Bloggin' Ain't Easy

Here's some Lipsey-style trivia: what do Gene Bartow, Mike Bordick, Jay Fiedler, Woody Boyd have in common?

When Scott said he was going to miss last week’s game and asked for volunteers to write the blog, the silence from the Cougars was stunning. Cougars are not known for their reluctance to speak up, so why were there no other volunteers? For the same reason you didn’t see people lining up to replace a legend. Which brings us back to the trivia question. Each of those guys replaced a legend: John Wooden, Cal Ripken, Dan Marino and Ernie “Coach” Pantusso of “Cheers” fame. While some did better (Woody) than others (Bartow), it’s never easy to fill the shoes (or, in this case, laptop, green shirt and protective cup) of a legend, even for one week.

It’s even harder when that legend wears so many hats. Imagine if Ripken not only played shortstop, but also flew the team plane, washed the uniforms and dragged the infield dirt, or if Coach not only served drinks, but also drove Norm and Cliff home at closing time, babysat Carla’s kids and styled May Day Malone’s hairpiece. In this case, the job called for someone to manage like Tony LaRussa, change personnel on the fly like Joel Quenneville, play shortstop like Luis Aparicio, plan postgame parties like Martha Stewart and blog like Perez Hilton.

So with all that pressure, who better than the legend himself to give some blogging advice. I asked Scott what I needed to do to blog like him, and he suggested that I follow the Radtke Best Blogging Practices: quit your job, stop shaving and start writing the blog at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, I ignored each of those RBBPs, which explains why you’re reading the blog now, several days after the normal Wednesday publication date. But after trying to write this blog, it’s hard to not give Scott his props. It’s not easy to come up with one idea, much less to crank out winners week after week.

Whether it’s a blog about punctuation and grammar or an entry from Miranda’s perspective or a public love letter to Melchiorre, Scott has consistently knocked it out of the park. Just as it’s easy to take for granted the time we spend each week reading the blog, it’s also easy to forget how much of his heart and soul (and patio and grill) Scott puts in to the Cougars.

Indeed, the manager of the Cougars not only puts out lots of fires, he also opens a Can of A Lot of Responsibility. To see how much that Scotty gives to the Cougars each week, just look at how many Cougars it took to try to pick up the slack caused by his absence: (1) Martini hauled the equipment back and forth, set the batting order and made the lineup changes every inning, (2) Fortier returned from all corners of the globe to take over (or reclaim his position) at shortstop, (3) Danielsen affably hosted postgame beer-quaffing festivities, and (4 & 5) your Pinch Blogger (along with his copy editor) is attempting to fill some space on the blog. Unfortunately, our efforts to entice this woman to the Cougars game were unsuccessful, so we couldn’t find anyone to replace all the hugs we usually receive from Scott.

A short digression on our Interim Manager. Knowing that Martini is often the straw that stirs the Cougar drink. Scotty asked Martini to step in to the role of Manager for this week. When it came to making the batting lineup, Martini took a shot with his novel first-come, first-bat approach (which persuaded Philthy to arrive at Howard Park at 4pm only to jam his (non-cavity-filling) fingers making a catch in the first and losing his chance to bat lead off). Martini also shook things up with his Home Depot “do it yourself” approach to lineup changes. Whereas Scotty meticulously plots every substitution and position change, Martini was a little more hands off (“if you were on the bench last inning, find a position this inning”). The only ingredient Martini forgot to add to the lineup was some mojo, and as a result we never had one of our signature Cougar rallies. If only Trouter could have brought some of the MSDS mojo to the game, the Cougars might have been able to stage a rally from behind. But despite Scott’s challenge to beat a winless team, we couldn’t catch a buzz without him.

By the way, some of you might be wondering what was so important that caused our fearless leader to miss the game. Suffice to say, Scott is always looking for an edge to improve the team. To illustrate, let’s first review a little Cougars history:

• Scott formed the Cougars in the spring of 2008 after scouring the area for the top softball (or other) talent and aggressively out-recruiting Team Orange for the cream of the local softball crop.

• After it became apparent that the Cougars perhaps were not firing on all cylinders in their inaugural season, Scott set out to find the finest (or perhaps only) 16" softball guru in the country. When he found that there was nobody that fit the description, Scott didn’t let that deter him. If there's not a 16" swing coach to be found, Scott decided to create one. How? He found the legendary Joe D, golf swing fixer extraordinaire and 16” legend, convinced him to trek out to Howard to give a hitting lesson to the Willbillies, and the rest is Cougar history.

• Before the 2009 season, Scott spent countless days searching for that small edge would push the Cougars over the hump and into the upper 90% of the league. Those research efforts eventually resulted in Scott purchasing four bats that he carefully selected to improve the Cougars’ swings. (It appears that Melchiorre took to heart Scott’s research on the optimal bat weight by hand-carving his version of Wonderboy, a 37 oz behemoth that Babe Ruth would have struggled to swing but that Flannery waved around like a toothpick.)
  

• Never satisfied, Scott continued his unending quest for respectability, by signing a free agent earlier this season, the first addition in the short and undistinguished history of the Cougars – the Stabber, who was immortalized in a previous blog post.

Which brings us to where Scott was this week. Scott learned a lesson from Charlie Weis and Ron Zook: in order to achieve consistent mediocrity, a coach must recruit nationally. So Scott spent this week searching the nation for the best talent to add to the Cougars. Here’s a picture of his scouting trip that kept him from Tuesday’s game. (I don’t want to give away the big announcement, but apparently Scott thinks he’s discovered some help for the Cougars, some guy named Mauer, who will platoon with Oxer at catcher.)

Next week is another big week for the Cougars with SLAM on Tuesday and the Hitmen on Wednesday. Not that the Cougars need any bulletin board (or blog) material to get motivated for the Hitmen game, but it seems the Hitmen may be getting a little overconfident after winning the first two Cross-town Classics. These pictures were taken in Flynn’s garage after another Chicken Shack fueled Hitmen party.

We've not been able to confirm the rumor that Witzy was seen driving through town with a moose strapped to the roof of his car, but expect "Moose" Oxer and the rest of the Cougars to be fired up for that game.

Oh, I almost forgot to recap last week’s Cougars/Gulliver’s game: we lost. Badly.