Worlds Biggest Rag

We finally get the long awaited interview with Gregg (of course in uniform and not sitting at a coffeehouse relaxing.) Heather even talks to the catcher with his full equipment on. Hey isnt it summer yet? Today should be day 4. The planets are all in allignment for the next few days and we still are stuck with this dreadful storyline that like the Rolling Stones refuses to just go away.

Everyone else has checked out for 3 months and the Larks are still hanging on to Greggs final days as a pitcher, before he starts the rest of his life as a semi-blind man. At what cost is all this? Love how the supporting player justifies the scam theyre pulling on the rest of the league. Hey, let them figure it out while we live with this distraction that didnt need to be at all if the coaches had any sense. The other characters on the team have barely been developed while we drag out the inevitable runner-up finish for Milford and Greggs retirement from a game he had no business playing for at least 2 years. The fathers issues are still murky in relation to Greggs eyesight. Who cares how that turns out. If Mom files for divorce tomorrow she’ll be a better woman. Take your son to the best eye surgeon you can afford and pray its not too late. If the doc says — “What the hell was this kid doing pitching in high school?” , well, as one of my favorite sayings goes– all bad habits you have will rear their ugly head at some point. And for 3 months of baseball, your son wont be able to see for 50 years.

P3– accurate to a T. I think Kaz may be referring to the connection to his dad again, since Pops is trying to keep some secret. Also shows how putrid a town Milford is, since part of any newspapers goal is to reach as many people as possible. And they all have online editions these days so some jamoke from Africa can read it if he has a decent broadband connection. Kaz forgot about that.

I Love the Sound of Breaking Hamms

If Rubin set out to drive clicks to Janet Cooke and Stephen Glass, not to mention Mason Hamstetter, he succeeded. Credit where credit is due, I suppose.

Janet Cooke was a writer for the WaPo who lied about her academic credentials and fabricated a story about a child heroin addict in the District. Bob Woodward – yes, that Bob Woodward – submitted the story for consideration for the Pulitzer and it won. It was soon revealed that there were discrepancies in her backstory; the WaPo board pressured her to confess and the Pulitzer was rescinded. Cook subsequently disappeared from the public eye.

Stephen Glass had been a feature writer and associate editor for The New Republic for several years when rebuttals from the subjects of his articles (D.A.R.E., the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Hofstra University, among others) began to shed light on his journalistic integrity. Glass’ bosses at TNR caught him in a lie involving a software company and its talented young hacker employee, all of which were fabrications created by Glass. He was fired by TNR then, after getting a law degree from Georgetown, was rejected for admission to the New York and California bars due to lack of moral fitness. Kinda makes you wonder why Georgetown Law let him in to begin with.

There have been other plagiarism scandals in this country, from Jayson Blair (not cleared) to Stephen Ambrose (not cleared) to Alex Haley (cleared and not cleared in separate cases) to the current President of the United States (cleared). Some of those charged have built back better than others. Seems like Mason Ham(m)stetter has kinda built back okay, so maybe he needs to chillax with his wife a little bit. It’s not like Gil’s gonna leak this to the press; he and Marty aren’t exactly best buds. Now if Heather Burns crawls out from under Gil’s desk off-panel, all bets are off.

Gil looks perplexed, doesn’t he? I haven’t seen him look like that since he was pondering whether to have an iced tea.

Musical inspiration for today’s post title:

This storyline has gone to the dogs

Just got home from the Chicago Dogs Bark at the Park ballgame with my own dog; they let the dogs march around the park twice a year and I take her once. So not feeling like commenting on the strip but its obvious that Mr. Hamm has an interesting past life, including a changed name that should have been known by the Milford admissions department when Gregg enrolled. But no.

What the hell that has to do with Blind Man Gregg remains to be seen, no pun intended. Ok Rubin, connect the dots.

My song today is Heat of the Moment, as one line in it has “fall from grace”.

His Good Side Is… Straight Ahead?

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.

Jinkies! Kaz and Gregg Hamm’s Right Eye Have Something in Common!

Okay, all of you who had Papa Hamm coming to Gil’s office with Gregg, give yourselves a cookie. All of you who had Mama Hamm being named after a character from Scooby-Doo, give yourselves a clairvoyant cookie.

The next mystery to solve is why the Hamms were so clueless about their son’s deteriorating vision. Odds are they invested so much time, effort and money into buying disguises for Papa Hamm they willfully ignored Gregg’s impending blindness. When Gregg told Papa he could barely see him, Papa just took that as evidence of how good his disguises were.

Finally we have Gil navel gazing in the teacher’s lounge, patting himself on the back for not picking up on Gregg’s poor eyesight sooner. As just about every one of you TWIMers have commented, the coaches should’ve picked up on this as soon as they practiced fielding bunts or comebackers. Waiting for Kaz to admit to Gil that he let Gregg slide on practice after taking Scooter’s word that they’d do it at home. Sounds like that would’ve been the first time they did it all season.

Scooter will get his comeuppance soon enough when Gil upbraids him for his complicity in the Hamm scam. Then the Mudlarks will unravel like a ball of yarn and miss the playdowns. Rubin skipped a girls’ plot for this?

meta: Following up on my last post, I found color footage of Jackie Hayes wearing his batting helmet. He appears briefly in a clip from George Case’s color home movies from the late ’30s and early ’40s. Some of his footage appeared in HBO’s When It Was A Game, and it’s also available from Case’s estate as well. Note Monty Stratton, another major leaguer who had to deal with a disability, appears a few seconds later.

It takes two to lie: one to lie and the other to grow his sideburns.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get today’s post up, but I’ve been at an absolute loss as to how to spin it. This has surely got to be the tipping point for this strip, right?

There are no adults coaching the Milford High baseball team, are there? There are just male chaperones who just sit back and let the kids do whatever they want, up to and including not practicing? You notice we almost never see practices at Milford except as they’re ending, when the players are standing around listening to to adults or going over to watch their opposite-sex counterparts play a game? I’d bet Whigrub have no clue what goes on in a practice.

This is just beyond the realm of stupid. This is so asinine it makes me not want to nitpick the usual lack of attention to detail, like the uncolored lights on the school bus or the long day’s journey into night from Valley Tech to Milford. I will nitpick this: there is no way you can wear a cap backwards sitting in a car seat with headrests without knocking the cap off of your head.

Have at it, gentle readers. The more I look at today’s strip, the more it makes my head hurt.

Marjie Ducey Never Lugged a Monster Camcorder Around. Neither Should You.

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 Borden Jaxxxon 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.

Can You Fist Bump in Braille?

The grand scheme is in full swing, and with only three players in on it (oh, and a tennis player but who’s counting? Is she even gonna get a story this spring?) it seems to be working. The big question: how long before someone picks up on it, who will that someone be, and how will they know?

Probably not Marty; he’s too busy with his own chatter. Did he get a new set of choppers after basketball season, or has he been sucking on the sugar cubes he’s been muddling with bitters to make his sippy cup Old Fashioneds?

How about Noah Syndergaard Kaz? Gregg’s awkward return of his fist bump might be a clue. Oh wait; it’s his right-angled approach that’s making it awkward.

Maybe another Mudlark who isn’t in on the plan will figure it out, especially if one of them calls Hamm by name while out in the field. Guess it’s a given he can distinguish Scooter’s voice from his other teammates in the heat of the moment.

You know it won’t be Gil; he’s always the last to know and the pissiest when he finds out.

Nice graffiti by the Chief on the dugout there, BTW.