Cheap Seats
Answer: Very carefully
Baltimore Orioles relief pitcher Jesse Orosco hasn’t been pitching forever. It just seems that way.
Orosco was warming up in the bullpen this month when someone yelled from the bleachers, “Hey, Orosco, how did you pitch to Ty Cobb?”
Fat chance they’ll wear them again
It was a time when 25 players could be louder than 25,000 fans, simply by donning their uniforms.
The 1970s returned to the Astrodome last Saturday as the Houston Astros wore their infamous bright orange-and-yellow “rainbow stripe” jerseys some would just as soon see burn in a disco inferno.
“These are bad,” Astros closer Billy Wagner said, grimacing, as he examined the jersey and pylon-orange hat he prepared to wear. “That’s really bad right there.”
The Astros paraded out the most recognizable duds in club history on a Fox telecast that might have been mistaken for a rerun of “That ‘70s Show.” In honor of their last season in the Astrodome, they broke out the uniforms worn from 1975 through 1986.
“I thought they were great, but some guys didn’t like them. Mainly the fat guys,” broadcaster and former catcher Alan Ashby said.
Friends he didn’t know he had
Chicago White Sox first baseman-DH Paul Konerko recently sank a hole-in-one during a benefit golf tournament, winning a trip for four to Ireland.
“I suddenly had a lot of friends in the clubhouse,” Konerko said. “Guys are coming up to me and telling me they’re part-Irish. With Carlos Lee, I kind of doubt it.”
Lee is from Aguadulce, Panama.
Appreciates the thought
Marc Upshaw, a former high school basketball star in Columbus, Ga., is pleased to know that Stanford coaches were interested in him - even if their recruitment letter arrived 21 years late.
The letter, signed by coach Dick DiBiaso, was dated May 5, 1978, but didn’t arrive at Columbus High until this spring.
David McQuinn, consumer affairs clerk for the U.S. Postal Service in Columbus, said he had no idea where the letter was all those years. But because of its age, he said it most likely was stuck in a pouch used to store mail.
“Maybe I need to send that in and they’ll give me a scholarship,” joked Upshaw, a 38-year-old father of two who runs his own business in the Atlanta area.
Guess he likes smoked fish
Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times has some fish stories. Here’s one:
“I was a kid, and my buddy and I were bass fishing in a boat with his cigar-smoking dad at a strip mine near Canton, Ill. My buddy’s dad had his lure in the water, and was preparing to put a minnow on another hook.
“He had his cigar in one hand, the minnow in another, and then a fish hit his line. Before he reached for the pole, my buddy’s dad threw his cigar into the bait bucket and stuck the minnow in his mouth.”
The last word …
“We call ourselves bottom feeders. The whole world under-appreciates middle relievers. Everyone looks at the lineup, the starting pitchers and maybe the closer. We pride ourselves in being the plankton of the baseball world.”
- Texas Rangers pitcher Jeff Zimmerman.