GO FISH!!!!
Posted on 10/17/2003 10:38:34 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
I’ve been a true-blue, hard-core Marlins fan for several weeks now. I watched the Marlins/Cubs series religiously, which coincidentally is the same way I approach Church attendance, once a year, and during a specific season…but never mind that, we’re talking sports and politics right now.
I grew a passionate and ardent (is that redundant, or did I just repeat myself?), dislike for the Cubs, whom as I came to find out reside in Chicago, which is north of here (then again, everything is north of here) the moment I found out that they were a baseball team. This team, as it turned out, would be playing my beloved Marlins; which is a fish as are all championship teams in Florida, with the possible exception of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Florida State Seminoles, the University of Miami Hurricanes, the University of Florida Gators, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and perhaps several others. Cubs on the other hand, are apparently some species of goat, at least according to everything I saw written about them on Internet forums this past few weeks.
The fact that they came down from the north explained the gazillion fans in our stadium for their games, as everyone here is from the north, the north of course, being all north of here. It also explained why there never seemed to be any Marlin fans cheering for the Fish back in Chicago, most northbound travel by south Floridians dead ends in any motel in the general vicinity of Disney World that features a free continental breakfast, or in the case of my people, on any beach where we can dry our feet before the Border Patrol arrives.
My dislike for these Cubs grew as I watched my beloved Marlins play the perfect hosts, graciously allowing them to score runs at will, while in turn, in very unsportsmanlike manner I might add, they refused to return the favor. I understood their rudeness a tad better later, after reading about the frustration felt by Cubs players and fans at having played non-stop baseball with no significant results since the Taft administration. All these things, along with the fact that the inconvenient game scheduling caused many TIVo controversies between the games, Bachelor Bob in the evenings, and a similarly named sponge in the afternoons (or maybe, it was the other way around), didn’t help the goats from Chicago make many friends in this loyal Marlin household.
The most interesting aspects of America’s pastime to me are the unbelievable amount of trivia involved, the great anecdotes, and the fact that there are no actual Americans playing the game anymore; I was soon immersed in the sport, and learned an interesting fact about one of the stars of the goats from the windy city; he had apparently behaved badly somewhere along the way to the championship and broken a bat, exposing the corked center. This of course, is against League rules, as bats are quite expensive, and players are most certainly required to take better care of the team’s equipment.
This bit of news actually helped me be a better Dad in the eyes of my seven year-old, as I was finally able to explain to him exactly how they could make metal bats that weighed so little...corked centers. What I could not explain however, is how the goat superstar from Chicago had avoided being sent to the batter’s box, which as we had both learned from watching hockey some years ago when the Florida Panthers made the playoffs, is where players that behave badly get to serve their time-outs. We figured that he was much too important a goat for time-out, and he simply ignored the whole thing, pretending it never happened.
It was while listening to the radio one afternoon that I learned about the curious tradition of yelling “CORK!” anytime the aforementioned goat star shattered a bat. A series tradition unless of course, you were a fan of the Goats, in which case, you pretended that the whole cork thing had either been a huge misunderstanding, or had not happened at all. It does appear however, that even when the bat doesn’t break, the ghost of the cork rears its ugly head, and the opposing fans strive to discredit every hit made by the goat star.
I learned all these things while flipping stations between Bachelor Bob, the similarly named sponge, the ball games, and the news, where a story about a political commentator who had once been hired to do commentary on sports shows, was also getting a lot of coverage.
You remember this guy. It was the guy who made an observation about the fact that A) some quarterback was not as good as everyone said he was, and B) that he was black. The statements, while being true in and of themselves, mentioned in the same sentence became a truth that everyone wanted to pretend did not exist. So he had to quit commenting on the politics of sports, and return to commenting strictly on the sport of politics.
Well, in the middle of the series, this guy’s right smack dab in the news again.
From everything I was able to gather, it seems that he had himself been playing fast and loose with the rules, and someone exposed him. He issued an apology and secluded himself from his job in an attempt to either escape further scrutiny, or maybe just trying to do the right thing. However, from the looks of things, the other team won’t let this just slide by unnoticed, and they’re jumping up and down yelling, “Cork!” at every opportunity.
This led me to think that perhaps, he should have corked it, and his fans could have made the whole thing out to be a huge misunderstanding, or even that it had not happened at all, which was after all, good enough for the goat with the cork in the bat. However, the commentator took the illogical route once again, and opted to tell the truth, which, as we see illustrated so often these days, is not a good thing to do.
Things however, seem to have a funny way of working themselves out, and in the same way that the goat with the cork failed to achieve significant results after playing possum, the commentator being played as a scapegoat for not having corked it, will probably find significance in his seclusion, and come back swinging.
The other team of course, will never allow him to forget his rule breakage, and try to taint his game by constantly reminding everyone of his past transgressions. In an attempt to discredit every point made by the political commentator, and maybe even to make him out to be a hypocrite, and a master of the art of double speak.
It’s OK; they never liked the way he played ball anyway.
But that’s baseball, ain’t it folks?
Me?
I’m excited and looking forward to the upcoming All South Florida World Series between the Marlins, and our other home team, los Yankis.
GO FISH!!!!
No, I don't like Disneyworld or alligators in the wild either. I am a curdmudgeon.
Well, that's a gimme.
As you know, he's a plucky catcher, and not a little sonorous frog.
Coqui?
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