Keith 'Soldiers' On After Dopey Descrip

To have Keith Hernandez on your baseball telecast is to take the good (funny, no filter observations from a sharp mind) with the bad (dopey comments that could've used a filter).

Keith stepped in some of it during the recent Subway Series, when Mets second-sacker Daniel Murphy had his bat sawed off by a filthy pitch in on the hands.

"Well, that is a dead soldier right there, folks, laying in that infield dirt," said Keith.

The problem was, it was Memorial Day, when baseball announcers are wise to avoid metaphors that mention war-dead. 

An SNY rep called it "an honest mistake" and said, "We will address the matter with Keith," reports the NY Daily News.


Keith's misspeak even reached the Daily Mail over in England, which reported "outrage" over Hernandez's characterization of Murph's splintered timber, though the article fails to mention any actual outrage.

The Daily News article says "dead soldier" is an established baseball term (it is not to be confused with "wounded soldier," which refers to half-finished beers that have been abandoned), but I'm not seeing a single usage of it in that context on the interwebs--outside of reports of Hernandez's Memorial Day blunder.
It does not appear in Wikipedia's Baseball Glossary or MLB's pretty lame Baseball Lingo page. 

Keith will not let it happen again--until, of course, he inserts his foot in his mouth once again. 

What's Funnier Than 'Fundies'?

Quick, "Fundies" are a new line of kids' underwear branded with their favorite cartoon characters, a new brand of savory-sweet snack (a mix of Funyons and Fun Dip), or the name given to an eighth day of the week proposed by Congress, falling between Sunday and Monday and during which no work can be done, only fun.

None of the above. In fact, "fundies" is the shorthand SNY announcer Keith Hernandez has come up with for baseball's "fundamentals."

(On a personal note, I loved the word "fundamentals" when I was a kid. Ed Asner would do a public service announcement about books under the "Reading is Fundamental" [RIF] rubric, and I'd wonder how "fundamental" ended up with three separate words in it [fun, dumb, mental]--and quality words at that.)

Hernandez has tossed "fundies" around a few times this season, almost always after a player, typically a Met, has failed to execute an elementary baseball play, such as hitting a cutoff man or getting down a bunt.

Last night's utterance came when R. A. Dickey was looking to sacrifice bunt. The replay showed Dickey assuming textbook bunting position: knees bent, shoulders square, bat parallel to the ground.

"Proper fundies here!" said Hernandez.

(That Dickey's bunt had gone foul was but a technicality.)

"Fundies" coughs up a quarter million links on Google. It's primarily a pejorative abbreviation for religious fundamentalists, and also--I am not kidding about this--a brand of underpants built for two people.

One suspects that a fundie would never be caught wearing fundies.

Hernandez is a busy man (spokesmanning for Just For Men moustache dye and Gold Coin of Oyster Bay, the schleps to and from his base in the Hamptons), and has been tossing around abbreviations quite readily of late.

"Trips" is his new shorthand for a "triple," such as the one Jeff Francoeur juiced off the Minute Made Park wall Tuesday, and Jose Reyes' last night.

As your mother used to say, be sure to pack clean "fundies" when you go on "trips"!

What's Better Than 'Cheddar'?

Somehow, we haven't mentioned the ever quotable Keith Hernandez here in a few weeks, but Keith has been driving a newish term in the baseball lexicon: cheddar.

"Cheese" has been a popular term for a good fastball for some time. The San Francisco Chronicle's "Bleacher Report" (gratuitous shout-out to old friend/SF Chron sports editor Al Saracevic!) had Giants closer Brian Wilson striking out Dodger Casey Blake with "97 miles per hour cheese" recently. (Several have surely described Wilson's fauxhawk as "cheesy" too.)

When the Metsies faced the Reds last month, Hernandez said of the Reds closer, "Cordero is throwing nothing but cheese."

But Hernandez, and perhaps other announcers, have taken the slang term and slanged it even further.

A Mets-Giants game last month prompted Hernandez, who is prone to stream of consciousness musings now and then, to think of old fireballing reliever Bobby Thigpen, who set the since-broken save record with 57 in 1990, and won the award for MLB Player Whose Name Most Sounds Like Pigpen for ten years running.

Keith could not come up with Thigpen's first name, but Gary Cohen, of course, knew it. (That's the Hernandez-Cohen SNY dynamic in a nutshell: Hernandez offering up some loopy thought, and the ever-solid Cohen closing the loop for him.)

"That guy threw some serious cheddar," said Hernandez.

Wikipedia's Glossary of Baseball has "cheese" and "high cheese" in it, but no "cheddar."

It offers: A fastball, particularly one that reaches the mid- to upper-90s in velocity. Also high cheese.

(According to the Babe Ruth biography, The Big Bam, the Babe once jumped into the stands during 1920's spring training to attack a spectator who kept calling him "a big piece of cheese," then quickly retreated when the fan pulled out a knife and threatened to turn the Babe to Swiss cheese.)

If we can squeeze another joke out of Brian Wilson's foul haircut, we would posit another term for his 98 m.p.h. fastball: Herman Munster cheese.

I Like Ike's 'Takeback'

The pitcher is poised.

The hitter takes his last half-swing in the box and awaits the offering.

The pitcher winds up.

The hitter's hands go back, then spring forward in a swing.

That's his hitch, right?

As children we were constantly instructed not to have a hitch, much the same way we were told to avoid inserting our size 8 Nike "spikes" into the "bucket."

Yet every swing naturally has some sort of hitch, and a "violent" hitch from Gary Sheffield--was Sheff's swing ever described as anything but violent?--didn't stop Sheff from amassing 509 home runs.

Of course, Hitch is also a 2005 comedy with Will Smith teaching King of Queens star Kevin James how to be a stud. You don't want that kind of hitch either.

So maybe there should be a less negative moniker for that backswing. Speaking of kings of queens, yesterday, Mets announcer Keith Hernandez repeatedly referred to Mets rookie slugger Ike Davis's "takeback"--that he'd start with his hands low, raise them high just before the pitch, then bring them back down to Earth again as his swing commenced.

His takeback. I'd never heard that before. You might say I was taken aback by it.

Hernandez, a very good hitter in his day, said the reason for Ike's recent slump was that he was bringing his hands too high in the takeback, leaving what Keith said was "a lot of margin for error" in his swing.

Davis, son of former relief pitcher Ron Davis, slammed a pair of dingers out in San Fran Saturday night, and added two doubles yesterday--including the game-winner in the 10th, high off right center's brick wall at AT&T Park.

Maybe Hernandez should "take back" what he said about Ike.

[image: newyorkmets.com]

Seinfeld Gives Gaga the 'Finger'

Jerry Seinfeld of course mans the SNY booth for three innings during Mets-Tigers tonight, setting up the sure to be delightful reunion with Keith "I'm Keith Hernandez!" Hernandez.

Seinfeld is a bit fired up after Lady Gaga snuck into his empty luxury box at CitiField last week and made a scene, which included giving the crowd the finger.

Erected middle fingers are, of course, as old as peanuts and Cracker Jacks at the ballpark.

But, as is his m.o., Seinfeld has some fun with the concept of "The Finger"--as in, what makes it "the finger," and why do people get so upset when you isolate it from the rest of the finger family?

Jerry let 'er rip on The FAN earlier this week:

"You give people the finger and you get upgraded? Is that the world we're living in now? It's pathetic. And why is she giving the finger? How old is the finger? How'd it even get to be the finger? Somewhere along the line somebody decided this is the bad finger."

When you think of it, The Bad Finger is actually a better moniker for the middle finger than, simply, The Finger. Of course, there might be legal issues with the '60 Welsh pop band Badfinger, the vaguely Beatles-esque outfit with the extraordinarily long Wikipedia entry and the cheesy hit "Come and Get It" to its credit.

Jerry and ribeye steak-eater Keith will likely spend some time sharing their mutual distaste for kids today, and the strange customs they live by.

Seinfeld concludes:

"I look at Lady Gaga the way Keith Hernandez watches these kids when they pull the pocket out, they wear the inside-out pocket. ... Do you think he could understand that? He can't understand that. That's a new game, that's kids."


[image: Getty/AP]

Gonzalez Gorges on 'Steaks' in San Diego

Maverick Mets announcer Keith Hernandez did not appear to make the trip to San Diego with the club this week, so we weren't treated to one of our better-liked baseball-slang terms in the past few days: the Rib-Eye Steak.

The Rib-Eye Steak is longhand for an RBI, which is of course shorthand for a Run Batted In. I think I first heard Hernandez--who I got to interview last year--mention Rib-Eye Steaks as RBIs toward the end of last season. (Of course, some baseball purists drop the 's' in the plural and use RBI to denote multiple runs batted in, as you don't say "runs batted ins".)

I googled the Rib-Eye Steak and RBI and found mostly steak recipes, some seemingly delicious, along with one relevant listing on baseball.wikia.com. It reads: RBI are sometimes referred to in slang as ribbies or ribs, or as steaks (as in 'rib eye steaks.')

The key middleman in this equation is the Ribbie: Ribbie of course is the phonetic pronunciation for RBI, and Rib-Eye Steak takes the "Rib" from Ribbie--sort of like God making a woman from a man's rib in the Book of Genesis--and stretches it out into a new and funny term.

The post-game spread is never far from players'--or announcers'--minds. Witness some of the more flavorful baseball lingo: as we learned in recent weeks, a string of shutouts is a bagel; a four-run homer, such as what 1st-sacker Adrian Gonzalez used to thwart the Mets last night; is a grand salami; an easily gloved pop-up is a can of corn;and a home run is a tater.

I probably should've written this post after lunch--now I'm starving.

Anyone know a place in midtown Manhattan that serves Rib-Eye Steaks on bagels?

[image: MetsToday.com]