All posts by Matthew Callan

Baseball

Rob Dibble Celebrates Diversity

dibble.jpgI’m sorry if people were offended by my comments during a recent Nationals game. Apparently I said something about some mouthy broads who were sitting behind the plate and people got all snippy about it. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so shocked these ladies could talk during the whole game. Doesn’t matter where a woman is, the ballpark or the beauty parlor–chances are she’s got her big yap open. Am I right, fellas?

Look, I know many women love baseball. And it’s not just so’s they can see a tight pair of polyester pants giftwrap Dib’s beautiful package. Lots of female types honestly love this game. That’s how great baseball is–even a buncha dumb skirts can dig it!

I love baseball because it’s a game that appeals to everyone. Just look at how many Spanish guys play it! They couldn’t be further away from American, but there’s something about the game that just speaks to them. In some kinda hybrid English-Mexican-y language, I guess.

And you got Chinese guys like Ichiro who come over here to play it, too. You don’t see them guys playing football, do ya? Probably cuz they’d get crushed to death by the linebackers. I could see an Oriental guy play punter or kicker, maybe. But they don’t–they play baseball. I think I’ve made my point.

Speakin’ of which, here’s this joke I heard from Bob Carpenter. Why did Ichiro bat in the first inning, then bat again in the fourth? Cuz an hour later, he was hungry again! Get it? 

How universal is the sport of baseball? I’ve even seen an Indian guy at a game once. Swear to god!

The problem with you guys is you’re too PC. Lighten up, wouldja? I don’t get upset when people make jokes about washed-up unfunny ex-jocks, do I? Because people do. Constantly. Right to my face. Oh sure, I cry when I go home, but that doesn’t mean I’m offended. Just deeply wounded.

Pointless Nostalgia Video

Pointless Nostalgia Friday Presents: Polly-O String Cheese

Who can say what forces shape us? We are often the prisoners of our times. One’s future could be shaped by simply being at the right place at the right time—or the wrong place at the wrong time. Have you ever thought about what might have influenced your life if you were born during a different age? The Renaissance? The Civil War? The Great Depression? Who can say what heights you may have climbed, or to what depths you may have sunk?

Me, I haven’t thought about this conundrum much, because I was born during the Age of Advertising, and thus have a miniscule attention span. I’ve said this many, many times here at Scratchbomb, but I have been immensely influenced by commercials. I feel like they’ve rattled in my brain my entire life. Anyone who says they are not influenced in any way by ads is deluded or lying.

When you’re a kid, you find many things funny that you don’t as an adult. Specifically, other people. Adults won’t just laugh in random people’s faces, but kids will. They can laugh for hours about somebody they see in the street with a weird haircut or dumb hat on. And if the same person also says something weird, in a weird voice, forget it.

I was reminded of this cruel fact of kid-hood when Joe Randazzo of the Onion tweeted a link to this commercial for Polly-O string cheese (the most needless and unasked for food innovation of all time until pancakes and sausage on a stick). This ad ran for roughly 8 billion years during my childhood, but despite its ubiquity, me and my brothers always found it funny. Always.

Why? Because of the wizened old man who says NUTHIN? The way he said this, combined with his wrinkly face—he looks like a slightly melted candle, or a shar pei—was comedy gold to us.

If you’re seeing this for the first time, or were not as struck by it as I was as a kid, I don’t expect you to think it’s funny. I wouldn’t either, if I hadn’t spent my entire childhood laughing at it.

Watching this ad an adult, I am struck by a few things.

  • Check out the odd posters hanging from the wall, that almost give it a Sedelmaier feel. I particularly like the one that bizarrely reads NO SCREAMING.
  • The guy behind the counter who yells at the old wrinkly man calls him “Shimmy”. Obviously, he was trying to say “Jimmy” and failed. But Polly-O wasn’t gonna shell out for more than one take or overdubbing in post. So there it sits, “Shimmy”. My brothers and I found this quite hysterical. HIS NAME IS SHIMMY! WHOSE NAME IS SHIMMY?!
  • Is cheese really the best part of the pizza, as this ad insists? That’s a matter of opinion, of course. But I think I’d rather have a whole slice of pizza than any one individual part of it. I like pizza, but I never get the craving to drink a cup of a tomato sauce on its own. In fact, cheese is probably the worst part of the pizza, nutritionally speaking.
  • I now realize that all Polly-O string cheese really did was make it acceptable for you to chomp down on a huge chunk of fattening mozzarella at lunchtime. It’s like having individually wrapped pudding cups filled with foie gras.
  • At the end of the ad, the kids taste the string cheese and give it glowing praise in foreign languages. But only the first kid says something in Italian (“Bellissimo!”). The last two say French expressions. (“Magnifique!” and “C’est si bon!”) C’mon, Polly-O, you’re making mozzarella and you don’t know the difference between Italian and French? Your handlebar-mustachioed ancestors are spinning in their graves.
Baseball

Roger Clemens: Portrait in Hatred

nixonrocket.jpgRoger Clemens has been indicted for perjury. On the one hand, I think this is a huge waste of taxpayer money. While lying to Congress is a serious crime, the likelihood of conviction seems iffy at best. The feds have been trying to nail Barry Bonds on a similar charge without success for years, and the evidence against Bonds appears to be much stronger than that against Clemens.

On the other hand, Roger Clemens is one of the worst human beings on the planet. Not enough bad things can happen to him to sate my schadenfreude.

Last week, in a post about Chipper Jones, I wrote about how I can usually separate my personal feelings from objective reality. Emphasis on usually. I could cast a Hall of Fame vote for Chipper Jones. I don’t think I could do that for Roger Clemens. And not because of steroids. Simply because I hate him with a white hot passion. I hate him more than some people who have done actual, tangible wrong to me. If I could harness this hatred and turn it into energy, I could power a steel mill for a year.

The worst thing about Clemens (even worse than the fact that he literally tried to kill Mike Piazza by throwing a 95 mph fastball at his head): His craven, psychotic need to be not just loved, but worshiped. That is often the sign of a man who deep down knows he is horrible, and thus demands love from others. All so he can say, “How can I be a bad person–look at how many people love me!”

In another life or another nation, Roger Clemens would have been a crime lord or a dictator. Someone who snatched power by force. Someone who demanded absolute fealty and craved absolute love from everyone. Someone who can never be told that he has done wrong, for it is impossible for him to be wrong.

I can easily imagine Roger Clemens commanding cowering citizens to perform grand, choreographed games in his honor, as North Koreans do at Kim Jong Il’s behest. That is exactly the kind of sick, depraved person he is.

Keep in mind that the Congressional hearing from which the perjury charge stems would never have happened in the first place if he hadn’t demanded one. It wasn’t good enough for him to quietly deny the charges of the Mitchell Report. No, he had to loudly protest his innocence to the nation’s lawmakers and force us all to shower him in love once again. This maniac was so obsessed with being adored, he laid his own trap.

Joe Posnanski wrote an amazing column (as usual) about Clemens at SI.com, in which he takes us back to the infamous Game 2 of the 2000 World Series, when the Rocket flung the bat at Mike Piazza. Posnanski’s observation: Clemens has no interest in smoothing things over with Piazza, but instead focuses on proclaiming his innocence to the home plate umpire.

That is the essence of Clemens. He had no desire in doing right or being right. His sole focus was on getting over, being absolved. It reminds me of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord who could have lived fat and happy on his cocaine billions, except that he had an insane craving for respectability. He desperately wanted to be elected to Congress, and didn’t care how many bribes he had to hand out or judges and policemen he had to kill in order to do it. As if becoming a Respectable Person would somehow erase the fact that he’d murdered his way to the top.

To this day, I’m still infuriated by the thought that Clemens received absolutely no punishment for this bizarre, dangerous act. (As Posnanski points out, Piazza very easily could have been injured by the shattered bat.) No ejection, no fine, not even a tsk-tsk from Bud Selig. It still blows my mind that someone did this in a World Series game and was allowed to continue to play in that game.

Karma might not really exist, but I like when it makes a select appearance in the lives of folks like Clemens. His life is over, for intents and purposes, and he’s not even 50 yet. Even allowing for Americans’ microscopic memories, and even if steroid use becomes accepted in the future, I can’t imagine his image ever recovering. God, that’s beautiful. There are people more deserving of cosmic payback than him, but he’ll do until they get theirs.

In honor of another instance of Clemens’ spiritual de-pantsing, here’s a trip down Scratchbomb memory lane of The Rocket’s various falls from grace.

Take Your Medicine, 12.13.2007
Wherein I discuss the Mitchell Report and touch on Clemens being exposed for the fraud that he is.

60 Minutes with Roger Clemens, 01.03.2008
Mike Wallace interviews a not-at-all contrite Roger Clemens, with a guest appearance from Hank Steinbrenner.

Roger That, 02.08.2008
An attempt to understand Roger Clemens through old clips from a baseball special called Grand Slam, which you can not watch because Clemens helped shut down my old YouTube account.

Joe Torre Revisits History, 02.04.2009
While promoting his book on Mike Francesa’s show, Joe Torre rethinks his opinion of Roger Clemens, using an amazing piece of equipment called his brain.

Michael More, Roger, and Me, 03.26.2009
Wherein I discuss why I can love Mike Piazza and hate Roger Clemens.