GREEN RIDGE, Mo.  Eunice Holcomb has long been a valued employee at the Swift Poultry Processing plant in this idyllic town in central Missouri that features a horseshoe pit on the town square and not one, but two full-time village idiots.  "I have been employee of the month at least twice and sometimes three times every year going back to 1989," she says proudly. 

            Come August of 2008 she hopes to be something else—an Olympic Gold Medal winner—as chicken sexing was today approved by the International Olympic Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, China.

            "That is something I've always dreamed of," she says as she swings back and forth in the glider on her front porch and looks out on dusty State Road HH that runs alongside her family's sorghum fields.  "Other little girls wanted to be princesses or baton twirlers, but not me."

            Eunice is a "chicken sexer" and is trained to distinguish between male and female chicken hatchlings when they are young so that her employer can place them on the correct feeding program; males (roosters) are fattened for sale as meat while females (hens) are fed a diet that maximizes their egg-laying capacity.

            The People's Republic of China has produced some of the world's greatest chicken sexers including Meng Xuenong, Ye Jianying, and Wu De, often referred to as the "Ed Ott of Chinese Chicken Sexing" because his name has one fewer letter than that of the catcher for the 1979 "We-Are-Fam-i-ly!" World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates.  "When I saw Ott score on Manny Sanguillen's pinch-hit in the Game 2 win over the Baltimore Orioles, it inspired me to greatness, even though my family had only four letters to give me after my older brothers and sisters had been provided for," Wu said.

            There are two types of chicken sexing; "feather" sexing of chicks whose sexual characteristics are manifested by differences in their feathers, and the more difficult "vent" sexing in which competitors must identify chicks' sexual organs from one of fifteen basic external physiological patterns.

            "People who say chicken sexing isn't a sport—I tell them to go figure skating, or maybe curling," said Lamar Gene Holcomb, Eunice's husband, who is hoping for a six-figure endorsement deal if his wife receives a medal in Beijing.  "She'd look good on a Wheaties box," he says with pride, "if they make one big enough."

            Eunice has two years of training ahead of her, including a Spartan regimen under which she will abstain from sex for the last six months leading up to the games.  Will that be difficult, a reporter asks her.  "I don't think so," she says with a straight face.  "I look at genitals eight hours every day and that's the last thing on my mind when I get home."

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman

KEOKUK, Iowa.   Elwood "Bud" Zaremba, pioneering knuckle-ball pitcher, died in his sleep in a nursing home here Sunday night after a brief illness.

Zaremba played with five major league teams over a 17-year career during which he gained a reputation as a solid middle-reliever and a practical joker par excellence.

"Bud was always up to something," said Red Rodney, his manager when Zaremba was with the AA Sault Ste. Marie Frost Heaves.  "One time he beat me home from the ballpark and got into bed with my wife to pretend they were having an affair.  I had to stop for gas and a quart of milk and got back a little late and, well, let's just say nature took its course."  Rodney's wife had twins as a result of the gag gone awry, but his manager never begrudged Zaremba the indulgence.  "I raised those kids like they were my own--Bud was such a fun guy to be with."

On another occasion Zaremba gave umpire Jim Barnes a "hotfoot", a trick that involved sticking a wooden match between the sole and leather of someone's shoe, and then lighting it.  Barnes' pants caught on fire, causing third degree burns over most of his right leg and an end to his career as an umpire.

"That was just Bud being Bud as they'd say nowadays," Barnes said from his wheelchair.  "Some people thought he was mean, but he was really just a cut-up."

Zaremba's career paralleled that of Moe Drabowsky, another pitcher of his era who liked to pull zany pranks on his teammates.  "If Drabowsky was the Bob Hope of baseball practical jokes, Bud Zaremba was the Lenny Bruce, because his jokes would really sting you," said baseball historian Peter Arsdale of Iowa State University.  "Moe would put a snake in your shoes, but Bud once put a live alligator in the back seat of an opposing pitcher's car.  The guy lost half his hand, and was subsequently referred to as Leonard 'Two Fingers' Curley."

Zaremba didn't leave his sense of whimsy in the dugout either.  "One time I went out to the mound and called for an intentional walk," Red Rodney recalled.  "Bud said 'Why waste my energy on three extra pitches?  I'll just hit him.'"  Zaremba eventually perfected a pitch he called a knuckle "slurve", a fast-dipping pitch that didn't sting but rarely missed, and he often used it in lieu of an intentional walk.

Zaremba holds one major league record that is unlikely to be broken.  Every team he played on subsequently moved to another city, changed its name or both.  He spent his rookie year with the St. Louis Browns, now the Baltimore Orioles; four years with the Milwaukee Braves, who moved to Atlanta; four with the Kansas City Athletics, who moved to Oakland, and seven with the second coming of the Washington Senators, who became the Texas Rangers.  In his final season, 1969, he appeared in 23 games for the Seattle Pilots, who a year later became the Milwaukee Brewers.

"I don't know that Bud had anything to do with it," Arsdale notes, "but after you'd played with him for awhile, most people wanted to get out of town."

Funeral arrangements will be private.  In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Institute for the Study of BIHT, beanball-induced head trauma.

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman