Beer and Japanese Nachos

I’ve come a long way since I had to meticulously set up my VCR to record the Game of the Week on my lousy, buzzing and rolling miniature television crowned with broken rabbit ears. (and Mel Allen’s TWIB!)  It almost seems absurd that I can now watch any game of my choosing on my phone while exercising or sitting on the toilet, and up to four different games simultaneously on my laptop. And that’s exactly what I decided to do on a lazy Friday. Escape. Open a few cans of Lone Star, tear open a bag of chips and salsa, and…just…escape. Does anyone care about Spring Training and its shuffling of bush leaguers and odd rules? Probably not.

Shohei Ohtani was on the hill for the Halos and that made me harken back to the time I saw him pitch in an exhibition game at Dodger Stadium one curiously freezing night in Los Angeles. The bleachers were teeming with Japanese, no doubt there to see their fellow countryman Ohtani pitch, and a young lady walking by my seat in the aisle spilled a large tray of nachos on me and my F*** the Angels t-shirt. (The stains exist to this day and I am still resolute about that idea) She apologized profusely and meekly in broken English and I felt terrible for her and assured her that I would wash myself off in the bathroom and there were no hard feelings. I also made a mental note of the very odd cultural difference/dichotomy of the Japanese dressing as if they were attending a business function/fashion show rather than the American way of dress which was mostly casual and lacking visual ingenuity with a few jerseys and baseball caps thrown into the mix. I honestly had never seen anyone wear a suit and tie at a baseball game that didn’t involve black and white footage of a guy cheering for Babe Ruth and tossing a fedora into the air. Is this a thing?

These glorified practices are opiate-inducing, laid-back affairs and I was watching passively as Mike Trout was pulled from the game in the 3rd and was probably teeing off by the 5th. Matt Olson does what Matt Olson does and hits a moon-shot to RF in his “feast or famine” playing style that is popular with big leaguers and Olson seems to excel at. The A’s decided to throw in a pitcher by the name of Brian Schlitter (who didn’t play last year because the minor leagues went the way of the dodo) and I had to stifle a laugh as I had written about this dude waaay back in 2019 before that mystery guy even thought about eating the delicious flying mammal that caused a global pandemic: A’s call up Brian Schlitter, A’s bullpen still in the shitter.  You ever hear that tired cliche–“the more things change the more they stay the same?” As you may have guessed, Schlitter did indeed put the game in the shitter, but I didn’t notice as equal measure of beer and Spring Training kicked in, and I was soon floating on clouds while verbal sparring with Morpheus in lotus land. Final: Angels 7 A’s 3

A’s call up Brian Schlitter, bullpen still in the shitter.

The perfect Oakland Athletic.

The Oakland Athletics ball-club, in a perpetual battle to dazzle, put Blake Treinen on the injured list Saturday essentially digging up 33-year old journeyman Brian Schlitter from the searing Nevada desert to red-carpet onto the Oakland faithful.  The move was so immaterial it is rumored that the Las Vegas Aviators clubhouse boy didn’t even notice that Schlitter was gone.

“You mean the guy with the beard?”

–He played in Japan in 2017, learning the art of tidy minimalism and sushi rolling among other things only used in conversation at cocktail parties. His season with the Seibu Lions was solid, and after having a strong start to the season, Schlitter struggled in the final six weeks and finished 2017 with a 1-5 record, 32 holds and a 2.83 ERA.

–He showed up to Dodgers spring training in 2018 throwing the media into a fervor for about 5 solid minutes until they realized he wasn’t Jake Arrieta. “What kind of shit is this!? I just thought I had a front page headliner and now I got the page in the back next to the sporting good ads,” one reporter was overheard saying.

–While with the Cubs he was sent to the minors for drilling notable douchebag (just ask the Astros!) Carlos Gomez in the head. Ok, well maybe this Schlitter guy isn’t so bad.

–Schlitter was the closer in Las Vegas and is a ground ball pitcher who relies heavily on his sinker. When the brain trusts and scouts were sitting around and discussing free agents his name popped up in the conversation as “cheap” and “organizational depth” which are the two comprehensive attributes of the organization. To put it simply: He is the perfect Oakland Athletic.