Bert Blyleven Makes the Tighe Hall of Shame

Aw, c’mon, Bert, give the little guy a BREAK. I don’t mean a big, looping break like that curve ball you used to toss that reduced batters to jelly-kneed buffoons swinging at nothing but air.
I mean a little break, for a little fan such as Avery, at his first Minnesota Twins game. Let me, as they say in baseball (and to recalcitrant teens before Thanksgiving dinner), set the table (or you won’t get anything to eat) before I try for a grand slam.
I recall the day that fresh-faced Bert Blyleven, whom the Twins drafted right out of high school, took to the Major League mound after only 21 starts in the minors. He was that good. Young he was, a lanky lad who threw a curve like nobody’s business.
Well, perhaps not quite as tricky as THIS pitch, mind you:



But Bert chalked up plenty of Ks in his Hall of Fame career. Slender he was (as was I) when his curves started freezing batters like so many statues of ice. Fans loved the 19-year-old (I wasn’t much older), and they voiced their disapproval whenever the coach pulled him. (Back then, there were no middle relievers to coddle the multimillion-dollar starters like nowadays; fortunately, there also weren’t any vuvuzelas to harass the coach with deafening buzzing noises, or he might have left Blyleven in and worn out his arm.)
Of course the grand old outdoor Met Stadium went dark long ago, memorialized now only with a home-plate plaque in the floor of the Mall of America, the mecca to excess that now stands where the likes of Blyleven and other Twins Hall of Famers such as Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew, not to mention opposing greats such as Yankees Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, whom I saw hit and play there when I was a lad myself.
Replacing the outdoor park was the indoor monstrosity known as the Metrodome, a leaky-roofed, sorry excuse for a ballfield, in which players frequently lost sight of fly balls in the light background of the Teflon bubble that served as its roof. And, as opposing players could tell you, it was as noisy in there during World Series games as those dadgum vuvuzelas at the World Cup.
Now, happily, the Twins are outdoors again, although the wisdom, weatherwise, of that choice remains to be seen if Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and clan can become the boys of October any time soon.
And now we come back to the boy of June: Grandson Avery’s first Twins game, where proud papa Brendan had his heart set on having Blyleven circled the infant as part of his schtick as the Twins’ color commentator these days. It traces back to the 2002 season, when he circled a fan carrying a sign.
Nowadays, fans of all ages trek to the stadium with signs of varying shapes and sizes, pleading, “Circle Me, Bert.” Thus it was that Brendan and magnificent mamma Erica produced a large and, I think, superior sign hoping that Bert’s eagle eye would spot Avery and circle him with his telestrator.
Brendan totes the sign touting Avery's first game, as well as Brendan and Erica's third anniversary.

Alas, it was not to be, although, perhaps attesting to the artistic merits of the sign and/or the cuteness of the kid, one of the wandering cameramen spotted Avery and gave him and Erica a moment of glory on the Jumbotron.

Take THAT, Bert Blyleven. You may have a reputation as a great prankster, but the Jumbotron took you downtown on good judgment, putting Erica and Avery up in the big lights.


Pox on you, Bert, and, although I believe you SHOULD be in the Hall of Fame, you’ll have to settle for now for the Tighe Hall of Shame for not circling Avery. This umpire, possibly by virtue of being a proud grandpa, penalizes you with a passed ball.

As I recall, Bert, you challenged Cy Young award winner Johan Santana to pitch a shutout in 2007, and you lost the bet. And THAT time, your punishment was a head-shaving.



Believe you me, Bert, I’m gonna buy Avery some clippers, and you could end up as bald as you were when Santana clipped you.

Jack the Ripper Takes a Whack at a Haircut

JUST when I thought Jack might be leaning toward being a food critic, perhaps even a chef (see June 1 posting,), because of his culinary tastes, he takes a whack at being a hairstylist (and shows his lack of taste in that arena).
Well, more precisely, he took a whack at his own hair. I haven’t seen the damage yet, but to hear Mom tell it, he wielded the scissors on his locks like Lizzie Borden did her ax on her folks — taking 40 whacks at her mom and then, when she saw what she had done, she gave the old man 41.
I was going to post a YouTube video of the scene — Lizzie’s smacking, not Jack’s whacking — but my devilish side lost to my angelic one, which pleaded that it was: Just. Too. Gruesome. So I opted for something from Alfred Hitchcock:



Back to Jack, the ripper, of hair: In the blink of Melissa’s eye, the lad morphed from being a finely coiffed gentleman who had served as a ring bearer, along with older bro Vincent, only three days previously to looking more like a rugby ruffian who had lost great gobs of hair in a scrum.

Ringbearers Jack (left) and Vincent flank the flower girl, Olivia, as they parade in for our wedding.

“I may have to resort to getting him a buzz cut for the summer,” his mother wailed into the phone as she told me about spots where the hair was within a half-inch of his scalp.
Oddly enough — and perhaps I should feel guilty about this, but I don’t — his ring-bearer duties when Kate and I married were intimately connected to his dome’s demise. After all, it’s partly the recent kindergarten grad’s fault.
He and his brothers had enjoyed playing with Flarp so much at my mom’s recent birthday party (so what if she died in’50; I recently discovered he actual birth date so we decided to celebrate her 93rd birthday) that Kate and I decided to spread some joy at the family dinner the night before our wedding.
So we passed out Flarp to each and every person there (even those who might not have needed a canister to produce the effect.
But wait! Perhaps I should digress, on the off chance that one or two of the few people reading this doesn’t know what Flarp is.
Basically, it’s the modern version of a whoopee cushion, and it looks like Play-Doh. Except, when you play with this dough, it makes a flatulating sound. I suppose that its name comes from the first three letters of flatulating, although I have no idea where the “rp” comes from
Whatever the etymology of the word, kids love Flarp, and adults love it, because it lets them act like kids. (Plus, you can eat beans and then use Flarp as a cover.)
Let me digress a bit more, and regale you with my story of how hard it can be to obtain sometimes.
I didn’t want to buy it in Florida, where I knew a Target store that carries it, because I was afraid some airport security official might think it was C-4 and toss me into Gitmo, as long as it’s still open.
A worker at the Target I wandered into in Iowa said his store is too small for that product (not enough space for the brraaaaaaaap?), but he obviously has kids because he knew what it was. So I called the Wal-mart and asked one of the rollback people whether he had Flarp.
“Nope, but we’ve got Whoopee,” he said. “It’s the same thing.”
He allowed as how it’s the same price as Flarp, a buck for a canister that has too much of the gel substance to be able to carry onto a plane, so I asked whether he had 35.
Not even close, he said, but I was bound and determined to get some party Flarpy favors, so I headed to the store.
Once there, I figured I was talking to the same price roll-backer in the toy department as I’d talked to on the phone.
“Where’s the Whoopee?” I inquired, drawing a blank stare.
“What’s Whoopee?” he countered.
“It‘’s like Flarp,” I replied. “You know, kids use it to … ”
“I know what Flarp is,” he said, rolling his eyes and motioning a couple of aisles over.
To my surprise, and delight, there was enough Flarp there to level half of Dubuque, Iowa, so I snapped it up.
It went over like gangbusters at the dinner; at least IMHO, as the kids text and tweet and twitter. Makes a guy wonder why EVERYBODY doesn’t hand out Flarp at rehearsal dinners to have a Whoopee of a good time.
Lest you think I’ve sidetracked myself to the end of oblivion, never to return, let’s get back to the beginning of the story: Jack the Barber.
It seems the lad got great gobs of Flarp in his hair and, instead of letting his mom handle it, he decided to put his locks on the chopping block by himself. Whackadoodle, he looked like a poodle, with a bad haircut.
Sorry I don’t have a photo to share the destruction, but after all, the kid’s got feelings. Suffice it to say he won’t be making a Brylcreem commercial anytime soon.
But for a fitting end — split ends, in Jack’s case — I bring you “Hair,” which should grow back by the time the lad is ready to enter first grade:

Jack the Connoisseur Relegates Kids Menu to Garbage Disposal

Jack’s got a bone to pick with the kids menu at restaurants — and it’s more than just the chicken fingers, which obviously are boneless, anyhoo.
The 6-year-old — we often call him an “old soul” because so many of his views on life seem to be those of a wise old man instead of the dinosaur-loving, prank-playing little rake he is (as when he joked around with Uncle Brendan at the pool) — believes kids menus ought to be banned outright.

Possibly echoing what many a dog has thought while begging for human food at his owner’s knee, Jack says the food on the kids menu simply doesn’t pass muster. So he prefers to order from the adult menu.
Kate and I got a hint of this when we took the lad out for his birthday dinner a couple of months back. As I’ve recounted previously, he not only ordered the adult steak with all the trimmings but also asked the waitress to bring him a gigantic gooey chocolate dessert and polished off most of that, too.
The thought recurred, though, the other night, when we were out celebrating his mom’s and my birthdays.
The budding connoisseur, it seems, has such a developed palate that he is selective when he’s in a mood for fish. Melissa asked the waitress what fish was featured in the fish and chips menu item. When the answer was cod, she allowed as how that probably wouldn’t be up to snuff for somebody who used to find tilapia tasty but recently pronounced it blasé.
So she instructed the waitress to deliver an order of the mahi to her son, although she stipulated that it need not be a full adult portion.
All eyes turned to Jack as he tasted the grilled fish (it looked like a full adult portion, BTW), awaiting his verdict with baited breath. (I know that should be bated, but hey, this is a fish story.)
“How is it?” someone asked breathlessly, baitedly.
He pondered the answer before pronouncing: “It’s good, but it needs a pinch of salt.”
OMG, who does he think he is? Julia’s child? James Beard? A Top Chef candidate?
There I was, eating one of my faves, a BLT on rye toast, happy as a clam, and he’s quibbling over a few grains of salt. Obviously, I don’t know jack when it comes to food.
However, I must acknowledge Jack’s practical, thrifty side. His 8-year-old brother, Vincent, had eaten only half of his cheeseburger, so Jack polished that off as well. That’s my kind of kid: cleaning the plate, his or not.
Speaking of Top Chef and Jack’s culinary acumen reminds me of one of my most embarrassing moments as a parent. Back when my oldest, Annie, was 7 or 8, we went to a mid-range family restaurant named Mr. Steak or something like that.
I never had eaten a steak there, despite the eatery’s name, because I was raised a poor drycleaner’s son who was steered toward burgers instead of the more expensive cuts of the steer. So, as per usual, I ordered a burger, perhaps splurging for a slice of cheese.
Came Annie’s turn, and she ordered, without flinching — a steak!
I was stunned, and my childhood deprivation took over as I literally foamed at the mouth that she would DARE order such an extravagant item (I think it was all of $5.95). I caused such a scene that Annie was bawling and had trouble enjoying the steak.
Only later did I realize how innocent her choice had been: She was used to going out to dinner with her grandparents, and Ambrose and Jeanette routinely had let her order whatever she wanted, which usually was steak.
And believe you mean, Ambrose was a packinghouse worker who knew his steaks, and ordered the best. I bet she’d never had one as lame as the piece of beef I raised the stink over.
The experience scarred both of us for life, as I’m still embarrassed about the day I acted like a bull in a china closet in a family restaurant, and my kids occasionally remind me about what a horse’s ass I was in throwing that tantrum.
So why does the Top Chef aspect remind me of that day? Well, Annie’s a film editor these days, and Bravo’s “Top Chef” and “Top Chef Masters” are two of the shows she’s worked on.
Twixt her and Jack, I’m surrounded by Top Chefs.
As for Jack, I think should inform him, as he searches for the perfect dish that doesn’t need even a pinch of salt, that even the late, great Julia Child muffed a few recipes, as Meryl Streep channeled last year in “Julie & Julia.”



Julia Child had quite a sense of humor, too:



And with that, I’ll sign off with a Bon Appetit!