Let's list dead baseball players! fun!

Excerpts from the Start Showdown.... 2 grown men, sitting Indian-style on the floor....

8:20 organize cards and pick teams. Start reading stats and reminisce about players....

MD: Remember Ceasar? didn't he hold his bat really high?

• MD:....Before the game, he used to milk a cow....

MD: wow that's a fantastic card you've got
HU: none of this makes any sense to me.

• HU: Chris Brown, he's dead?
  MD: A lot of people are dead from the 80's..... (got on to list dead players and how they died: shot, held up a liquor store...)
• HU: I read a story he got cut by the Royals in 85 and then contemplated killing (so and so, wasn't paying attention to players name)
• MD: Idaho, I should go there, I like baked potatoes
  HU: but there were a couple of white supremacists who set up there....

9:00 still holding their cards, reminiscing.....

• HU: they hold him up to be a great human being, but he beat his wife....
  MD: well, they cleared him of the rape allegations
• MD: I can't remember the Philly bullpen
  HU: Dickie Knowles
  MD: Dickie Knowles!!!! It's all coming back to me know (Cue Celine Dion)
• MD: he's a coke-head you fool!
• HU: he brought his foot up as well (both MD and HU, sitting on the ground, lift up one leg/foot in the air, in perfect geek symmetry)
• MD: I don't know why so many of them get so fat... they do nothing?
  HU: it's sad when your idols let themselves go (MM thinking: what's sad is this conversation)
• MD: I think he was living under a bridge for a while
• MD: My favorite pitching coach, he's also dead! Dick Pole. (OK, favorite pitching coach? that's pathetic!)

*Lil Urban is sitting on the floor, mixing some cards*

• HU: Sweetie, don't mix up another team. play with these guys (and by *guys* he means a pile of cards)

9:30 about to actually start playing, looks at the mess of cards on the floor in front of Lil Urban

• HU: I need to pick another team, she's done some trades

9:40, going over the instructions, realize that they can also play by *mail* by sending each other plays, and apparently, there is a solitaire option..... They try to figure out how one would play Strat by one's self:

• MD: wait, I'm going to use a left fielder. What a surprise! To myself!

9:50 Mortimer's Dad says :OK, let's start playing!,
Mrs. Urban, sitting on the the couch, looks up from laptop and says "What, you're not playing?" (confused look on her face as to what exactely all this chatter has been about.....)

Comments

[lizard]

oh, I remember my brother playing Strat probbly 30 years ago or more. Those cards brought back memories. I can remember him picking up a card that just looked like numbers and staring at it, saying "wow, this guy was amazing" because all that crap meant a lot to him.

I also remember him playing by mail with friends.

Don't know if he introduced his son to the game, but I wouldn't put it past him.

[Herb]

In our defense ...

[Debberoo]

Hilarious! Aren't they just irrisistable in their weirdness? So happy to see MD feeling better and having such a good time with his wife's other husband. It's a wonderful world.

[spacemom]

I am halfway through the description of this post when Dr. Jay announces "Makes sense to me, Dick Pole was my favorite pitching coach too. But these days I'm partial to Bud Black"

(side note to anyone who cares Are these pitching coaches or porn stars?)

This is sad... even sadder that I am reading this post while watching the Indians and the Tigers on the MLB baseball package...

[spacemom]

Apparently I am not allowed to bring up another pitching coach, O. Herschiser as in his name may give this blog an X rating.

[Herb]

I believe Stump Merrill may have dabbled a little in soft core films.