Team Logo of the Gotham City Bats
The Gotham City Bats are a good-hitting ball club. We’re not real sure of their exact team colors. They play all their games at night in the dim glow of cheap always-popping-out arc bulbs at Guano Park here in downtown Gotham, so it’s hard to tell – and we’re not real sure either where they hang out in the daytime to ask anybody. Until those conditions change, their team colors will just have to remain a pigment of our wildest imaginations. Black and gray with a dab of yellow as the oval background to their black bat logo that appears on both the left side jersey pate and the cap are the closest ideas here of everybody at The Pecan Park Eagle.
We did get a snoop-scoop the other night at the ballpark by hiding a sound activated micro-video gadget in the suite where team owner Bruce Wayne was holding a roster-move planning session with General Manager Jim Gordan and Playing Manager Robin Rocker after the club’s game with the Reading Riddlers was rained out. Those guys are so big on conserving and recycling their resources that it’s a shame that more big league clubs don’t follow their example. Straight from the “tape”, so to speak, here’s how the Bats got away from having to pay a player $2,000 a month for seven months in the 2015 season by simply assigning him out and activating his tricky compensation clause that some guy worked into his 2014 contract as the penalty for letting him go this year. The player they are talking about here is that well known veteran utility man, 38-year old Joker Jester, also recognized in Houston as the great-grandson of T.C. Jester.
Give a listen to how smooth the Gotham City Bats front office pulls this one off:
Owner Bruce Wayne (BW): “Gentlemen, the Bats don’t need to waste money in 2015. The Joker must go!”
GM Jim Gordon (JG): “I agree, Boss, but there’s the matter of that buyout clause we failed to notice when we signed him in a pinch last August. Do you really want to pay him for nothing – just to get the Joker and his “deck of 51″ misplaying-the-ball tricks off the field?”
MGR Robin Rocker (RR): “It’s not my money, Mr. Wayne, but I have to agree with Jim. ‘Holy Strangeglove’, gentlemen! We’ve got to do something! He’s not only killing us in the field. The Joker also strikes out ten times in between each homer he hits!”
BW: “Then riddle me this one, gentlemen: ‘What’s faster than a snail, but slower than a turtle? His DP/AB ratio only makes my red blood curdle?”
The JG/RR Chorus: “We know! – We know! – The Joker’s gotta go! – But how we can his butt and save the bucks – still hurts our toe!”
BW: “Could we salvage him with a move from the outfield to pitcher?”
JG: “Are you kidding, Boss? We’ve tried that in the winter league. The Joker’s more hittable than our Iron Mike pitching machine!”
BW: “How about as our back-up catcher?”
RR: “Back-up Catcher? Boss, we tried that one too this winter. Anything the opposing batters don’t hit is a potential passed ball, especially, if they swing and miss it near his eyes. He always blinks!”
BW: “How about first base then?”
RR: “Doesn’t work either. The guy can’t stretch six inches. Our infielders would need Hall of Fame arms and make perfect throws to first every time in the hope that some of their great efforts stayed in his glove rather than popping out – which is what usually happens when we let him take infield at that spot.”
JG: “And please, Boss, I know this probably goes without saying, but the Joker is too lead-footed for either middle infield spot.”
Fearless Fosdick
~ from Lil Abner
~ an Al Capp creation
BW: “What about third base?”
RR: “Holy Fearless Fosdick, Mr. Wayne! There’s no way the Joker could handle third base!”
BW: “Fill me in on the particulars of your cryptogram, Robin. What exactly did you mean by your ‘Holy Fearless Fosdick’ comment?”
RR: “Don’t you remember Fearless Fosdick from the old Lil Abner comic strip in the newspapers, Mr. Wayne? Cartoonist Al Capp invented him as a parody of the popular Dick Tracy cop cartoon. Only Fosdick was a defective detective who went around with all those baseball-size holes in his body that you could see through from the bullet blasts he took from the crooks and other bad guys. – Got that picture? – Well, I’m just saying that’s what the Joker is going to look like if we put him at third base for the Bats – only, in his case, the baseball-size holes are going to be from all the real baseball smashes down the line that our Gotham City pitchers usually give up!”
BW: “Yes, Robin, I see what you mean. – And the outfield is no possibility?”
JG: “That’s where he screwed up last year, Boss? – Remember how we started this discussion?”
BW: “Yes, Jim, I remember. Well, failing the absence of any other good alternatives to letting him go and still paying him, we’ll just have to do what all baseball clubs do with these kinds of washed up, never-were-much good ballplayers.”
RR: “What’s that, Mr. Wayne?”
BW: “Simple math, Robin. – Joker Jester just got the 2015 job as our new bench coach.”
JG: “Good move, Boss, and who knows? Maybe the Joker will turn out to be another La Russa and go on to managing his way into the Hall of Fame someday!”
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
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