1's line here by saying, "I'm surprised he can bend over that far." 


Now, onto Philly for a three game set. Wish the boys well. We certainly don't want them coming out of the series with any nasty diseases those Philly fans carry. (Oh, wins would be welcomed, too, of course, but I'm just hoping no players lose their goddamn life to the bubonic plague that's known to circulate CBP.)

* At least I think that's what Ben says. His hair is absolutely mesmerizing in person and I kind of got drawn into it, blocking out my other senses.

Sorry, Espi and.... ONE HUNDRED!?!

Okay. First, I have a confession to make. I changed my computer's wallpaper to this on Monday.

Well, since then Danny Espinosa's gone 0 for 13 with 4 strikeouts and no RBI. So, to get Espi back on track (and to pay homage to that absoloute shit show of a performance by Sean Burnett in the 9th inning last night) I'm going back to the old wallpaper.

 

Excellent. I feel a gazillion times better now. I really don't want to talk too much about last night's game, mostly because I think Drew should have been out to start the 9th inning... but I will say this. I have a hunch... a very large hunch... That Drew was steaming in the pen about not getting his name called. The steam continued to boil as he saw Burnett blow up. He gets his name called, and what does he do?

He just strikes out David Wright to end the shamockery. Oh, yeah, he also hit 100 MPH according to the MASN gun. The radio guys said he hit 100 on two separate guns, as well (hat tip to Pam Storen for that, btw).

Did he really throw that hard? Meh, who really cares. The point is this:

Drew is the kind of guy that wants that ball in the pressure situation, and he can ramp his stuff up to meet, or exceed the needs of that situation. You need a heater, located up in the zone, with some extra cheese on that? Done.