Fatso Flanagan and the Curse of the Passed Ball

As a teenager, I lived and breathed baseball. It felt morally incumbent on me to listen to Los Angeles Dodgers games on the radio, and I did so as religiously as the pious to Holy Communion. Good thing that, in Vin Scully, the Dodgers had the best sports announcer in the history of human speech.

Mr. Scully is long gone now, and I can’t unsee that professional team sports are all about one mob of mercenaries hired by a Trump-admiring billionaire or, worse, a corporation, battling another mob of mercenaries hired by a Trump-admiring billionaire or, worse, a corporation. And when the contemporary Dodgers decided recently to accept the Vile Excrescence’s invitation to visit the White House, I was heard, with (figurative) tears streaming down my sunken, prolifically creased cheeks, to murmur, “Lips that touch the Dodgers’ shall nevermore touch my own.”

Fatso Flanagan,here wearing a jersey concocted by AI before he joined the Richmond Smug Celebrities, fails to touch first base, which is just as well, as he’d probably have crushed the motherfucker.

I’ve had both shoulders replaced, one of them twice, and a partial replacement of my left knee. I can hobble hurriedly nowadays, but not really run, and I’m not so sure I can even throw, the twice-replaced shoulder being my right one, and I’m right-handed. But I can watch. Oh, can I watch, as I do on the huge riverside field just across the Thames from Eel Pie Island, where rock and roll was born.

And what fun, the watching! In some ways inept novices are much more entertaining than professionals. A pitcher unable to throw a strike, for instance, is usually pretty boring, but not here. Once having been walked, the runner, automatically heads for second the moment the pitcher throws his first pitch to the following batter. Trying to throw the runner out at second, the catcher throws the ball into center field, where it goes through the center fielder’s legs. Secure in the knowledge that none of the not-yet-involved defensive players will perform more competently, the runner just keeps running until he’s scored. It’s the first practice of my Little League Rookie Division team. It’s hilarious.

Even more fun is when the Richmond Smug Celebrities’ Fatso Flanagan, who’s shaped like an American factory workers in the AI-generated videos the Chinese made at the dawn of the Vile Excrescence’s glorious, easily won trade war, manages to hit a pitch. In the time it takes him to reach first base, I can stroll home, make myself a nice lunch, check my email, have a nap, and then mosey back to the field. God help me if, as happens so often, one of the fielders overthrows first base, and poor gasping, beet-red Fatso, who was winded almost from the exertion of having swung his bat, must somehow find a way to get himself to second. The mighty Thames will be at high tide again, and the moon high in the sky, before he can manage it, this while the opposing players evoke inept Harlem Globetrotters.

While pumping iron of an afternoon, I commonly watch a new Netflix series about a year in the life of the Boston Red Sox. Yesterday’s episode, about outfielder Jarren Duran’s suicidal ideation-inspiring self-doubt, established early on that his dad was the very demanding type, for whom wee Jarren’s performance was never good enough. I was reminded of how I believe parents who scream at their pre-adolescent children at soccer, softball, or other games ought to be banished to Guantanamo, as I continue to believe all professional sports teams should employ snipers to, uh, take out players who point skyward in appreciation of The Lord Thy God’s help after doing something marvelous.