There’s No Veering in Baseball!

Well that whole journalism thing was awkward, wasn’t it?  Made me feel stupid for thinking there might be some point to it.  Let’s get back to what this strip does best: putting Milford’s girls in the orbit of Milford’s boys. After all, boys won’t watch girls play unless they’re interested in one of the players but girls will watch the boys play just because, amirite?

So to wrap the spring* plot up we’re gonna see if Ryan has indeed practiced his anger management after he gets another bad call from a crappy Valley ump and his teammates flub away a lead on him.  Marty’s mom has told him to take out the trash, so he quickly makes the Mudlarks a Fielding Three and rolls a 14 for the Tilden batter.  As with most Gil Thorp arcs, all of this would come off as a lot less contrived if the plot had been better paced. Then again, the phrase “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” is probably wasted on someone who holds track and field in such contempt.

*Feels funny calling it that in the middle of July, doesn’t it?

That’s “Dafne.” “Hello” is my kitty’s name.

I will refrain from falling back on my go-to “Who saw that coming?” from Black Dynamite except to say, well, I saw that coming.

Now that that’s out of the way, hey, sports! Well, sorta. Not only did laissez-faire Mimi let Daffy back onto the field after that fiasco, she let her take infield. Some of the other Lady Mudlarks must have run off from practice after being distracted by something or other.

I notice Drafty has a soccer ball in her room. Maybe Heather Burns left it behind for her. Anyhoo, while we await a week of hand-waving at Milford losses and Dafonte’s print mea culpa, we can at least have fun speculating on what misogynistic fun and games await us for the next eight weeks thereafter.

 

Blooper Reel

Daftpunk can’t run her precious little hit piece on Ryan, so she quits the school paper.  Ryan gets rattled when Central girls troll him about an event that (according to his parents) wasn’t all that, so he loses his mojo and quits on the mound. Now the rest of the Milford baseball team quits all around him and the season goes down the crapper. Gil’s quit on his team too: relying on hope and working on his grilling technique, he could give two shits about the rest of the season. Yo Gil, out here in the real world, winners eat steaks, losers eat franks and beans. (By the way, what the hell is Gil wearing on his wrist? Is he talking to Dick Tracy on that thing? Maybe he’s talking with that talking baseball with EES in P1. And what the complete hell is with his hand with integrated spatula?)

Even the color monkeys phoned it in on this one: they didn’t color the Jefferson player or whatever it is Mimi’s got in that pitcher (and don’t tell me it’s straight Everclear). I’m beginning to get the idea that the Whigrub brain trust has run out of ideas on how to wrap this arc up; not saying they’ve quit on it yet, but it’s starting to feel that way.

I’ve been on the road all day to Bakst country and just arrived only a few minutes ago.  I almost quit on this post for today, so I hope you’ll forgive me for its brusque nature.

 

Misadventures In Plot Advancement

Man, our bespectacled Dafne summoner is about as useful as Rubin when it comes to advancing the plot. At least we got a score. Do you suppose any of the kids on the Central team know what’s going on?

Bonus point: As pointed out in the comments, it is awesome that the Valley Conference is old school and uses wooden bats.

So, I Took A Little Vacation From The Blog…

May 30, 2017

And this is what I come back to… Nothing wrong with the first two panels of Tuesday’s strip and I even get a kick out of The Bucket supporting the baseball team, confident in the knowledge that they”ll more than make back their advertising spend through increased sales of milkshakes and french fries. But, boy howdy we swerve back to the Volcano hit a girl plotline and I got just about nothing.

May 31, 2017

I am trying to imagine that part of Ryan’s shock is coming not from the sign, which looks about a third the width of the one they were holding in panel three of Tuesday’s strip, but also the incessant clacking and clanging of those bracelets.

Chill, ‘Cane! You still got the W

Having been yanked from the game by Gil, Ryan Van Auken looks startled as he trudges into the Milford dugout.  And no wonder: judging from the motion lines Whigham drew in, Ryan’s glove arced over his left shoulder before hitting the back of the bench in front of him.  He must have thrown that shit before he walked in the dugout!

Bobby Mitchell (not the one who integrated the Redskins) earns the save when a levitating Barry Bader wills the ball to rise vertically into his outstretched glove.  Awful nice of Gil to put stripes down the sides of the Mudlark unis; gives Barry a way to relate to his old man. But what is that leaf-like object hovering over Barry’s rear end?  An actual tobacco leaf?  An indicator of his preferred kinks?  Or something else?  Talk amongst yourselves.

Mount Van Auken

When we were introduced to this Ryan Van Auken chap, we learned he was a former hothead who’s reformed into a semi-normal tempered guy at best. Of course we know that whatever is said about someone in this strip, the remainder of the storyline will consist of that person displaying the opposite behavior whenever he/she is involved. Which invariably is day after day after day. Why tell us anything and then not contradict it, so to speak.

So here goes a missed ball/strike pitch, which by the way the catcher stuck his glove out practically over home plate to catch it; if the batter swung its easily catchers interference. So kind of a moot point there. And of course the team cant play over the bad call as ALL teams must do as no umpire is perfect until they have robots behind the plate sometime in 2035 or whenever. P1 shows the OF 2 feet from the fence for a ball he has NO chance for; he’ll need a cast-iron jockstrap any second now. And Gil comes out to calm down his suddenly upset pitcher, who does what they all do and tries to convince Gil he can handle the moment. Gil, just get  a reliever up and do your job and move along.  Its game 1 of a 30-game, 5 game a week season, where a lot of teams play doubleheaders every week. And you’re worried about 1 game and 1 pitcher. Thats what happens when it takes a week to PLAY 1 FREAKIN GAME!! We over analyze what should be a small portion of a season.

 

 

Aw, Bucket! Let’s Regroup

The sign says what Van Auken thinks. Oh wait – maybe it’s for The Bucket. This is a Milford home game (and a G-rated comic strip) after all.

So has C.B. Bucknor finally been assigned to games on his umpiring level?  To be fair I can see how the pitch may not have actually been a strike.  Granger’s white catcher’s mitt makes for a difficult target. (C’mon, color monkeys, if you’re gonna color the gloves, color ’em all!)  The batter, the catcher, the ball, and the base line all seem to be drawn in different planes and our POV doesn’t give us any clue as to where the corner actually is.

Artwork aside, suffice it to say that many umps would toss a pitcher after making a pissy expression like ‘Cane did.  Case in point (one of many):

Maybe Van Auken gets off with a warning this time, but I guarantee that by game’s end he’ll have acted pissy again and gotten ejected. In the Thorpiverse, that leads to an immediate benching for the next game by Gil – a game in which, inevitably, the Mudlarks will lose because of the benched player being unavailable.  Gil will probably make Bader or Pelwecki pitch in relief and get shelled, then lay a guilt trip on Van Auken.

All this could be avoided if Granger calls Ken Brown over from first for a conference. The three of them could discuss finding another family to break up and the lousy strike zone would be forgotten.