All posts by Matthew Callan

Baseball, Skitch Hanson

Up the Middle with Skitch Hanson: Shoebox Greetings for the Hall of Fame

Scratchbomb hands over the reins to nationally syndicated sports columnist Skitch Hanson, as we’ve done many times before. You may know Skitch as the author of the highly popular syndicated column “Up The Middle.” You may have read his best-selling book Why Eckstein Matters. He’s also a frequent guest on ESPN’s sportswriters panel show Mouth-Talkers! You can follow Skitch on Twitter here. Without further ado, here’s Skitch.

I apologize that my Hall of Fame column came later than usual this year. I actually handed in my ballot at the last minute. I was searching all over the house for it, then my wife told me she lost it. And while she told me she lost it, she lit the ballot on fire right in front of me. I told her tampering with a Hall of Fame ballot was a federal offense. She said it wasn’t at all and that she was leaving for Ibiza for two weeks with her special friend Marco.

Luckily, I was able to send my choices in by teletype. It’s good to know that the BBWAA still uses the latest technology. Do you know it took me forever to find a teletype machine in my newspaper’s office? And when I did, it was covered in dust, banana stickers, and somebody growing a potato in a jar. When I started in this business, we used teletype to send info back to the newsdesk, and as far as I’m concerned, no machinery has improved on it since. You can keep your Blackberrys and iPans and whatnot. Also, my editor won’t let me get one because the last time I was issued a company cell phone, I gummed up the keys with Mallomar residue.

When Jack Morris failed to get into the Hall of Fame yet again, I poured out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo in his memory. In truth, I knocked over a bottle of Yoo-Hoo onto the hood of my editor’s car, but I retroactively dedicated it to his memory. That and the sizable repaint bill, which is coming out of my paycheck. I had no idea Yoo-Hoo was so caustic.

It’s too bad that we’re letting so many people vote for the Hall of Fame that didn’t watch some of the eligible candidates play. If you look at Morris’s pure numbers, of course he doesn’t belong within a mile of Cooperstown. In order to understand his greatness, you had to have seen him in action, and then remembered that action many, many years later, when most of the finer details are rather hazy in your memory and mixed up with other things you’ve seen on TV. I, for one, will never forget that time I saw Morris pitch a 15-inning complete game and knock in the winning run to save an inner city rec center, aided only by his grit and determination and most of the Harlem Globetrotters.

I truly believe that you can only judge a player if you’ve actually seen him on the field, preferably from a press box view, while ingesting a Skitch Special. That’s when you anchor two hot dogs and a hamburger together with a shish kebab skewer, then drop it into a deep fryer. Some stadiums were better than others in making it for me. The guys at Wrigley were the best; they’d always have two Skitch Specials waiting for me when I showed up at game time, along with a fully charged defibrillator.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite players was Jimmy “Shoebox” O’Leary, backup utility man for the Senators. No one really knows how he got that nickname; some say it’s because he was born in a shoebox, others say it’s because he lived in one. I can’t tell you now why he was my favorite player back then. His batting average always hovered around the Mendoza Line, he couldn’t field worth a lick, and he got a nosebleed every time he ascended the dugout steps.

Still, I thought he was the greatest player in the world when I was six, and to honor that memory, I vote for his induction into Cooperstown every year. My fellow writers keep telling me I’m insane, that he’s not on the ballot, and that they’re going to drum me out if I don’t stop doing this and also bringing my homemade scrapple to the meetings.

If I’m disappointed that Morris failed to get in, that’s how pleased I am that Jeff Bagwell was also denied. As I’ve discussed before, there’s no hard evidence Bagwell ever did steroids, or soft evidence, or even some sort of evidence-mist. However, he did play at a time when many other people may or may not have done steroids at some point or another, and the fact that he didn’t speak up about it is a mark against his character. If someone was around that much cheating at that time and said nothing, they’re just as guilty as those who committed the act. If there’s anything I’m sure of after spending most of the last 30 years in locker rooms, it’s this.

I’m not looking forward to next year’s ballots, full of proven cheaters like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, cheaters by association like Mike Piazza…now that I think about it, it will be easier to vote than ever before. I’ll just draw a huge frowny face on my ballot, check off Morris, write in Shoebox, and be done with it. More time for homemade scrapplin’.

* * *

And now it’s time for Some Things I Think About Things I Think!

  • Tim Tebow has brought joy back to the NFL. Anyone who says something bad about him should be caged.
  • In this strike-shortened season, the play in the NBA has really fallen off, based on what I assume from not having watched a single game so far.
  • Love him or hate him, Shia LeBoeuf is here to stay, folks.
  • I’ve started an online petition to keep egg nog lattes at Starbucks all year round. I have 12 signatures, each from someone named Mike Rotch.
  • Alex Ovechkin is going to have to do a lot more to get my attention. Like play a sport other than hockey.
  • I don’t care for that “Partying Rock” song by L.S.M.F.T. Give me the Little River Band any day of the week.
  • Albert Pujols’ decision to leave St. Louis for the glamor of Hollywood is truly selfish, as it means I will probably have to drive from LAX to Anaheim several times this upcoming season.
  • Insider’s tip: Take a bag of microwave popcorn, poke a tiny hole, pour M&Ms inside, and seal it up before you pop. The result is a delightfully gooey mess and it tastes a bit like metal.
  • Have you guys heard about radishes? Crazy!
  • Stayed up late last night to watch a few old episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati. I really think that show holds up, and the roaring laugh track really helped mask the sounds of Marco and my wife upstairs.
  • Treat yourself to some fried spaghetti this week. You’ll thank me.
NYC

Rifle Vodka and the Awesomeness Corollary

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I enter the liquor store and immediately see a small boy, maybe eight years old. This does not alarm me in and of itself, nor do I judge his parent(s) for bringing him there. I’ve dragged my kid into a liquor store before while out and about trying to conduct 12 errands at once, cuz hey, daddy needs his medicine. My neighborhood is about equal parts Irish and Polish, so kids in a liquor store = not a big deal, as long as they’re not indulging in samples, and at least 90 percent of the time they’re not.

What does catch my eye is the fact that the boy is enraptured by an elaborate display. It is a large box that looks like an old timey suitcase or a trumpet case, lid open. Inside, a life-size glass Kalashnikov, full of vodka. In the case’s extra space, 10 neatly arranged shot glasses, each sitting in its own little nook.

It looks a lot like the example you see here, except 100 times more opulent. Having lived the last decade-plus of my life in neighborhoods with sizable Eastern European populations, I am very familiar with the firearm-shaped vodka container. Still, this was by far the biggest one I’d ever seen. It even had a strap to sling over your shoulder, in case you decided to take it hiking. And the case it was in, a thing of beauty! It was lined in a faint green vinyl, the color of an old portable turntable. Its exquisite leather straps had shiny brass studs,and the lock was the kind you’d see on a steamer trunk. The inside: crushed red velvet.

And this boy is just staring at it, like Ralphie gaping lovingly through the department store window at his Red Ryder BB gun. I could understand why; hell, I wanted to take this thing home.

It reminded me of my first trip to New Orleans, making an obligatory trip down Bourbon Street, and seeing soused, beaded tourists stumbling down the block carrying enormous “grenades” full of booze, giant plastic containers topped off with a straw. Sometimes they were actually shaped like grenades, sometimes footballs. It struck me as a very childish thing, putting booze into what is essentially a sippy cup.

It also struck me as a very American thing to do. I love Thing A. I love Thing B. If I put them together to make Uber-Thing A-B, it can only be better! Hence, turducken and cheese-injected pretzels.

Of course, when I first saw a rifle-shaped glass vodka delivery system, I realized that maybe this is more of a universal impulse than I first suspected. Perhaps all of us, regardless of origin, want all the things we love in one place. It is, after all, a very infantile, pure-id imperative. How else to explain the sight of an eight year old, staring lovingly at an impeccable designed, marvelously appointed Kalashnikov filled with vodka?

Pointless Nostalgia

A Slippery Vision of My Own Ridiculous Demise

It was just like a bad comedy. I stepped into the shower without first noting that there were no towels hanging up, or a bath mat laid down, either. It was such a dumb Man thing to do. I should have hung shelves badly and not asked for directions to complete the Idiot Sitcom Dad trifecta.

Instead, I opted for a different brand of idiocy. Rather than call out to my wife to grab me a towel from our linen closet, I chose to try and get it myself. Again, no bath mat, so I am completely soaking wet and trying to ford my way across the bathroom floor without anything between my dripping feet and the tiles.

I make it to the bathroom door, open it, and make a fumbling grab for the linen closet door, which is mere inches away. And then, one foot slips violently, doing a Rockette kick upward. The other one follows a split second later. For a moment I am completely off the ground, in mid-air, and am fully conscious of this. I feel like I’m outside of myself, observing it. Time stands still.

I’ve had an experience like this once before. On a trip to Action Park at age 12 or so, I rode the alpine slide and followed all the directions, and still found myself separated from my sled when I hit a bump just a bit too hard. I remember feeling suspended above the ground, seeing the sled on the grass next to the track, and consciously thinking “Huh, that’s weird,” before I crashed down to the concrete below me, shoulder first.

While I’m mid-air above the tiles, I think, “I’m going to be one of those idiots who kills themselves slipping in the bathroom.” For this nanosecond, I’m 1000 percent sure I will come crashing down and break my neck, leaving a wet, naked, dumb corpse for my family to find later. I’m going to be a Darwin Award winner.

I come crashing down to the floor and somehow I fall side first. It hurts like hell, but is nothing near fatal. I let out a series of loud laugh-cries, these weird stuttering chuckles that draw my wife’s attention. (Well, that and the noise of my fat ass plummeting to the floor.) She yells “What happened?” several times, but my voice is too choked with pain-laughter to respond.

Finally, I spit out “I slipped” between guffaws. Then, a “fuck!” that is chopped up by so many gasps it gives the obscenity 13 syllables. A split second ago, I was convinced I had a date with the Grim Reaper. Now, I only have a sore hip, stinging pain in my knees, and the burn of my own stupidity. I was also given a depressing reminder that you don’t get to choose how and by what manner you will meet your fate. (Unless you go for suicide, which is not really my cup of tea.) My own experiences with death in the last decade taught me that pretty much every death is undignified and unfair, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. This, however, would have been a shade more undignified than most, I think.

Not many people come so close to death and live to tell the tale. I am one of the very few who has been given a vision of my own mortality. And it was fucking ridiculous.