Friday, May 07, 2004
The All Fat 9
I was thinking last night about an upcoming fantasy baseball season and I decided that I’d like to build a “theme team.” The idea is straightforward. For example you only draft guys who were born in the same year, or who come from California or something.
The idea I came up with was a team made up entirely of fat guys. Here’s my preliminary lineup:
Pitcher: Mickey Lolich. Although some pictures of Cy Young make it look like he enjoyed the occasional pizza, I know for sure Lolich was chunky. Honorable mention goes to “The fat Juan,” Juan Berenger.
Catcher: Smokey Burgess. An embarrassment of riches at his position. But Burgess, of whom Boyd and Harris referred to as “not baseball fat but putsy fat,” was my backstop of choice.
First Base: How can I pick only one? This is like shooting fish in a barrel. But I give the nod to Cecil Fielder. Near the end of his career Cecil got so big it looked like he needed a chair on the field because he was getting tired just standing there. It takes a lot of work to pump blood through a body that size.
Second Base: This was harder than I thought. I mean have any second basemen in the “bigs” (pun intended) ever really been fat? I went with an old-timer named Fatty Briody. Hey, if the shoe fits . . .
Shortstop: Honus Wagner. Either it’s a bad angle or something but Wagner looks absolutely humongous in some of those old photos. Supposedly a great defensive man in his day though so I gotta go with him.
Third Base: I’ll take Harmon Killibrew in this spot. Prodigous power and great root beer won him the spot over a passel of portly patrollers of the hot corner.
Left Field: Dave Parker. Not a traditional home of the chunky ballplayer but Parker is a nice choice. I really liked him as a player and he had a knack for clutch hitting.
Center Field: Babe Ruth. Although Ruth was not fat for a lot of his career he did pack on the pounds near the end so I had to go with him. You know it pained me that they had John Goodman portray the Babe in the most recent movie of his life. The fact is that this man was a hell of an athlete who could have won 20 games and hit 50 homers in a season given the chance.
Right Field: Heck there’s more entrants here than in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Tough to narrow it down so I went with a personal favorite Greg Luzinski. It’s fitting now that the Bull is running his own barbecue joint in the Phillies’ new ballpark cause lord knows he must have packed away plenty in his playing days.
Manager: Joe Schultz. Somewhere in the afterlife Joe’s munching liverwurst right now.
I was thinking last night about an upcoming fantasy baseball season and I decided that I’d like to build a “theme team.” The idea is straightforward. For example you only draft guys who were born in the same year, or who come from California or something.
The idea I came up with was a team made up entirely of fat guys. Here’s my preliminary lineup:
Pitcher: Mickey Lolich. Although some pictures of Cy Young make it look like he enjoyed the occasional pizza, I know for sure Lolich was chunky. Honorable mention goes to “The fat Juan,” Juan Berenger.
Catcher: Smokey Burgess. An embarrassment of riches at his position. But Burgess, of whom Boyd and Harris referred to as “not baseball fat but putsy fat,” was my backstop of choice.
First Base: How can I pick only one? This is like shooting fish in a barrel. But I give the nod to Cecil Fielder. Near the end of his career Cecil got so big it looked like he needed a chair on the field because he was getting tired just standing there. It takes a lot of work to pump blood through a body that size.
Second Base: This was harder than I thought. I mean have any second basemen in the “bigs” (pun intended) ever really been fat? I went with an old-timer named Fatty Briody. Hey, if the shoe fits . . .
Shortstop: Honus Wagner. Either it’s a bad angle or something but Wagner looks absolutely humongous in some of those old photos. Supposedly a great defensive man in his day though so I gotta go with him.
Third Base: I’ll take Harmon Killibrew in this spot. Prodigous power and great root beer won him the spot over a passel of portly patrollers of the hot corner.
Left Field: Dave Parker. Not a traditional home of the chunky ballplayer but Parker is a nice choice. I really liked him as a player and he had a knack for clutch hitting.
Center Field: Babe Ruth. Although Ruth was not fat for a lot of his career he did pack on the pounds near the end so I had to go with him. You know it pained me that they had John Goodman portray the Babe in the most recent movie of his life. The fact is that this man was a hell of an athlete who could have won 20 games and hit 50 homers in a season given the chance.
Right Field: Heck there’s more entrants here than in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Tough to narrow it down so I went with a personal favorite Greg Luzinski. It’s fitting now that the Bull is running his own barbecue joint in the Phillies’ new ballpark cause lord knows he must have packed away plenty in his playing days.
Manager: Joe Schultz. Somewhere in the afterlife Joe’s munching liverwurst right now.
