A Terrible Admission
I think that I might be coming around to Orel Hershiser. The Met killer (and, briefly, the Met) has always irked me with his cockiness, condescension, wily sinker-curveball repertoire, dugout hymnsong and, recently, his Keith Olberman eyeglasses. Worse than all that? He sent his kid to the St. Mark's snooty school in Dallas. There should be no forgiveness.
And, yet, he's a professional gambler, even though he is super rich and famous. That's definitely worth something. So's the fact that he audibly irks his ESPN co-announcers, Dan Shulman and Steve Phillips, to the point where they make risque puns on his name. (Seriously.)
And then there was last night's Mets game on ESPN (don't ask how it ended), during which Hershiser annoyed dumb-as-rocks Steve Phillips by describing the neuroscience behind the change-up. (It turns out that your brain can't locate your ring finger and pinky in space as easily as it can your index and middle finger. That makes throwing an accurate circle change, which relies on the pinky and ring fingers for its spin, very difficult.) It launched the following exchange:
Phillips: And here I am saying that we should teach kids the change-up, but it sounds way too complicated for me. So would you say that [neuroscience keyword that Hershiser had just used] was why I couldn't hit the change up?
Hershiser: You couldn't hit the change up because of your hand-eye coordination.
Zing! Edutainment!
And, yet, he's a professional gambler, even though he is super rich and famous. That's definitely worth something. So's the fact that he audibly irks his ESPN co-announcers, Dan Shulman and Steve Phillips, to the point where they make risque puns on his name. (Seriously.)
And then there was last night's Mets game on ESPN (don't ask how it ended), during which Hershiser annoyed dumb-as-rocks Steve Phillips by describing the neuroscience behind the change-up. (It turns out that your brain can't locate your ring finger and pinky in space as easily as it can your index and middle finger. That makes throwing an accurate circle change, which relies on the pinky and ring fingers for its spin, very difficult.) It launched the following exchange:
Phillips: And here I am saying that we should teach kids the change-up, but it sounds way too complicated for me. So would you say that [neuroscience keyword that Hershiser had just used] was why I couldn't hit the change up?
Hershiser: You couldn't hit the change up because of your hand-eye coordination.
Zing! Edutainment!