Tuesday, July 05, 2005

GRAND (Slam) MA(nny) MOSES!

Don't you love Manny's new patented style of home run hitting?

He swings, and the ball goes up in the air, seemingly headed for the right fielder's glove. Manny watches the ball, before walking toward first, creating the illusion that it's a fly out. Then said fielder keeps going farther and farther back. The ball just clears the wall as Manny celebrates, and everyone in the park's jaw drops. Also, it's always a grand slam. It's kind of like a legitimate version of Jeter's trick, because instead of dropping it in in front of the right fielder, Manny drops it over the wall behind the right fielder.

I love that Manny is closing in on a yankee-held record. Lou Gehrig leads all major leaguers with 23 grand slams, and Manny now has 20. Side note: I live across the street from Gehrig's birthplace. There's a plaque on th building. Wouldn't it be funny if I put a little line next to his plaque, with a "23" next to that, and then drew three more lines below it, numbering each one, and putting a big picture of Manny next to the twenty? And then I could move Manny up the ladder as he gets closer to the record. And I'd write "Grand Slam Chart" above it all.

I love seeing yankee-held records fall. Since Johnny's got a 21 game hitting streak, it's a good time to bring this up. All my life, I've hoped for someone to outdo that 56 game hitting streak. My fantasy was always that somebody like Milt Cuyler breaks it, going 1 for 4 every game, 57 times in a row.

Some people out there might read this and give me some crap like, "A true baseball fan would want the record to stay intact." Well, a true Red Sox fan would want any person in the world to break that (bullshit-) record as soon as is humanly possible, provided they're NOT wearing a yankee uniform. Ted Williams had a better batting average over those same 56 games anyway.

If Johnny broke it, though, it woud be even sweeter than if a Brook Fordyce-type did.

Comments:
There was a guy about 8 years back, can't for the life of me remember his name, who had a 35 game hitting streak that no one noticed, because he was a bench guy and got into one out of every three or so games. I think he had an injury in there, too, so the 'streak' stretched over parts of three seasons. I may be completely mis-remembering the story, but I remember really hoping he'd just keep going, and then one day people would look up and realize he had a 60 game streak over like 250 games. Of course, the day after someone mentioned it, it broke.
 
Andrew, are you sure that wasn't a novel you were working on? It would definitely make a great movie. Guy plays 10 games a year and breaks the streak in his sixth year. No one notices until several years after he retires. You know, now I feel like I need to go on retrosheet just to verify DiMaggio actually holds the record.
 
Okay I red this, and then started to doubt myself. So I enacted a series of complicated Google searhes and found this. Tony Eusebio, Astros backup catcher. It was actually 5 years ago, and it was a 24 game hit streak, and it took him 51 days, all in the same season. But apart from that, I was totally, 100% right.
 
Wow, I don't know how I missed that. It still sounds made up, though. Like maybe Tony from the Astros accounting department did some Photohopping and hacked into the official MLB computer, using the "Superman III/Ofice Space" method of inserting himself into the lineup every few days, giving himself a hit each time, and hoping no one would notice.

Great list of Present and Pastros, too.
 

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