Sometimes there is crying in baseball.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is considering the special election of a man generally considered to have been the worst professional player ever.
In 1935, young Clint Patzer passed up a chance to be governor of Maine and signed a contract with the Arkham Entities. After just three days with the team, he was traded to the Dunwich Shamblers for shortstop Davey Bungstopper, who was dead at the time.
Patzer, who never played a regular position on the field, bounced around the minor leagues for 15 years. His family paid teams to let him play. Sometimes they had to pay a lot. He became known for his habit of weeping uncontrollably every time he made an out, which was almost always. His career batting average of .073 remains a seldom-approached standard of futility. He once attracted national media attention when he went to bat in his underpants.
Longtime Dodgers scout Doc Farfel said, “He was definitely the worst I’ve ever seen. You name it, he couldn’t do it. Hitting, fielding, running–none of it was ever happening for Mr. Patzer. His teammates and managers only tolerated him because they were paid off, too. Even with that, persons unknown tried to poison him on at least three separate occasions.”
After his baseball career, Patzer landed a job as the guy who stuck his head through the hole in the canvas so that people could throw things at him, on the old Seaside boardwalk on the Jersey shore. It was then that he acquired his nickname, “Lumpy.”
In 1959 he joined an expedition to Nepal to capture the Abominable Snowman, and never returned.
“There’s got to be a place in the Hall of Fame for sheer incompetence,” says Hall janitor Randolph Khrushchev. Apparently the Baseball Writers Assn. of America agrees with him.
(Sorry, folks, but I needed a laugh today.)
I thought you were making fun of my first attempts at playing Baseball. When I was a mere lad, I took it upon my self to lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse in porttitor eros. Quisque ac augue at dolor tincidunt venenatis. Curabitur at urna dui. Curabitur quis nulla commodo, porta augue a, vulputate nibh. Fusce et ullamcorper tellus, et dictum sapien. Aenean lobortis lacus leo, eget dignissim purus gravida vitae. Sed scelerisque magna elit, id interdum leo egestas suscipit.
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And then I tried out for the Majors. 🙂
Years ago, major league teams used to have open tryouts at high school fields, etc., all around the country. I covered one that the Cincinnati Reds had at Colts Neck. They had a scout there, and anyone–yes, anyone–could walk up and try to show what he could do.
Imagine my surprise when I found in the outfield a friend I hadn’t seen since we were both in 5th grade. I’m amazed we recognized each other.
I’m sure it was very rare for a team to find gold in them there hills–but nothing ventured, nothing gained. There are a lot worse ways to spend a summer day. And you can always tell people, “I had a tryout with the Cincinnati Reds!”
Too bad Patzer didn’t to on to become Governor of Maine. Just maybe something he might have done could have put a chain of reactions in motion to save us from the State’s current Governor.
One bad decision, and you pay for it for the rest of your life.
https://youtu.be/ywYGUYd9Yqs