When Extra BP and Your Lucky Rabbit's Foot Fail You

Today's entry comes from the minor leagues, where Wilmington Sharks play-by-play guy David Tanklefsky dishes about the "slump-buster."

We know that Mark Texeira tried taking more swings from both sides of the plate to bust his current slump, then tried taking fewer. Neither seemed to be working.

Big Tex was three for four with a pair of walks and a pair of rib-eye steaks last night, so it's entirely possible that he partook in a little slump-bustin' this week.

Tanklefsy writes:

Ballplayers are a superstitious bunch, as anyone who follows the game closely knows. An assistant coach I recently met took to cutting his spiked red hair into a mohawk and drawing mullet-like lines into his sideburns after his team went on a winning streak--a one game winning streak.

So it should come as no surprise that ballplayers mired in the doldrums of a slump will do some [ahem] less than conventional things to break out of it.

Enter the slump-buster.

Urban Dictionary's most PG explanation of this phenomenon is that a slump-buster is an unattractive female that a player has relations with in the effort to get out of a slump. The term has also found its way into the non-baseball world (which may be where it came from to begin with) to mean a person who helps a friend or acquaintance who has been lacking in the department of corporal relations to "break their slump."

The theory behind the slump-buster seems to be that once you get back on base, the hits will come in droves.

As you might imagine, there aren't a lot of first source texts that point the way as to which ballplayers have utilized slump-busters over the years. Wade Boggs drew plenty of unwanted headlines to the Red Sox in the late '80s when he was found to have carried on an extramarital affair for four years, but the guy only hit below .300 three times in his 18-year career. It's hard to have a slump buster if you never have a slump.

Also, when trying to determine who constitutes a slump buster and who does not, it's important to note that the guy in the slump isn't typically attracted to the slump-buster. So, no A-Rod--Kate Hudson and Cameron Diaz do not count.

David Tanklefsky is a freelance writer and musician from Boston who is currently calling play-by-play on internet radio for the Wilmington Sharks in Wilmington, N.C.




[image: bostonherald.com]

Fun and 'Games' for Strasburg

Today of course marks the Major League debut of wunderkind pitcher Stephen Strasburg, and the MLB Network is capitalizing on the monstrous interest in the Nationals' #1 pick by showing the game tonight.

It may be the most eagerly awaited rookie pitcher start since portly pitcher Fernando "Eyes to the Sky" Valenzuela was taking the hill for the Dodgers back in '81.

One thing to look for amidst all the Strasburg hoopla--his pitching repertoire is so wicked (notice I didn't say "nasty") that pundits often compare it, not to other flesh-and-blood pitchers, but to video game pitchers. In short, mere mortals do not compare.

Harrisburg Senators closer Drew Storen had this to say about his former teammate:

“He’s got Nintendo stuff. You create a player on a video game, and that’s what he has. The ball just comes out differently from his hand. He does something that nobody else can do.”

Strasburg was also said to post video game-worthy statistics while at San Diego State. Strasburg turned a few heads when he struck out 23 against Utah back in 2008.

Reported the Las Vegas Sun:

His coach had never seen anything like it, and that’s saying something, because his coach has seen a lot. Tony Gwynn, a baseball Hall of Famer, once saw Kevin Brown strike out 16 Astros. But he never saw anybody strike out 23. That’s just crazy, Gwynn said.

“It was like a Nintendo game,” he said.

Writes BaseballDraftReport.com:

He also has Nintendo numbers through two seasons at San Diego State with 180 strikeouts, 31 walks, and 79 hits allowed — only 18 of them for extra bases — in 134.1 collegiate innings."

The first Stephen Strasburg-as-video game-reference I found came from none other than Tony Gwynn, MLB Hall of Famer and Strasburg's old coach at San Diego State.

Strasburg also tallied exBoxcellent numbers in the minors, reports Buffalo News.

Strasburg allowed just three hits, struck out nine and walked two. He's 3-0 in Triple-A, throwing 18 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing just four hits and four walks and fanning 22.

Those are PlayStation numbers.

Sadly, no one references Atari 2600 anymore. I remember Atari skiiing (good), hockey (very good) and track (lame), but did Atari ever do baseball?

Either way, get those joysticks out of storage--it's game on at 7 p.m. tonight.

Manuel Labors For Right Word Regarding Bad Ollie

I swear, sometimes this blog just writes itself.

Mets skipper Jerry Manuel was chatting with reporters over the weekend about what's really the only downer in Metsville these days--Ollie Perez's refusal to go to the minor league Buffalo Bisons to learn to become a major league pitcher again. ("The buffalo in the locker room," deftly quipped NY Timesman Joe Lapointe.)

The Mets avoided a sticky situation by putting Perez on the disabled list. The move raised some eyebrows, because no one seemed to know that Perez was injured.

Manuel, however, said the team's front office deserved better than skepticism that it was playing a little dirty pool.

Writes the Times:

Manuel acknowledged that the timing of Perez’s injury would raise suspicions, but he defended the legitimacy of the injury, going so far as to coin a new word.

“In my years that I have been here, the Wilpons, Saul Katz, Omar Minaya, they have had similar situations where they could have used what I would say would be a less integrious option,” Manuel said, referring to the Mets’ management. “But they never chose that.”

It's not surprising for ballplayers to make up new words (or "strategery"-minded presidents, for that matter); you'll recall that Roger Clemens said former friend Andy Pettitte likely "misremembered" Clemens doing juice. Of course, Clemens was called The Rocket, not The Rocket Scientist.

It's less common for bookish, jazz-bo managers in chem professor glasses to make them up.

I just hope the Mets continue their victoriginous ways.

[image: zimbio.com]

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]

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]

What's Nastier Than Nasty?

Several years ago, then-Mets catcher Mike Piazza acknowledged one of the great cliches in sports.

Piazza may have been useless at throwing out base-stealers, but Big Mike was no dummy: He was a media-savvy guy and a decent interview after games. (Full disclosure: I may or may not have started the rumor that Mike Piazza starred in the movie Teen Wolf under a different name.)

Speaking with a New York Magazine reporter, Piazza opined:

"I've been trying to invent a new cliché to replace stepping up," he says. "That's the most overused term in sports. I've got to invent a new one. I'll test out a few phrases and see what catches on. How cool would that be, if you could think up a term like step up and see all these guys using it in interviews? I need to start watching more of Don King's interviews. I heard him say one time, 'These are tribulations and infractications! These are hypocrisies and hypotheticals!' He's funny, man -- he's amazing. Maybe I can borrow something from him."

A decade later, here's another baseball cliche that needs to be retired: A "nasty" pitch.

I tuned into This Week in Baseball over the weekend for the first time in years. Notably, and perhaps of no surprise to anyone, there's really nothing about the current week in baseball in the show; ESPN and its myriad tentacles of course have covered all that ad nauseum. Instead, it focuses on longer-form insider topics, such as who's got the toughest pitch in the game.

That segment showed clips of several pitchers showing their signature pitches. Accompanying each pitch was the live announcing; out of maybe 20 clips, all but two had the word "nasty" in the call.

Ben Sheets' curve? Nasty!

Johan Santana's changeup? Nasty!

Tim Lincecum's entire repertoire? Nasty, nasty, nasty!

The two non-nasty descriptions, if you're scoring at home, were "devastating" and "filthy."

Nasty is so overused that it's taken, well, the nastiness out of it. We're here in New York, so we're particularly attuned to pitches being called nasty due to a certain bat-smashing closer taking the hill every couple days, though the Yankee games are so damn long that Mariano is almost taking the stage around the same time Jay and Dave are.

So let's put "nasty" to rest. Filthy, I'm fine with. But I'm open for suggestions. Any announcers around the country coming up with good substitutions for nasty? Anyone else like the sound of nastardly?

[image: outstandingcollectibles.com]

'Bloused' Pants Mystery Solved

Last week, we questioned what the heck Derek Jeter was talking about when he mentioned Yankees being made to wear their pants "bloused". Was he referring to his baseball pants, or his post-game, late-dinner at Tao trousers?

I reached out to a fashion expert, who'd never heard of the term.

I then reached out to Paul Lukas, who operates the incomparable Uni Watch website and ESPN.com column, which obsessively studies sports uniforms and is one of the great niche-sports reads around.

Lukas was good enough to hit us back over the long weekend. It was fitting that it was over Memorial Day that Lukas memorializes the concept of bloused baseball pants.

He writes:

Bloused pants refers to the proper method of wearing one's pants high-cuffed. It's not enough to have the pants bunched up at the knee -- the proper method is to have the elastic cuff tucked under and out of sight, which causes a slight bulge at the point where the fabric breaks underneath. This is blousing.

Look here:


See how the pant leg fabric turns under?

See how the cuff point is wider than the stirrup just below it? That's the blousing effect.

Nowadays, of course, the Yankees don't enforce this rule. Neither does anyone else. A pity.

[images: Daily Mail]