NEW YORK, NY – Holy smokes, tomorrow is Opening Day of baseball season! And not a moment too soon. I don’t think I could take another week of no longer caring about the Men’s NCAA Final Four or the ongoing sagas of Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson. Sure the NHL and NBA are speeding towards their regular seasons wrapping up, but right now baseball is the tonic we all need. I have long lobbied for Opening Day to be a National Holiday, but my lobby isn’t handsomely appointed and doesn’t even have a doorman. Nevertheless, PLAY BALL!
Mets DFA Darin Ruf. Two days ago, the Mets finally put all of Darin Ruf’s belongings out on a curb in *Port St. Lousy and sent him on his merry way. This was long overdue. For those of you who chose to forget (a wise choice) the Mets “acquired” Ruf at last year’s trading deadline. They thought they were getting a right-handed power hitter. What they got instead was a wet sack of cat food. Watching Ruf was rough, to say the least. And the Mets gave up JD Davis and three (!!!) pitchers to get him. Giving up Davis alone would have qualified as a fleecing. This trade should have been reported to the cops rather than MLB. I always wondered why Ruf only had one “f” in his last name. Now I know that the missing letter was always there, implied through his playing grade, a big fat whopping F. Bye!
Ken Griffey Jr., Reds 4th Highest Paid Player. Here’s another one for Mets fans, who are bummed that the team is still paying a-hole extraordinaire Bobby Bonilla north of $1 million every year. My mainish cheese danish, the one and only Ken Griffey Jr., is still receiving deferred payments from the Cincinnati Reds and will be the fourth highest paid player on their payroll at almost $3.6 million, as the season begins. Cincy hasn’t overpaid for anything like this since Jennifer Marlowe was secretary to radio exec Arthur Carlson at WKRP. I was a Bailey Quarters fan myself.
Anthony Volpe. I gotta say, I’m kinda cracking up over all of this Yankees Anthony Volpe hype. The last time I heard the name Volpe, it was attached to some knucklehead named Joseph, in an old NYC Apex Tech commercial from the early ’80s. (By the way, my kingdom for anyone who can locate that commercial.) Anyway, I hope AV pans out for the Bombers and doesn’t drop out to become a welder or something. “That’s baseball, Jawn!” If he does choose the Apex path, he’ll be assured that each tool he learns to use, will go right in his box. At least that’s what that guy from Apex used to promise.
I’m done. Come back tomorrow for Buddy Diaz, who was more of a Technical Career Institute guy himself.
*Port St. Lousy: Management is claiming TM despite Angry Ward clearly coming up with this.
