Earlier this week Red Sox pitcher Curt Shilling recorded his three thousandth strikeout, with Nick Swisher being his victim. Not since Roger Clemens struck out Edgar Renteria a few seasons ago has a major league pitcher attained this landmark achievement. As only the 14th player to reach this milestone as a pitcher, Shilling chose to sign this ball and auction it off for charity.
Another player also reached the three thousand strikeout milestone, that being Jim Edmonds, who managed to attain this level of futility as a batter, rather than as a pitcher. Slightly less awesome of an accomplishment, it is garnering him some attention nonetheless. Edmonds has decided to sign this ball as well and put it up for auction alongside the Shilling ball. As of press time, the Shilling ball had a high bid of eight thousand dollars by a loyal Red Sox fan and the Edmonds ball had only one bid of one million dollars by Todd McFarlane.
Commentators have noted that this has been quite a tumble for Edmonds, who was considered an MVP candidate only a few seasons ago. On the subject of Edmonds' inglorious mark, his current manager Tony LaRussa, remarked, "I don't know how that dude stayed in the league with three thousand damned strikeouts. Only a special type of player can reach a milestone like that, as a batter, that is. I mean, yeah, I play him hurt all the time, be it sprains, strains, blurred vision or hemorrhoids, so he gets more strikeouts because of injury, but three thousand? Wow. Now, if I myself had played for twenty years, I would have had five thousand strikeouts, easy. I was that bad. But Jim, like I said, is a special kind of player in my mind."
[This story is a satire of public figures.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment