From a Slick Stop to a Meal Stop

Time for a break from the Milford Witness Protection Program for some actual action.

Central tries to mount a late rally against the Mudlarks by putting on Milford’s uniforms and crowding the plate. This ruse fails as Gonzo Aceves gets the batter in disguise to ground into a game-ending double play. Surprising that Gil and Kaz left Gonzo in to pitch a complete game; maybe they were also too busy watching Mama Hamm take a bullet for Papa Hamm to pay attention to the action on the field.

Menawhile Marty’s in his crate, calling the game using the CB radio he pulled from under the dash of his car and taking notes using a carpenter’s pencil. Guess Marty got it from Heather that everyone’s calling Aceves “Gonzo” now. Though he and his butter knife are long gone The Mayor has left his mark, at least for the rest of this season.

Now it’s off for postgame junk food, either at Ricozzi’s or The Bucket. Will the Hammmmer walk into a pane of glass as he joins the rest of the team? Will Papa Hamm be stuffed in the trunk of the Hammmobile when Mama Hamm comes to pick Gregg up? Will Scooter be too busy bragging about the twin killing he turned to bore everyone to tears with baseball trivia? So much to anticipate for the rest of the week!

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.

A Good Season? Guess We’ll Have to Take Gil’s Word for It

Boy that Hollis sure took some tough stands, didn’t she? Calling out teammates who sipped hard seltzer and twisting Mimi’s arm to get more playing time and fluff up her resume was tough. Speaking of tough stands, tough guy Gil finally eases up on Pranit Hollywood when nothing’s on the line…

… or at least we’re being led to think that. A quick scan of the game results and I see Milford’s at 4-2, 2-2 in the conference, with 1 unknown outcome.* More than one conference loss usually implies no playdowns, so it’s safe to say the Mudlarks are playing out the string. And of course Milford was out of it because Pranit didn’t play. No one ever steps up for Milford.

Now, with nothing on the line and Kaz pulling the baseball gear out of storage, Gil relents and lets Pranit Smoothie back in the game. A meaningless win, some platitudes for the next two days, a lame joke on Saturday, and then time to pound that Budweiser hit the old batting cage. Wonder if Pranit will ever collect on the gambling debts owed him. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if he shows up for baseball with all his limbs intact.

What a wasted use of Marty this season. No way he wouldn’t have gotten word of Pranit’s suspension and run with it like a drunk with scissors. Even the Chief is phoning it in. He’s put Tevin’s head on Gordon Achebe’s Ted Kluszewskiesque body.

* The season so far:

@ All Saints W, 57-56

Redford W, 60-54

Jefferson L

Goshen W (“a bounce back”)

@ New Thayer W (“comfortable”)

@ Madison ???

Central L, 58-60 (notice how a three would’ve won it? Pranit the implied scapegoat)

Sweeps Week

All hoops action today as the Milford season opener at All Saints nears the end of regulation. Milford can’t hit treys tonight so they’re gonna have to rely on their inside game to close the deficit. With Ward Korczyk’s layup ( aren’t scores usually called “baskets” and not “hoops”?) off the fast break, the Mudlarks cut the lead to one, 55-54. The setup is for a one-point game either way, which should be resolved tomorrow or Saturday. A non-conference game won’t have any impact on Milford’s Valley title hopes, but it could expose weaknesses that will either be addressed or exploited as the season progresses.

Surprisingly quiet during football season, Marty looks to make his presence known earlier in the basketball campaign. Will he pick up on the behind-the-scenes stories that will influence the on-court action? Or will Heather Burns scoop him for the Star – especially when it comes to the story of the Lady Mudlarks’ Colorado Springs-bound captain who seemingly came out of nowhere?

meta: Football season may be over in the Valley, but we’ve got to take a TWIM time out to remember the late John Madden, who passed away yesterday at 85, popularized the use of the telestrator and turducken, and who lent his name to the video game series that played a supporting role in the fall arc.

Let’s Meet The Other No. 13

We’re back from our Hot Chocolate For Charity break to resume this game at All Saints. Gil’s shaggy haired cousin whistled Tevin Claxton for his second foul and Tevin commiserates with a teammate on the bench. It’s just some guy, but dammit, it looks like Pranit Smith. We’re not sure if Pranit rides the pines because he seemed like just a run of the mill chucker, but if a chucker can consistently show up, he can make Gil’s squad. He can also provide comic relief on the bench and snark at Tevin who knocked a guy over and has to take a seat.

Let’s meet another new Mudlark, Nomar Ramos. Rubin almost gave as a palindromic name. If only we would have been introduced to Nomar Ramon (or maybe Somar Ramos). No matter, Nomar instantly gets abused by an All Saints big man, Big Drew Fialka. (Big Drew may be an assistant professor at Middle Tennessee State University. He may also be an aspiring actuary and watersports enthusiast from Tampa. Weird.)

I don’t think that’s Big Drew in panel 3. He’s not backing anyone in. That guy is just looking at Marty. Maybe it’s supposed to be a Mudlark bringing the ball up the court after Big Drew abused Nomar Ramos. The colorists weren’t sure, so they just split the difference and put that guy in a black uni. The colorists had a few on those Hot Chocolates for Charity and forgot which color they’d established for All Saints at the tip off. This uni coloring crap is hardly worth mentioning anymore as it is consistently inconsistent. But we gotta mention it here, I guess. What else do we have to discuss? No seriously, what else?

Showing Up? We Can Do That!

We conclude Marty Moon’s interview of Gil on a rare note. Gil appears to be answering Marty’s question with something other than condescending snark. It almost sounds like humility! His statement may even go beyond humility and reveal Gil’s sincere indifference about competition! Hey, I have little confidence in our preparedness, but we will actually be present. Damn Gil, that was inspiring.

Milford will open on the road at All Saints, which is not a traditional Valley Conference foe as far as I remember. Also, with the name All Saints, it could literally be anywhere so why bother with the google nonsense (we can save that for the lineup). Yes, it’s mostly lineup time from here on out so hang onto your hats.

I don’t know if we had Dallas George or Curtis Charles on the hardwood before, but they’ve both participated in football and baseball in the last year. Dallas and Curtis both caught passes for the Mudlarks in 2020. Maybe they were around for this past season, but wide receivers didn’t seem to get much ink.

Of course we know all about Tevin, so we can move straight to Wade Korczyk in the front court. Um, well….so much for googling cause Wade Korczyk turns up bupkis. That just leaves our starting center, Gabe Landau. Gabe, like Wade, doesn’t seem to have figured in any other Mudlark sports up to now. (Maybe this is why Gil can’t help but admit that he’s not prepared.) Gabe is maybe a software engineer or the Vice President Of Business Development at HaystackID. Maybe he recently married Kelley Nevils. But now it’s time for Gabe to tip off against All Saints.

Oh my goodness, All Saints unis are a sort of teal color! That’s shocking. The colorists got some new colors for Christmas. Or a new color at least. We’ll watch closely this season to see if there are any other colors in play (if we see much actual action.)

That’s about the extent of it. Maybe we can find out who’s on the bench later. Is Pranit on the squad, doing sportspuke on the bench? We’ll see.

Hey, if I don’t see yez all tomorrow, Merry Christmas!

Stumblin’ In

It didn’t take long for VT’s Matt Hasselbeck Jr. to eat his words. Milford draws first blood, but isn’t it kinda chancy (see what I did there?) to have your star tailback returning punts? Oh, what’s that? Maybe he didn’t return the punt and just ran in for the touch on a play from scrimmage? Either way, I hope he ran an extra ten yards through the end zone once he crossed the goal line. Gotta get ready for that Canadian ball, dontchaknow.

On to the next drive and Milford scores on another explosive play, as Tevin goes left while everyone else goes right. Classic misdirection. Pity it’s gonna get called back for holding on the Mudlark that’s got VT #51 tied up. That might be Tommy “Jamón” Serrano, who previously succumbed to Boyd Spiller’s fake juice but hasn’t completely recovered from learning that it was fake. In fact, to the untrained eye (or maybe the eye that was trained half a century ago, give or take) those two look like an electric football Backer figure locked together with an All Purpose figure…

…which would make perfect sense if we revert back to one of our original Gil Thorp tropes: that all of this action is playing out in Marty Moon’s crate in his parents’ basement.

Speaking of Marty, how nice of him to show up to broadcast the Mudlarks’ season finale. How do we know this is the finale? Look at the calendar, and the deus ex machina Rubin’s dropped in our laps. Milford’s gonna drop the Valley title to Goshen – the same Goshen they blew out by 24 not quite two months ago? Doesn’t make any sense unless the Milford loss is the only one Goshen’s suffered all season. If both teams end up tied in conference play, the Mudlarks take the title based on head-to-head. None of that matters when you have a plot to wrap up and you’re you’ve wasted on hooch most of your time on details that didn’t really advance it.

Post title refers to how Goshen will make the playdowns.

Spiller Pokes The Choker

This concludes the second game of the season at Kettering. Kettering tried to get fancy with a sweep but there was the games unsung hero, Steve Lehto, again to sniff it out and finish off the drive that had just started on the recovery of QB Tevin Claxton’s fumble. Marty Moon finishes doing something (opening a pill bottle?) while he concludes his broadcast to three listeners.

After the game, the real drama resumes. Tevin Claxton had a history of choking in JV, or so we heard earlier from Boyd Spiller. It looks like ol’ Boyd is there to remind Tevin of this and needle his quarterback about his almost costly fumble in this game. Well done, Boyd. You’ve solidified your role as this season a-hole newcomer.

Heather Burns Twitter feed has remained silent. Maybe she’s only going to work home games. Who needs a media strategy?