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.

Holy Cow! This Kid’s Gonna Be Annoying!

Scooter Borden took his hacks

And gave a baseball forty whacks

When Kaz saw how he had done

He gave Scooter forty-one

Alright, that’s out of the way. Scooter Borden is this year’s Barry Bader, a scrappy second baseman who runs his yap and toots his own horn all the time. The easy comparison is to scrappy second baseman Scooter Gennett, whose MLB career may well be over as he hasn’t played in the bigs since the Giants released him in 2019. I kinda thought the pared-down bill of his batting helmet in P1 (which magically grew back) was a nod to Brooks Robinson as well.

But for people of a certain age, there is only one Scooter.

Father of teenchy was a Navy man, and he spent a portion of the late Fifties and early Sixties based in Bayonne, New Jersey. Yes, that Bayonne, of infamous early SNL fame.

One weekend father of teenchy visited American Shops, a men’s clothing store in Newark where several current and former Yankees would show up, sign 8×10 glossies and help hawk suits. One of the glossies he managed to snag was from none other than the original Scooter himself, Phil Rizzuto. I know the story was not apocryphal as numerous photos exist of Rizzuto working at American Shops, including this one (a Getty Image, so linking and not downloading) of him with Yogi Berra and Bobby Shantz, and this one.

That Rizzuto 8×10 moved around with us for years and eventually went missing. I suppose if I went through father of teenchy’s effects more thoroughly, it would show up. I’m just grateful that he forgave me for playing with and scuffing up the baseball that Lou Boudreau signed for him.

Anyway, back to Milford’s Scooter. Borden might think he’s laying down the perfect bunt, but holding the bat like that is a sure way to get some fingers broken. Kaz better watch his too, hooking them through the cage like that. Will Milford’s Scooter continue to be chirpy and annoying? It’s more likely than him ever doing spots for The Money Store.

Phil Rizzuto has been gone since 2007. Father of teenchy has been gone almost eight years now. Thanks for humoring me as I ramble as much as Phil Rizzuto did to Bill White.

“Jefferson beat MYOB, that’s how Jefferson did.”

“Not checking scores, Coach. Just nudes from some rando chick I don’t know. Kelly something-or-other. Says she’s a travel agent, wants to take me around the world.” If Pranit Hollywood had any stones, that’d be his reply – not only to Kaz but also to Tevin. “Oh yeah, got some pics of that little gymnast girl you been sniffin’ around, too. Said she was gonna balance my beam.” At least it’d explain Pizza Pranit’s breaking out in a sweat and sheepish grin.

Today’s strip is a whole bunch of mind your own damn business. How does Kaz know if Pranit Fitness is checking scores if he’s not looking at Pardon My Pranit’s phone? When did Tevin get appointed team captain, or to a service academy? Does everyone at Milford High think The Daily Pranit’s business is theirs now? Of course they do…

… or at least they did once he opened his trap about his Sportsduke shenanigans to more than one person. If Pranit of the Apes had kept his frickin’ mouth shut, the only problems he had would’ve been his own, at least until his losses started affecting his play. Not until then would the coaches have cared about what he does off the court. We already had the “gambling is bad, mmmmkay?” story line this past summer. Did we really need it again?

It takes a paper to raise a child

Boy these coaches sure plan ahead– instead of off-season weight-training in summer, they wait til the local rag notices their lack of muscle up front and hope the kids read the rag before it becomes a fishwrap. (Some of you remember I’m a mailman. Years ago we used to get a local news mailing once a month or so that looked like a folded paper, and we called it the fishwrap.)

What a pair of dummies. If they ever donated their bodies to science, the doctors would find nothing inside of em but wood.

P2– Last I checked, fury hath nothing to do with the size of ones biceps. Another dummy. (More wood inside)

And in P3 we have the besties reading the paper together (oh Pleeeeezze! Who the hell does that?) with a plate of cookies to one side. Methinks if you’re sharing cookies, normal people would put the plate in the middle, allowing both of you equal opportunity to graze as your perusing the local rag (future fishwrap).

Yep, 2 more dummies. (You know what goes here)

Who’s Boomin’ Who?

Kaz is probing Gil about his strategy of inserting Pranit Smith into the game at clutch time with a potential for the game winner from outside. Gil reveals that he wasn’t all that confident in Pranit’s ability to hit the shot, but he was working on building up Pranit’s confidence. Well, okay.

There are two ways to look at this. Sure, if you never put Pranit in this situation, you’ll never test him and he won’t have an opportunity to grow. On the other hand, if you throw him out there and he misses, you’re going to have to deal with potentially making things worse in terms of his self confidence. It seems that neither Pranit nor his teammates thought he had much potential, but it looks like Gil had been trying to elevate Pranit’s game as a project, unbeknownst to his coaching staff (or us). The other important factor in this is timing. When do you expose Pranit to the pressure situation to build his character? At the end of a close opening game on the road? If you do it then, it suggests this was a high priority project for Gil. Again, we had no clue this was going to feature in the actual action. Heck, up until Gil subbed Pranit into the game, I wasn’t even sure Pranit was even on the squad!

So we move forward to the home opener and now the confusion increases exponentially. Rubin is giving us a Boom Goes The Dynamite?? Was that a continuation of the talk of Pranit’s confidence? Is that Pranit lighting it up in a display of his new found shooting prowess? I can’t tell because I can’t trust the stupid coloring for crying out loud! A player in black is taking a shot over a player in red, so whose dynamite is going boom here? Maybe the narration isn’t about Pranit at all and it just means Milford is getting lit up in the home opener. Maybe the narration is just drunken ramblings and Rubin just parties with the colorists and nobody gives a crap what’s going on.

Happy New Year. It looks like 2022 is gonna be more of the same crap.

And Pranit Was His Name-o!

Welcome back and Happy 2022, TWIMers!

The year and the Milford boys’ basketball season starts off on a high note when Trevor Lawrence Gabe Landau kicks it outside to the one Mudlark who hasn’t been chilly stinking it up from beyond the three-point line, Pranit Smith. Pranit drains the trey, or so we’re told; no onomatopoeic “swish” of confirmation but no onomatopoeic “clang,” “clunk” or “thunk” either.

Cut to the bench where Gil has pulled off his jacket and given it to Kaz to wear for the final seconds, or at least it looks that way. This is the first we’ve seen of Kaz during this game, and maybe he had one on this whole time. Is Gil in shirtsleeves or still in his jacket? Did Pranit drain the color of of Gil’s jacket like he drained the trey? Are we gonna have to figure out the teams and the players from one panel to the next from here on?

meta: It pains me to have to post this, but as I write news comes over the wire of the death today of Deacon Dan Reeves. Bad enough that we’re reeling from the loss of Betty White and Celtics hero Sam Jones yesterday. Deacon Dan got a shout out from yhs in TWIM some time ago.