YouTube is gonna totally deplatform me for this folks
From the bottom of my heart, I am so very, very sorry. I don’t know if I’m going to be writing at this bloghole again. I pride myself and think of myself as a journalist first and foremost here, so ultimately I feel beholden to my responsibility to write about the Reds and tell you what’s going on and to not look away from the inconvenient or unsettling parts. Even if it means my own annihilation under the palm of forces far beyond my simple capacity for comprehension.
I’ve been thinking recently of some of the great truth-tellers in history and how they musta felt. Martin Luther, for example, was a man animated by a singular zeal and conviction. He was fully aware of the gravity of his actions that day when he posted his 95 Theses (dude is a legendary inner-circle Hall o’ Fame shitposter. If Martin Luther had Twitter I’m pretty confident in saying the world woulda ended already) and he strode back down the street clear-eyed and full-hearted. He couldn’t possibly have known how any of it woulda shaken out, but he knew the stakes. It was better than possible that he would end up on one. And he was at peace with it. He knew with the unbreakable heart of a faithful man that God was on his side.
That’s how I know I am totally not up for this. I know the stakes here. It’s better than possible that nobody ever even reads this because I’ll probably be phased into an alternate dimension and have my atoms scattered across a timewarp as soon as I hit “publish.” And I’m fuckin terrified. As I sit here, my eyes are crossed and my heart choleric. And lord knows I ain’t got a Frederick the Wise to be my Wee Bey when this shit gets real. But here I blog, I can do no other. So help me God.
It is not remarkable to say there is something remarkable about Elly De La Cruz. Not only is it immediately noticeable how remarkable he is, but it is remarkable just how immediately you notice there is something remarkable about him. It’s remarkable just how remarkable he is. We just can’t shut up about him. Wide-eyed children share tales of his daring-do, and old men speak about him in hushed tones. He has a gravity that you can see even through the television. Like he doesn’t just run fast, he manipulates the spacetime between him and second base, squeezing it like an accordion. He doesn’t just hit the ball hard, he punishes it as though the ball itself was the one who desecrated his temples and ravaged the grain fields of his supplicants. There is something not quite human about this guy Elly.
“Elly” seems a bit of an uncommon name too, doesn’t it? Like it’s gotta be short for something. He says it isn’t, Baseball-Reference says it isn’t, but I don’t know. So I did some research (this is the part of the movie where you stand up in the theatre shouting “NOOOOO DON’T GO IN THERE DON’T DO ITTTTTTTTTT!!!!” but you and me both know I’m too stupid to listen and and you and me both know I’m probably already dead).
It really is wild to think just how long people have been boppin’ around on this planet. We’ve been building cities and such for at least 10,000 years going all the back to the Younger Dryas glacial period, if not even before that (we don’t have any evidence of large-scale settlements before this but also this is when that big flood happened and the hall of records mysteriously washed away). We’ve been worshiping and praying and gnashing and wailing and hooting and carrying on in all the ways we do, with some modes of worship coming into fashion and others going out, and so on and so on for thousands of years. In the olden days you’d read of gods who demanded sacrifice, gods who were jealous, gods who would punish arbitrarily, and gods who meddled in the affairs of humans. It was common, at least, far more common than nowadays, for gods to walk the earth as simply as you and me, getting in adventures and meeting new people and such and walking around like they was a person but doing, you know, godly shit. In fact, there’s a pretty cool book called American Gods written by an Englishman that imagines what it would be like if these old gods were still boppin’ around with us like that, what would they do and what would they get into and the like. It’s fun.
This, though, I don’t think is all that fun anymore. I watch Elly De La Cruz playing baseball and I cannot deny the deep and agonizing sense of dread I feel. This is a being far more powerful than I have ever known before. I’ve known greatness. I felt the joy of watching Joey Votto extend himself to the limits of his mere mortality and create something exquisite there. But he was always human and we all knew that. But this guy Elly, he’s really fuckin’ up my cosmology, bro.
Electric Elly, The God of Storms. Since the solar eclipse on April 8th, Elly is hitting .297/.416/.662 with 13 steals. I think something happened that day. I think maybe the eclipse awakened the ancient Sumerian God Enlil, the Lord Wind, eldest of the Anunnaki. And because I am the first one to discover this globe-shattering truth, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be struck down by a lightning bolt or something. I’m as good as dead.
At least, that’s the most plausible explanation I can come up with. Because Elly De La Cruz just ain’t real.