Guest post: The return of Brandon
Posted on February 29th, 2008 – 11:41 AMBy Michael Rand
We were starting to wonder the other day what the heck happened to formerly-frequent commenter Brandon. And then out of the blue he sent us an e-mail explaining his absence (new job) and offered up this little ditty about Michael Cuddyer and his magic habits. It’s a Friday. Why not just run with it? Also: reminder that YouTube Sunday is definitely on. Send your links! They will be posted! Become famous! Get random phone calls from women who have been in Playboy! OK, Brandon:
Michael Cuddyer is something of a brilliant magician. Apparently he’s got close to 45 minutes of top-notch sleight of hand material; he has amazed his teammates during spring training with his textbook trickery.
This leads to a question: does this information make you like Cuddyer more, or less?
On the one hand, having such an innocent hobby (one shared with Dunder-Mifflin’s Michael Scott, it stands mentioning) makes Cuddy seem more human, more of a regular guy, a stand-up sort of fellow with whimsical interests. Doing magic is eminently more relatable than some of the more common hobbies enjoyed by professional athletes, like collecting jets or diving into pools of gold medallions.
On the other hand … come on, man; magic? If it wasn’t for role-playing games and fantasy movies, magic would be the nerdiest of all adult diversions. We’ve all read the recent University of Illinois study that found no one who has perfected a magic trick has ever gotten lucky. That’s common knowledge.
Cuddyer may be “normal,” but so am I, and so are you, and everyone around us is normal as well. Do we really want the athletes on our beloved sports franchises to be someone we could easily envision joining us at our lame parties and sitting in the cubicles next to ours, discussing recent innovations of wrinkle-free slacks? The heroes of yesteryear, your Joe Namaths and Ted Williams and Eddie Gaedels, would have slapped the taste out Cuddyer’s mouth for his inherent geekiness. Have our standards been lowered to a point that an admitted dork like Cuddyer — he didn’t even try to hide his shameful hobby! It’s as if he isn’t embarrassed at all! — can remain in the general public’s good graces?
Discuss amongst yourselves.
13 Responses to "Guest post: The return of Brandon"
Is Cuddyer responsible for those Magic Mushrooms?
1. Don’t be hatin’ on role-playing games. My brother (Father Max) sees more naked women in a week than you will in a lifetime (oh yeah, maybe that’s ‘cuz his day job is figure-drawing instructor).
2. Shameful hobbies are what makes America great. Weird a cappella singing, riding a bicycle on a treadmill in a bar until you puke, running in packs across golf courses, and posting pro-Wisconsin diatribes on the website of a major metropolitan newspaper are at least as shameful as learning sleight of hand.
This post as seen on “World of B.”
I’ve always appreciated flaky Twins players (see: Ford, Lew; Redmond, Mike; et al), so I’m in favor of Cuddyer being a dork.
When he gets done with his act, if he starts thowing the deck of cards in the air and says, “Just makin it rain”…start to worry.
Good point Jon…would you rather be in the clubhouse watching Cuddyer doing magic tricks, or watching Redmond doing the “Naked Walk”?
When was the last time you heard a major incident of a Minnesota Twin beating a security guard over the head with a steel pole, getting caught with weed, driving 100+ mph through downtown St. Peter (while drunk), or trying to put out a pathetic rap album that sells 68 copies? I’ll take a dork over a criminal any day.
Joker
Franchise got tagged with a DUI a couple of years ago and Rincon was busted for steroids. Plus one of the Twins better prospects has been busted for Roids. These aren’t a bunch of choir boys either. That being said they aren’t as bad as the Vikings.
Does anyone else find it odd that the Vikings are going after these ex-Bengal defenders? First they are coming from the Bengals (I’m looking at you Chris Henry. Second the Bengals have had one of the worst defenses in the league for the last couple of years.
-Rant over, Let’s hope this gets deleted by the Strib changeover.
“Troy Hudson can spit fire.” - Ron Artest
Ah, touche jama…I repressed the whole roid thing. Got sick of hearing about it I guess.
Completely forgot about Puckett in the bathroom at Redstone too…
If you thought Perkins had it rough yesterday check out Johan’s line today.
I didn’t realize dead people could hit HR’s.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/boxscore.jsp?gid=2008_02_29_slnmlb_nynmlb_1
It’s a beautiful day, except for our collective mourning over the end of the Theo Ratliff era.
‘Toine must be losing it right now.
Wait. Is juggling dorky?
Wait. Is juggling dorky?
You’d think the answer would be “yes,” but back in the day, Doug Henning pulled some major arm candy. He tagged Charlene Tilton back when that meant something, man.
When Stu starts his own blog, I hope he calls it “Tagging Charlene Tilton”.
