Unfathomable Miscellany
Jocko
A Combination of Baseball and A Spooky Halloween Story
Ever notice how much ball players spit? I think that might have been
part of the reason I didn't like watching baseball until about 2 weeks
before I met Felix (less than 2 months ago). I think I just started
watching baseball at work because I'm a maid, and stealing comic books
and women's launderette from the rooms I clean is only entertaining a
menial fraction of the time I spend at work. But anyway, even though I
didn't love watching the sport, I started collecting baseball cards
when I was about 8 years old. They were 35 cents a pack, and even came
with a piece of stale chewing gum that loses its flavor after about 10
seconds of chewing. Just from the stats on the cards, I could decipher
between the good players and the common players. I also knew what
positions were played by whom; all this knowledge in a boy who didn't
have the patience to sit though 1 inning of a game. Hey, I wonder if
my Alomar rookie card will go up in value after he spat in the
umpire's face. Anyhow, Don Mattingly was my favorite player because he
is left handed, had a batting average over .320, and he always looks
stylin' in all of his baseball card pictures. The way he held his bat,
the wad of chew in his cheek, his mustache, and those black lines
under his eyes that I never understood the purpose of. I think I
started collecting baseball cards because when I was 7, my Christmas
gift from my mother was a perfectly vertical line constructed entirely
of scientists who performed vivisection. See, my mother led the
terrorist organization known as the Vivisection Revenge Brigade, and
that's a revolution for evolution. Boy, did my mama live in the fast
lane (she spontaneously combusted back in '89). The closest I had ever
been to live in the fast lane was being stuck behind a Winnebago going
47 mph on a stretch of the I-5 with a speed limit of 65 mph in the
high desert. This particular region in the Valley of Darkness reminds
me of the time I spent in Mephistopheles' Bad Lands, where I was
attacked by an unholy heathen, much like the Arch-Angel Gabriel. I
single-handedly defeated the un-godfearing servant of evil in a joust
and brought this vile, filthy creature's unpenitent knees to a
penitent stance; eyes to the ground and all. This Fallen Angel (like
all Fallen Angels) was the epitome of Danger, and when Danger reared
its ugly head, I switched to disjunctive syllogism #2 and said, "Take
this and eat from it. For this is my body, which will be given up for
you." I then made this disciple of Beelzebub repeat the most divine
and holy phrase out loud several hundred times before I severed its
disgusting head. The last thought to cross its mind when I showed it
the power of a soldier of God was that divine and holy phrase: Jocko
is King!
This "article" appeared in Church on Thursday, Issue #6, October 1996.
