Sorry, folks, I had todo it again. The setup was just there.
There is just really no point to this. The blind kid – who may not be blind after all(?) – is now gonna have two blindfolded kids throw balls at him simultaneously? If they’re lucky, everyone will just flail and nobody will get hurt. I still can’t get over how everyone involved with this strip seems to think baseball and softball involve the same pitching mechanics and even use the same sized ball thrown from the same distance from home plate. Sheesh.
The Chief must miss drawing Kaz on the regular. He’s added Kaz’s forelock first to Gil and now to Gregg.
I got nothing more for this right now. Thinking about it makes my brain hurt. Maybe I’ll sweat in my eyes and have a bright idea later.
Well look who’s back. It’s our old pal Bob Kazinski – and now he has a penthouse. Did he move to North Carolina in the interim?
Oh. It’s not Gastonia, it’s The Gaston, Milford’s premier luxury high-rise. We visited Kaz and his new squeeze Rachel in the penthouse for the seudah hamafseket before Yom Kippur. Never mind.
For a moment there I was thinking that Kaz’s Penthouse was a new comedy club and Kaz was polishing his new standup routine. Hey, a Milford Juvenile Sports Program Manager can’t be making that much more coin than a Milford High assistant coach, can he? The Gaston can’t be rent-controlled, can it? Kaz has to have some kind of side hustle going on, amirite?
All of this is conjecture and backdrop for why Kaz feels the needs to regale his audience with a joke that’s even more dated* than Cami’s A League of Their Own line and somehow at Gil’s expense. (Anyone wanna guess what the setup was for the Cab Calloway punchline? Feel free to take a stab in the comments.) Gil “I don’t drink” Thorp finds it most amusing as he continues his lying sack ways – lying, that is, unless he’s still nursing that HooDad’s he had at the hospital while visiting Rod.
There’s gotta be some more exposition down the line this week. Why else would be seeing Kaz for the first time this year? I for one would welcome Kaz’s Penthouse as the Gil Thorp spinoff we all need.
*Cab Calloway’s last public performance came in 1992 at a benefit for the Associated Black Charities in Baltimore. His last public appearance was at the White House in 1993, when President Clinton awarded him with the National Medal of Arts.
After yesterday’s detour to pay tribute to Jack Berrill, we’re back to… where, exactly? And when, exactly?
P1: Is this an actual arcade or an arcade museum? It features a Pac-Man machine and runs on quarters rather than tokens. Since when did either exist in Milford or anywhere else in the Valley? Did Gil take the kids there in a time machine? The car parked out front looks a bit dated, but then again this is Milford, where seeing a ’66 GTO on the streets isn’t out of the ordinary. Seems like it exists only to reinforce Gil’s image as reinforcer of (somehwat) old-fashioned values, like…
P2: … carrying cash and change. No falling prey to cryptocurrency scams for old Gil, nosireebob. Besides, while you kids are mashing buttons (unless that narration box in the previous panel is self-referential on Barajas’ part), Gil’s gonna slip outside to buy some vapes from some new dealers in town. He’s never met these dealers but they sent him a text left him a voice mail that they’d look familiar and that they don’t take plastic.
P3: “Thanks, Mr. Thorp.” “Sure thing, kid whose name I don’t know and can’t be bothered to remember.” J/k: this has gotta be little Luke Martinez Jr., who has become one of Jami’s few friends. When Luke Jr. gets home and tells his parents how Gil gave him quarters to play video games, it’s sure to touch off some heated conversation between Luke Sr. and his cardiac surgeon wife about who’s responsible for sending Junior off with everything he needs for a play date, followed by Luke Sr. chaperoning the next play date and renting a mobile video game trailer to park in the driveway (or engaging in some other sort of macho one-upmanship).
The outcome of last Sunday night’s Oscars pretty much guarantees that Everything Everywhere All At Once will become the new normal in visual storytelling, at least for a while. We can thank Barajas for helping us prepare for that, I reckon.
Looks like we’re only ever gonna see games where Ggerg starts from here on in. No need to bother with details like a rotation when they don’t serve the square peg of a story getting hammered (pun intended) into the round hole of realism.
The Central kids either didn’t get the Oakwood memo or got it and promptly forgot about it, bunting the ball almost straight back to – or only slightly left of – the mound. (Seems like that memo should’ve included a note to hit back to the pitcher on a line drive, not on the ground.) How the Hammer ended up over there after his follow-through is unclear except as a device for the Chief to indulge in his recent shoe bottom fetish.
Boy, Ggerg’s teammates sure like patting his bottom. They must realize they won’t have many more chances left. Speaking of bottom, what’s that white thing hanging off of Ggerg’s rear end? Speculate away, gentle readers.
Today’s baseball history lesson is the story of Bert Shepard. Bert Shepard’s major league career lasted all of one game, a relief pitching stint for the Nationals/Senators on August 4, 1945 against the Red Sox. It was his journey to the bigs that made Bert’s career all the more memorable.
Shepard, a lefty, had played semipro and was playing sandlot ball when he was discovered and signed by the White Sox in 1939. He struggled with control problems, was released, finished high school, and then signed another pro contract in 1941, this time with the Cardinals. In their famed system, Bert again showed flashes of talent at the C and D level but still struggled with control. At the beginning of 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he attended flight school, earned his pilot’s wings and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant. In early 1944, Shepard joined the 55th Fighter Group in England and was soon flying P-38 Lightnings over the continent.
On May 21, 1944, Bert was flying his 34th mission over Germany when, after having destroyed a train and an oil tank on a strafing run, his P-38 was taken down by flak. He was knocked unconscious when a shell grazed his chin and his plane hit the ground at full speed. Miraculously, Shepard wasn’t killed, but soon faced another threat when the angry German farmers who found him turned their pitchforks on him. A Luftwaffe doctor, Ladislaus Loidl, and two armed soldiers soon arrived at the scene and held back the farmers at gunpoint.
The Luftwaffe doctors amputated Shepard’s leg 11 inches below the knee. He was later transferred to a prison camp where a Canadian medic fashioned an artificial leg for him. Shepard began playing catch with a cricket ball and then resumed pitching a baseball. In February 1945, Bert was involved in a prisoner exchange and returned to the US. He began practicing baseball with some players from a local semipro team. Realizing that he was still able to throw his familiar pitches, Shepard became determined to resume his professional baseball career. Shepard went to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to be fitted with a new prosthesis, where he was visited by Robert Patterson, the Undersecretary of War, who presented him with a commendation for his service, valor, and courage. Patterson asked Shepard what his goal was, and the former flyer replied he wanted to play baseball. Undersecretary of War Patterson called his good friend Clark Griffith, owner of the Senators, who then offered Shepard a tryout.
Griffith signed him to a major league contract, but had no intention of using him in a regular game, figuring to keep him around to serve as coach and batting practice pitcher. In addition to pitching BP Bert visited veteran’s hospitals, offering encouragement to other wounded veterans, and made a training film for amputees returning from the war. Finally on August 4, with the Nats down 14-2 in the top of the fourth, and the Red Sox with the bases loaded and two out, Washington manager Ossie Bluege brought Shepard in to try and stop the damage. The Nats were playing their fourth consecutive doubleheader, and an already thin pitching staff was getting battered by Boston. Shepard struck out the first batter he faced, George “Catfish” Metkovich. He stayed in the game and, for the remaining five innings, gave up only one run on three hits.
With the Nats battling the Detroit Tigers for the AL pennant in 1945, Bluege was reluctant to use Shepard again. His only other on-field highlight occurred on August 31 when he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross between games of a doubleheader. Washington released him on September 30; he was resigned in 1946 but, with the return of so many pleyrs from the war, Shepard failed to make the team and would never play in the majors again. He would, however, meet Ladislaus Loidl, the Luftwaffe doctor who saved his life, at his home in Austria in 1993.
The reason I’m posting the Bert Shepard Story is because, unlike Gregg Hamm, Shepard could field bunts.
Of course, you need to see bunts to be able to field them but, once fielded, you should be able to make the throw to first. Why Valley Tech baserunner feels the need to share his insights with Scooter is beyond me; he should have saved them for the bench. Now Scooter will have to come up with signals for the Milford infielders to play in for the bunts. His Nolan Ryan reference implies that the Hammmmer will start striking out a bunch of Techsters but still lose the game anyway.
Today’s post title, of course, a reference to Regular Show‘s Muscle Man, who never was able to get the mom joke format down pat.
If you told me today’s strip had been written and drawn twenty years ago and fished out of a drawer for today, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Wonder what was going on in Milford twenty years ago today? I don’t even think this blog had been started yet.
April 30, 2002
Well whaddaya know, Milford was playing Central then too. The laws of gravity weren’t quite as rigid then as now. Okay, what about ten years ago, then? Well thankfully TWIM was in existence, and we were getting to know young Scooter BordenJaxxxon Kiser.
Back to the present day and still trying to figure out this nonsense. Amazed to find out there’s an online version of the Star, and that it has employees who are dedicated to capturing video for that online version. That’s probably a lie the editor-in-chief told Heather to cover up the fact that it’s not only payroll but also headcount that’s been slashed since Marjie’s retirement. Probably told her this dinosaur of a camcorder was state-of-the-art, too. How naive is she to think that the “beast” takes better videos than today’s smartphones?
Naive enough to know that the only VHS player in town belongs to the Milford High Athletic Department. Between her and Kaz, they’ll go to the videotape and discover the little ruse G-Hammm, Scooter and Wilson have going on. That’s the only way this strip of anachronistic non sequiturs has any relevance to the plot.
meta: Thanks to tdrew for covering for me on Thursday. I owe you one.
Hey kids! Didja ever wonder whatever happened to Jaxxxon Kiser? Well wonder no more! He grew up and changed his name to Eli “Scooter” Borden. Just look at him – the same monster paws, the same glazed-over stare at no one and nothing in particular – no way they’re not out of the same gene pool.
Anyhoo this little trivia buff has obviously burned a lot of brain cells coming up with this scheme that he’s only gonna use with this one pitcher, that’s gonna require the catcher to buy in and, oh yeah, that the coaches are gonna go along with too. Think Scooter and the Hammer are gonna let Gilberto and El Kaz in on this ploy? How many games into the season before Milford’s opponents pick up on it? It might work in a non-conference game against one of those school’s Neal’s buddies went to, but it won’t take long for, say, Goshen to pick up on Borden’s chatter and start banging on trash cans.
Smirky Charis does nothing to dispel the notion that she’s definitely not with Scooter because of his mouth.
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This Week in Milford 
Arf!
This strip will make sense tomorrow
Because I keep thinking that tomorrow
I’ll catch on!
Another plot thread tomorrow
Ties up all the loose ends and confusion
‘Til there’s none!
When I can’t figure out
Who’s who, and what’s what,
I just grasp at a straw,
And post, and say,
Oh!
This strip’ll make sense tomorrow
When I read the comments on GoComics
Then I’ll cry
Tomorrow!
Tomorrow!
I’ll get it!
Tomorrow!
‘Cause Henry
Will tell us why!