Beaned Pitcher Huff Wakes Up With Herculean Strength

We've already discussed pitchers throwing "sinks" this week, but how about pitchers throwing entire bullpens?

Tribe skipper Manny Acta was speaking with the Cleveland Plain-Dealer about his pitcher David Huff, who started yesterday after taking a horrific A-Rod smash off his noggin over the weekend. (It simply had to be A-Rod, didn't it?)

Sadly, Huff's appearance--three innings, six hits, five runs--was almost as ugly as the A-Rod incident. But Acta said the real victory was seeing Huff get action against real batters, as opposed to simply tossing warm-ups to the backup catcher.

"It's easier to throw a bullpen than to see a ball come off the bat again," said Acta. "That's what we'll be watching."

I don't know, is it really easier to throw an entire bullpen than to face a live batter? Those bullpens are large.

Of course, we jest. A "bullpen" is popular shorthand for a bullpen session.

In the same breath, Acta introduced DL--as in disabled list--in an uncommon usage as a verb.

"I was on the conservative side from the get go," said Acta of getting Huff back into action. "I said let's DL this guy and give him some time off. But the very next day he was in the dugout for the whole game like nothing happened."

Of course, using nouns as verbs has been popular in corporate American for years; maybe we can "trial" our new product after we "baseline" the competition's sales and, of course, "synergize" with our sister businesses.

Like Evan Longoria referring to Carl Crawford's "ceiling," Acta's noun-as-verb is another example of corporate-speak oozing into baseball--and leaving linguistic tar balls all over the diamond.

[image: cleveland.com]