Dorothy, you’re not in Milford anymore.

We’re really moving the spring sports season along – if Cami thinks on April 21 its gonna be a learning experience coaching baseball, her experience is woefully behind. At this rate, (just like the old days) she may get the hang of it by July. When the seniors have graduated and the school is empty, she’ll all of a sudden have that A-Ha moment.

Then we have a new player on the softball team, and Gil, on April 21, has discovered she’s a lefty. These coaches are so slow sizing up the talent its embarrassing. Can you see a real coach asking that moronic question 2 weeks into tryouts? God, at least she figured out she needed a right-handed glove to play left-handed. And about time she showed up too. Maybe she can pitch too!

Dorothy, youre a lefty?

No coach, I couldnt find a glove for my left hand, so I bought the only right handed glove left at the store today. I suppose since my glove is on my right hand, that means I have to throw with my left hand. Is that right coach? No pun intended.

Right Dorothy. Now go play 3rd base. It makes no sense but neither does anything else I do in this strip. Maybe by Memorial day we’ll actually play a real game and we can fine out who’s good and who’s not. Then maybe I’ll make some adjustments in time for summer vacation. Then Cami will finish her learning experience. Hey, maybe I’ll have you pitch at some point down the road.

METAPOST: I AM GOING TO MIAMI NEXT WEEK FOR SUN, FUN, GOLF AND CUBS BASEBALL. NEED SOMEONE TO COVER MONDAY AND FRIDAY FOR ME. THANKS AND HAVE FUN!

No, call me Moron.

Pretty sad that after a kid misses ONE shot in a Pop-A-Shot game where you normally get a bunch of shots and try to make as many as possible in 30 seconds or so, Gil has to step in and instruct him on proper form. Hey Gil, your 2 feet taller at least, so your perspective on the rim is quite different. Its kinda like me teaching a little kid how to dunk a basketball on a 4 foot rim. Im 6’3. Dont even have to jump for that. And little kids cant hold a ball like that – they need to push the ball with 2 hands or else it wont make it to the basket. Doh.

Then we have P2 where the ball is suddenly smaller then the beach ball drawn yesterday. Great Gil you made ONE shot. The object is to grab the ball again and make MORE shots. One is shit in that game. A line drive style works best in Pop A Shot, as the ball come back faster after it goes through. Gil wants him to shoot moonballs. The way Gildo is shooting, the ball will hit the fuckin ceiling before the net.

P3 – Little Luke thanks Gil the way a kid addresses an adult, but ol Gil wants him to pretend he’s an adult already. As a kid I only called adults by their first name when they were my relatives (Aunt Murial, Uncle Ben). What happened to “Coach Thorp”? You mean to tell me all the kids Thorp coaches call him Coach Thorp and this tike already is on a freakin first name basis with him??

Nobody reading this will argue with P3. Generations come and go, but familiarity rules are timeless.

And Gil just broke them.

Not Sure Which Part of This Is Tradition

Is it the bonfire? Wrong time of year for that in Milford. Unless they started it with Gil’s playbook. Then that might be a good new tradition.

Is it the s’mores? I thought sloppy joes were the thing.

Is it ditching your date for your gal pal? In the words of the late Judy Tenuta, “It could happen.”

Is it the man bun? Not sure we’ve seen one of those on a Mudlark before.

I know what it is: it’s the underage drinking! We’ve been down this road multiple times before. All it takes is one snitch and Gil’s zero-tolerance policy and, before you know it, there won’t be enough kids to field a basketball team. Milford forfeits the rest of the season and starts getting ready for baseball. That’s one way to deal with those pesky budget cuts!

I’d like to check that bald guys birth certificate..

Holy moly if that wasnt the worst drawing of a high school athlete yesterday in P1 then one doesnt exist. He looked more like the janitor (not Steve Luhm) then a triple double machine that could be in the NBA in 4 years if not sooner. The way these high schoolers are built these days, you can almost lengthen the court for them.

Big postgame interview after a podunk high school game. Really, a camera is needed? Who are these guys, the Associated Press? Normally you see the coach interviewed by 1 guy as he’s cleaning up the bench area. And all dressed up too! Marty needs to remember the tie doesnt have to match the jacket. Green on green looks.. notsogood.

And Marty is looking away from Gil as he asks the (dumb) question. Why the hell is he referring to a football game?? This is the basketball team. Yes I know Gil coaches everything except pickleball, but these are different guys playing a different sport. Or theyre Supposed to be.

And you dont have a Playbook for basketball Gildo. Hey, if your playbook burns up because of that fire that’d be a GOOD thing.

Vive la Résistance!

Gentle readers, I must admit that there are days when I need a little motivation to try and understand a given day’s strip and to make a coherent post about it. Most Some days I have to broaden my horizons and try to find a pop culture reference to tie in the action or the dialogue. Most Some days the pure absurdity of what’s being presented lets the post write itself. Some days – and today is one of those days – that I just have to break the strip down into its individual parts and comment on each part. On those days it helps to have a mantra, and today’s mantra is Ohm. So let’s get to it.

P1: All together now: In American football, the team in possession of the football, or the offense, tries to advance the football down the field to score points while the team without possession of the football, or the defense, tries to stop the offense’s advance and to take control of the ball for themselves. In terms of the goals of each unit, the offense is thus the force and the defense is the resistance.

P2: Marty has been at this gig long enough that he should know the basic rules of the game. He should also know that the end of the second quarter in American football is usually referred to as “halftime” or “the half.” Or it could be that Lachlan doesn’t know that. Lachlan is a name of Gaelic origin, so he could be a noob at calling an American football game.

P3: Now we know how Marty’s been supplementing his income since he lost the TV2 job: by calling illegal dog fights over the dark web. Applying the dog fighting analogy to Valley Tech football might explain why there’s a chain-link fence right along the sideline of their field. Cage match rules at Valley Tech might explain why Maivia’s having such a good night, or day, hard to tell.

Stepping back and looking at the strip as a whole, you can see a flow of action, kind of like Eadweard Muybridge’s photos of horses. It’s the description of the flow that requires detachment and meditation. So please join me. Ohm…

meta: A moment of silence and a bag of candy corn on the curb for Mike Leach. Love him, hate him, or somewhere in between, you have to admit he made college football more interesting and less corporate. Rest in peace, oh pirate.

A Day for Definitions*

mudlark, n. 1. (mainly UK) someone who searches the mud near rivers trying to find valuable or interesting objects. 2. (UK) a horse who runs well on soft, wet ground.

Neither of those define an actual bird and, of the two, only the latter makes much sense as a sports team mascot (e.g., Indiana Pacers, Murray State Thoroughbreds/Racers). The only NCAA Division I school with a peacock mascot had a Cinderella run in the most recent March Madness (beating the aforementioned Murray State in the process) and a shout-out at the end of the Pranit Smith winter arc. Trotting out a reference to what was already an idiotic Rubin plot from nine years ago doesn’t establish continuity; it throws a marrowless bone to a readership looking for some strand of it after the past 2.5 months have made their collective heads spin.

context, n. the situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it.

As much as we all bitched about the lather, rinse, repeat of the beginnings of a Rubin sportsball season, they helped place the wackiness that followed in some sort of context. We’d have Gil and/or Mimi tick off to Marjie and/or Marty the starting lineups named after Rubin’s friends or colleagues IRL; we’d see a Milford team play a non-conference opponent (probably another shout-out) on the road (Connecticut? South Carolina? Vermont? Chuck a dart at the map, Rubin!); then we’d dive into the Valley Conference schedule. Sometimes – make that often – games would pass and we’d get no detail about them beyond the result. Other times, single games would drag on for days or even weeks.

When they did, however, we would at least know the opponent, the score, and the quarter or inning. Sometimes we’d even know the time remaining, the field position, down and yards to go, the outs, the count on the batter, the number of fouls on the hoopster. Yesterday we had to connect a lot of dots to make sense of what was going on on the field. There were 10 seconds left in the game and Milford had a 4th-and-1 on the (school?) Bobcats’, oh, say, 23. Gil wants to go for the end zone; Kaz wants to send the kicker out to attempt a 40-yard field goal. Somehow Kaz, who heretofore has not been the OC and playcaller, overrules Gil (who used to be in charge of calling plays). Since high school kickers who can hit from 40 are scarcer than peacock’s teeth, the kick is predictably no good. The Bobcats run out the clock and the Mudlarks lose.

What was the score of the game? Would a field goal have won it? For the sake of argument, let’s assume it would. Knowing poor Hooper wasn’t likely to make it from 40, why not go for the first down? Did Milford not have any time outs left? That would’ve been a factor in the decision as well. All that matters is the Mudlarks lost, Patrick Swayze Kaz feels shame, and Gil stares blankly out the prairie style window at the mule golden retriever trans soccer player who will make Hooper history, Milford woke, and Luke Martinez leave town when he kicks the winning field goal to beat Valley Tech in the season finale.

*(Source for both definitions: Cambridge Dictionary)

Hey Blue are you blind?? No, your pitcher is.

All the umpires in history who’ve had to put up with various themes on the taunts they receive from fans about being blind have to love this strip, where the ump finally gets his revenge! This time its the pitcher who is blind. And the ump calls him out on it, and damn it, he’s right.

Yeah Gil no rule says Blue HAS to toss your man from the game, but guess what smartypants. The ump is in charge of the game, not you. He can remove anyone from the game that he believes is a safety hazard to the other players. And if you cant figure that out by now you’re a moron. He can eject fans too. How many years have you been coaching and not know that? I coached baseball for 5 years and had several arguments with the blue man group. But I never crossed the line. If an ump told me my player couldnt see, by god I’d have him out ASAP. Not Gildo.

My catcher once got tossed for accidently bumping the ump walking off the field after an inning late in a road game, and the players mom went berserk, understandably. I thought Blue was gonna run her as well, and he had a right to. I found out I had no catcher after I heard her screaming at him. (We lost the game in the next half inning anyway so I didnt need to replace my only catcher. But it was still a BS call.)

And what is Gils insistence on PLAYING this guy anyway?? Jesus, put someone else in already! Dont you have 4 other pitchers at least?? I’m starting to think Gil is in cahoots with Mr. Hamm, secretly giving Gregg more PT to help some unknown cause that we dont even have privy to yet.

Because this makes less sense every day. Thank god the ump sees right through this charade. Throw em all out Blue!!

Oh yeah, Heather is transcribing the action. Whats her take on this?

Charis Puts It Bluntly

Today’s baseball history lesson is – aw, hell, we had this baseball history lesson almost two months ago. The Hammer isn’t going to start drinking heavily or contemplate suicide. Nope, he’s getting the Nuke Laloosh advice from Mr. Trivia and his girlfriend. I thought Rubin might’ve foregone a girls’ sports plot this season to have the single female character serve as the voice of reason. I thought wrong.

As much as we joke about it, this is really a ridiculous answer. So ridiculous that it’s wiped Ggerg’s mouth completely off his face. One would almost have to be stoned to come up with it. In fact, if I didn’t know any better I’d think Charis and Eli had been partaking themselves.

How long before the Oakwood scouting report makes its way through rest of the Valley? How long before Gil is forced to forfeit every game he’s had this menace on the mound? This plot has two weeks left – three, tops – so let’s just sit back and see how much stupider it can get.

Can’t wait to see what Mopman does with this one. The colorists missed a golden opportunity to color C & E’s eyes pink.