I was sold the minute Charlie showed up and started talkin' about WHIP. I sort of imagine her having all of the things Bill James has ever written in her house somewhere. I bet she has a Baseball Prospectus subscription.
Parkman the catcher! Oh gosh. So perfect! I love the little jokes about how it's like he reads people's minds. (Is he taking the place of Koyie Hill in this verse? The Cubs aren't my main team, so I don't know all the AAAA-type players.)
Claude being all mysterious. The kind of ball player who shows up in novels about baseball. Like he walked straight out of something from WP Kinsella, man.
Loved DL the outfielder. It suits him so perfectly. And ahahaha the guys being all unbelieving, still, that he married a stripper. So baseball, and yet so Heroes.
And Ted! with the hilarious off-field injury because he's angry. (I love the terrible reasons for DL-stints, like the time Rich Harden messed up his shoulder turning off his alarm clock, or the time Joel Zumaya messed up his wrist because he was playing too much Guitar Hero.)
LOVED the bit about Peter still living in a hotel, not ready to commit in his mind to being in Chicago because he doesn't trust it.
Nathan the Yankee! Of course Nathan would be a Yankee.
And the bits about baseball wifery were nice, because man. Baseball wifery must suck so hard in so many ways and ♥
And basically this rocked my socks straight off, and then they danced around the room some.
Peter = Fontenot because YES of COURSE the parallel is a utility infielder! One who's JUST AS SHORT AS PETER! Possibly the better choice would have been Mark DeRosa, but there's no narrative arc in that one. :)
Charlie has a subscription to Baseball Prospectus and the Ken Burns documentary and a baseball card collection the size of West Texas. She's getting a degree in statistics so she can be the stats girl for the Astros, I swear.
Also, Parkman is a mash-up of Koyie Hill and Rob Bowen and every other damn catcher the Cubs have tried this season. (Also, because of this epic, epic story, I know everything about the Cubs. AAA, AA, A+, EVERYTHING.) The real Koyie Hill was designated for assignment, but we're gonna just... pretend that one away.
Ted = this random third baseman playing for Iowa, Scott Moore, who honest to god hurt his foot the day after getting sent down. PERFECT. (Or the time Carlos Zambrano got wrist-sprain from e-mailing too much!)
Nathan = A-Rod. It seemed appropriate.
ALSO: Your comments make me crazy happy. Because it's amazing that so many non-baseball fans can get into the story, that it means something to them outside of the numbers. But I'm crazy happy that someone else who loves the game appreciates it. Really. You rock.
I write/read some baseball RPF as well (which may or may not be skeevy to you, and I apologize if it is!) and when I first got into it, I was like "the problem with RPF is what's the canon?" and candle-beck said, basically, we have canon, and it is called box scores. :D The thing is taking the box scores and also showing everyone how baseball is basically made out of magic. Which you did! All the things about this story I loved are the little things, and those are the things that always make me love a good baseball story. the little anecdotes or sometimes the numbers, or just the little asides.
I still can't get over freaking Claude in this.
And Nathan is totally A-Rod.
And Peter, man. When I first clicked on this story, I knew Claude was going to be a pitcher, and I was afraid that this was going to be some kind of Bull Durham type thing (not that Bull Durham is a bad story, because it is an amazing movie!), because I was like "Peter is a righty. He is much too short to be pitching. And if he caught he'd break in half." And it totally didn't even occur to me that utility infielder is the perfect match for what Peter actually does in canon until it got introduced in the story, and I was like "Yes! Yes! That!" Not only does it make sense bodily (I mean, really, Peter Petrelli is all about legging out infield hits and bunting his way on base sometimes, because I have a hard time imagining him regularly hitting it out of the infield), but with canon too, and *flail*
Box scores, news articles, telecasts, a subscription to the Chicago Tribune. I always had about six browser windows open, juggling schedules and roster moves and box scores (play-by-play, pitch-by-pitch, and straight stats). At some points it felt like I was writing a very strange research paper. Heh.
I can't get too skeeved at the baseball RPF, because every once in a while I think about the fact that I've basically slashed Mike Fontenot and Carlos Zambrano. Heh. (Which would be adorable, by the by, if only because Fontenot is SO TINY and Zambrano is SO BIG. When they do the post-game high-five, Big Z holds his hand up so Fontenot has to jump to hit it.)
I was sold the minute Charlie showed up and started talkin' about WHIP. I sort of imagine her having all of the things Bill James has ever written in her house somewhere. I bet she has a Baseball Prospectus subscription.
Parkman the catcher! Oh gosh. So perfect! I love the little jokes about how it's like he reads people's minds. (Is he taking the place of Koyie Hill in this verse? The Cubs aren't my main team, so I don't know all the AAAA-type players.)
Claude being all mysterious. The kind of ball player who shows up in novels about baseball. Like he walked straight out of something from WP Kinsella, man.
Loved DL the outfielder. It suits him so perfectly. And ahahaha the guys being all unbelieving, still, that he married a stripper. So baseball, and yet so Heroes.
And Ted! with the hilarious off-field injury because he's angry. (I love the terrible reasons for DL-stints, like the time Rich Harden messed up his shoulder turning off his alarm clock, or the time Joel Zumaya messed up his wrist because he was playing too much Guitar Hero.)
LOVED the bit about Peter still living in a hotel, not ready to commit in his mind to being in Chicago because he doesn't trust it.
Nathan the Yankee! Of course Nathan would be a Yankee.
And the bits about baseball wifery were nice, because man. Baseball wifery must suck so hard in so many ways and ♥
And basically this rocked my socks straight off, and then they danced around the room some.
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Charlie has a subscription to Baseball Prospectus and the Ken Burns documentary and a baseball card collection the size of West Texas. She's getting a degree in statistics so she can be the stats girl for the Astros, I swear.
Also, Parkman is a mash-up of Koyie Hill and Rob Bowen and every other damn catcher the Cubs have tried this season. (Also, because of this epic, epic story, I know everything about the Cubs. AAA, AA, A+, EVERYTHING.) The real Koyie Hill was designated for assignment, but we're gonna just... pretend that one away.
Ted = this random third baseman playing for Iowa, Scott Moore, who honest to god hurt his foot the day after getting sent down. PERFECT. (Or the time Carlos Zambrano got wrist-sprain from e-mailing too much!)
Nathan = A-Rod. It seemed appropriate.
ALSO: Your comments make me crazy happy. Because it's amazing that so many non-baseball fans can get into the story, that it means something to them outside of the numbers. But I'm crazy happy that someone else who loves the game appreciates it. Really. You rock.
Reply
I still can't get over freaking Claude in this.
And Nathan is totally A-Rod.
And Peter, man. When I first clicked on this story, I knew Claude was going to be a pitcher, and I was afraid that this was going to be some kind of Bull Durham type thing (not that Bull Durham is a bad story, because it is an amazing movie!), because I was like "Peter is a righty. He is much too short to be pitching. And if he caught he'd break in half." And it totally didn't even occur to me that utility infielder is the perfect match for what Peter actually does in canon until it got introduced in the story, and I was like "Yes! Yes! That!" Not only does it make sense bodily (I mean, really, Peter Petrelli is all about legging out infield hits and bunting his way on base sometimes, because I have a hard time imagining him regularly hitting it out of the infield), but with canon too, and *flail*
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I can't get too skeeved at the baseball RPF, because every once in a while I think about the fact that I've basically slashed Mike Fontenot and Carlos Zambrano. Heh. (Which would be adorable, by the by, if only because Fontenot is SO TINY and Zambrano is SO BIG. When they do the post-game high-five, Big Z holds his hand up so Fontenot has to jump to hit it.)
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