There is a menace wandering the streets of the Bronx, with muscles and flesh part human and part science fiction. But rather than petrify and curdle even the strongest of wills, this madman is among the most revered swatsman in all of base-ball.
What gives?
This gives, I tell you.
Indeed, Alexander "Slaps" Rodriguez, it has been reported, is guilty of that cardinal sin of doping one's body with pharmaceutical-grade gibberish. Instead of sticking with the tried-and-true and remedying his maladies with Duffy's and a pinch of salt-cured ham, Slaps took the easy way out, sticking his rump with the types of needles best left to the bums in the Bowery or those caustic and nihilistic song-scribes from Tin Pan Alley.
And who is to blame? Why, good readers, we are to blame. Stuffy and I carry the weight of this. For our periodical is called "Full Circuit Clout," and we are single-handedly contributing to this nation's fundamental fascination with the long-distance swat, the moonshot four-bagger, the sweet sassy molassey. It is I, old friends, that takes responsibility for championing the full circuit clout above other base-ball pursuits such as mitten-wielding, field running and pill tossing. Oh, to take a step back in time and rearrange this disaster!
Alas, not a thing is possible. Slaps is forever
tarnished. And truly, am I right to feel the shame of leading him to ruin? Is celebrating the most heroic of all sporting accomplishments -- the full circuit clout -- truly to blame for pushing Slaps toward his fateful decision? Am I not just a pawn in this opera of skullduggery and intrigue?
I am not complicit, dear readers! I neither procured the doping agent nor stuck Slaps in the hindquarters with a druggist's hypodermic. Let his fall from grace be his punishment, and let Full Circuit Clout continue to celebrate all that is good with the sweet four-bag roundtrip from each of the game's most accomplished swatsmen!
And a tremendous sigh of relief was exhaled by the assembled Rooters as the Colossus made hay with a doozy of a delivery, clouting the pitch deep into the Boston night. And a restful sleep certainly was enjoyed last evening by Mr. Ortiz, our genial clouter who had seemed to have traded his ash clouting stick for a damp noodle.
To-day's unseasonably warm weather in Maine has led me to strip my necktie and un-button my waist coat. My 20th Regiment flag flutters gaily in my back-yard, and I hear the whirring of a pushed mowing machine in my neighbor's grass patch. And though the day is a beaut beyond compare, my summer reverie is complete only because I have thought many times to-day of Jason "Argonaut" Bay's decisive four-pillow-roundabout in last night's tilt with the Clevelands.
On Saturday, the Bostons returned to the ball-park in Anaheim invigorated after their loss Friday evening. The walloping by the "Angels" must have sparked many a locker-room diatribe by the team's veteran members, for the Red Stockings responded famously.
There is a menace wandering the streets of the Bronx, with muscles and flesh part human and part science fiction. But rather than petrify and curdle even the strongest of wills, this madman is among the most revered swatsman in all of base-ball.
