Spencer Steer, Christian Yelich, and other neat things to talk about around baseball
With the rainout yesterday (reskedged as a doubleheader on Aug 30) the Reds now sit at 6-6 after dropping series against both the Mets and Brewers this week. Sometimes the pitching has been stout, and sometimes not. Sometimes the bats are really bangin, and sometimes they aren’t. In conclusion, the Reds are a team of contrasts.
It’s still too early to identify any substantive trends about anything, but there’s some interesting bits to bullshit about. Skid Steer has been the best human hitter in the National League so far, leading the Senior Circuit in RBIs and hammering an OPS near 1.200. He has pretty well convinced Red Reporter’s Chief Industrial Strategist and my personal friend Wick Terrell that he’s the guy around whom the organization should build their next World Series winner. I ain’t here to argue. Skid goes out there and does good old-fashioned baseball shit every single day. It is so much dang fun to watch that fella play.
I think the most remarkable thing about the guy is how remarkably unremarkable he looks. He’s listed at 5’11” and 185 lbs, but I’d say he looks like he’s added some upper body mass since they got those numbers. Either way, he’s my size! A notch taller than average, but he’s by no means a Big Fella. He doesn’t stand out in a crowd. Put a Bengals quarter-zip on him and he would not at all look outta place scarfin’ ‘sketti at a church fundraiser or checking fantasy results while following his wife around Costco.
Which is all unremarkable right, but the contrast with the obviously superhuman presence of Elly De La Cruz cuts a fascinating image. Elly showed up one day a few years ago and instantly captured the collective imagination. Having seemingly pupated over the preceding winter, he had grown several inches and was now capable of feats of derring-do on the diamond that could turn you stupid. Now, all of us having turned so much stupider from having watched him do the things he does (I’d embed a clip of his highlight reel here, but I can’t redumber how to do that), the spectacle hasn’t lost its capacity to captivate. He is so evidently more than a man, though perhaps less than a god.
And then there’s ol’ Skid Steer, wearing that same ol’ Bengals quarter-zip, having a slice of white bread and a glass of skim milk for a snack before the game and playing Candy Crush on his phone. And the both of em can fuckin’ bang, man.
Around baseball, the Shohei Ohtani gambling melodrama seems to have come to a grim realist ending. His erstwhile interpreter Ippei Mizuhara has reportedly come to a plea agreement with the feds. Details emerged yesterday because of a court thing (please contact Red Reporter’s robustly staffed legal department for more information) and it turns out that Mr Ippei is a very sick person. In the span of three years or so he racked up gambling losses totaling around $180 million. That isn’t a typographical error or a factual inaccuracy due to sloppy reporting. He was averaging around 25 bets a day and burning through thousands and thousands of dollars that did not belong to him the entire time. When he got pinched he was in the hole around $40 million. That’s the habits of a desperate and obsessive gambler who has a key to the Duckberg treasure vault and nobody and nothing to help him out of the spiral. He’s gonna go to prison for a long time, but that is no justice.
And all the while, Shohei Ohtani remains what he seemingly has always been – a moon-faced baseball autist who is functionally incapable of guile. Like Isaac Newton and Ludwig Wittgenstein and other revolutionary instantiations of the potential for human greatness before him, Shohei is unconcerned with the baubles and games with which we mere mortals occupy ourselves. He exists at the edge of this dimension, busying himself by manipulating and reconfiguring the fabrics of our spacetime. As his personal emissary to the human world, it was kinda easy for Ippei to take advantage of him. It’s all a drag.
NEWS FROM HELL
Obvious cautionary tale that most nobody seems to be interpreting right and storied NFL quarterback Tom Brady says he might actually this time possibly isn’t maybe like retired retired after all and he might play this coming season if the right situation comes up. I’d rather see him marooned on a glacier in the Antarctic, but that’s my druthers.
It mostly sucks that people generally seem to not get that this guy is a food-brained psychopath who is a constant displeasure to all the people around him. But we humans are a puny species that is ill-equipped for our environs. It’s hard to expect too much, you know?
Have a good weekend, y’all. Go Reds, they are my favorite team.