WORCESTER, Mass. Spring is in the air in New England, even if the ground is still too soggy in some places to play baseball. "Like Yogi Berra said, 'April is the cruelest month'," notes Little League dad Todd Schwab. "The spring chill really makes you hungry," he says as he and son Todd, Jr. slurp giant sodas while waiting in line for their turn to meet former Red Sox pitcher Rich Garces, a right-hander whose weight was officially listed as 250 pounds during his playing days, but who was believed to be much heavier. "That was with one foot off the scale," says his former pitching coach Joe Kerrigan.
El Guapo: "You keep eating like that, someday you'll be in the big leagues!"
Garces, also known as "El Guapo" or "The Handsome One" during his major league career, is part of an outreach program on the part of Major League Baseball designed to keep fat kids from quitting the sport so that they will eventually realize their potential as pitchers. "We have a program for black kids," says Commissioner Bud Selig," referring to the RBI or 'Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities' initiative, "but we've never done anything to link today's victims of childhood obesity with the overweight greats of the past."
Wells: "The lunch buffet was picked over, so I ate a batboy."
In San Diego, obese pitcher David Wells has signed on with the Padres for a victory lap to end his career, and he spends time before each game giving kids tips on proper diet. "You've got to learn to pace yourself," he tells Ronnie Dalrymple, a porky twelve year-old who weighs in at 180 pounds and is a set-up man for the Hungry Crab Marlins, an A-level Little League team sponsored by a local restaurant. "When you come to the park, get your protein and carbohydrates first with a couple of hot dogs or three and a soft drink, then get an ice cream bar or sundae." "Uh-huh," the boy says as he nods his head up and down like a bobble-head doll. "Then and only then do you switch to the low-mass, high calorie foods such as cotton candy."
Livan Hernandez: "Do you mind if I get something to eat at the seventh-inning stretch?"
The connection between weight and pitching prowess was often suspected, but never confirmed until a study by Kyle Rayl, a member of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. "If you plot the statistics of pitchers going back though the late 1800's," he notes, "you find that the higher the weight, the lower the ERA."
Antonio Alfonseca and his six-fingered hand.
Back east in suburban Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Antonio Alfonseca is instructing some local youngsters in the finer points of fielding his position. "Those slow-rolling grounders, you want to let your little second baseman or your big first baseman get them for you," he says before agreeing to allow the kids to examine his unique hands, each of which has an extra finger. "I don't know if it's been a help to me in baseball," he says, "but it allows me to shovel food in my mouth much faster."
CARACAS, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez today threatened the United States with an embargo on the export of shortstops until Venezuelan native David Concepcion, a five-time Gold Glove winner for the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine" teams of the 1970's, is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
"The big medal is for Most Improved Right Fielder."
"Venezuela produces the world's most beautiful women and the best shortstops," Chavez said to a cheering crowd at the presidential palace in Caracas. "Let the Yanqui oppressors try to get by with their little David Ecksteins and Freddie Pateks."
Freddie Patek, world's shortest shortstop
On Monday Chavez took out a full-page ad in USA Today touting Concepcion's Hall of Fame candidacy and praising other Venezuelan shortstops such as Luis Aparicio and Miquel Cabrera. The socialist dictator has become increasingly eccentric over the past few years, calling for an end to presidential term limits and ordering the nation's clocks to be moved forward by a half hour. "He kept missing the Web Gems segment on SportsCenter," said Marvin Schaeffer, who covers Latin America for The New York Post.
Dave Concepcion
In addition to shortstops, Venezuela is a major exporter of petroleum, which is marketed in the United States under the "Citgo" brand. The company is perhaps best known in America for the sign in Boston's Kenmore Square that is visible to spectators in Fenway Park.
The Citgo Sign
Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Chavez uses the sign to disrupt the play of non-Venezuelan infielders such as former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and current Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who has developed "Garciaparra Syndrome", a disorder characterized by obsessive fiddling with batting gloves. Chavez has issued perfunctory denials of that charge, citing the writings of left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky as evidence that America is to blame for world poverty, teenage acne and Johnny Pesky's failure to throw out Enos Slaughter in the 1946 World Series.
"You think I'm wacked--read some Noam Chomsky."
Democratic Senator John Kerry issued a statement deploring the Bush administration's failure to maintain sufficient reserves to see America through a shortstop shortage, saying "When I was a boy growing up watching Eddie Yost play shortstop for the Red Sox, whom among us would have thought that America would ever lose its position as the birthplace of the world's greatest 'hot corner' men?"
Eddie Yost
In the 2004 presidential race Kerry identified Yost, who played for the Washington Senators, the Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels, as his favorite Red Sox player.
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.
CHICAGO. In 2003, Cubs' manager Dusty Baker caused an uproar by saying that black and Hispanic players were better suited to play in the sun and heat than whites. As the 2006 season enters the dog days of August, Baker is at it again.
His latest race-based claim? "White people smell like wet dogs," the straight-shooting skipper told reporters outside the batting cage at Wrigley Field before today's game against the Cincinnati Reds. And unlike his prior assertion, this time Baker says he has an expert to back him up. "Go talk to my man up in Evanston," he said, referring to Allen Reynolds, a sociology professor at Northwestern University.
"Dusty's view is based on a stereotype, but like many prejudices it has a grain of truth to it," Reynolds said. "Upper-class white people do smell like dogs favored by the affluent, such as black labrador retrievers and Jack Russell terriers. The odor is caused by the natural fibers they wear--the people, not the dogs--and by their participation in privileged outdoor activities such as field hockey and lacrosse." He noted that the phenomenon was especially pronounced among graduates of small liberal arts colleges.
Baker, who is African-American, was unapologetic at a post-game news conference. "I'm not racist," he complained. "Wet dog smell is a good thing." Baker then compounded his original offense by telling a joke that some white reporters in attendance took exception to. "How do you spot the bride at a WASP wedding?" he asked, then paused for effect. "She's the one kissing the golden retriever!" he said to scattered laughter and a few groans.
Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was accused of a double standard when Baker made his initial comment in 2003, since John Rocker, a white Atlanta Braves pitcher, had previously been disciplined for insensitive racial remarks while Baker went unpunished. Rocker was philosophical about Baker's latest gaffe. "I think we've all got to loosen up a little bit and not be so thin-skinned," he said by telephone. "After all, Bud Selig does smell like a dachshund."
Jesus was the son of a carpenter. Mohammed was apparently a merchant of some sort. (Don't make me draw you a picture, okay?) So why shouldn't the founder of the world's next great religion be a former major league catcher with a lifetime batting average of .245?
Religious seekers, meet Darren Daulton.
FoxSports.com yesterday reported that Daulton, who played fourteen seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and the Florida Marlins, has devised his own personal system of metaphysics that is based primarily on the Bible but includes elements taken from primitive cosmologies as well.
Daulton predicts that the world will end at 11:11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on December 21, 2012, the last date on the Mayans' calendar.
I don't know about you, but I waited until February for prices to go down before I bought my 2006 calendar. Daulton has been granted the power to see into the future, and wants to share his vision.
With the apocalypse set to arrive in six years and ten months, you can forgive Daulton if he's making the most of his time left on earth. He went public with his views after a recent round of golf in Dunedin, Florida. St. Paul got into the evangelical game after he was struck from his #### on the road to Damascus. Why shouldn't the godhead reveal itself to mankind over by the ballwasher on the seventh tee?
Daulton penned his new testament--working title: If They Only Knew--while in jail last summer. He has had problems with the law before, including a drunken driving arrest following an accident in 1997. A member of two World Series teams, the 1993 Phillies and the 1997 Marlins, Daulton claimed at the time that he was run off the road by nefarious henchmen (to borrow a term from Rocky and Bullwinkle) sent by the White House and the FBI as a result of a business deal gone bad.
For guys like me who can't plausibly use the excuse "I'm pregnant and rushing to the hospital!" to beat speeding tickets, this does, in fact, open up a new dimension. "I went long on pork bellies and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is after me, officer!"
Daulton told the Philadelphia Daily News he realized he'd been chosen as a medium for divine purposes during a 1997 game against the Cubs in Chicago, when he got the game-winning hit for the Marlins. "I didn't hit that ball," he told his wife after the game when he broke down in tears. "Something happened, but it wasn't me."
There have been plenty of tears shed in Wrigley Field over the past 98 years; none but Daulton's were caused by divine possession. Daulton says that experience was his first inkling that "for whatever reason," he has been "awakened to other realms."
Like all true eccentrics, Darren Daulton is beyond parody. Don't look for his book to appear in stores anytime soon. Then again, don't buy that 2013 calendar just yet.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
