Rookie throws "like a crafty veteran".
In a shocking development following Tuesday's one-game playoff in Minneapolis between the Twins and the Tigers, Major League Baseball has just announced that Detroit's starting pitcher, Rick Porcello, is just 20 years old. While players of both teams and the league were aware of this fact, it didn't stop Twins pitcher Scott Baker from voicing some envious feelings.
"He grows more facial hair than I do," said Baker sheepishly before telling the press how they could reserve their lower club season ticket seats at Target Field by logging onto Twins baseball dot com.
In spite of the information being freely available on the internet, the broadcasting crew of the televised event didn't bring up Porcello's age once. When asked why, both Chip Caray and Ron Darling shrugged their shoulders.
"Well," said Caray, "my first name is Chip. What do you expect from a guy whose first name is Chip?"
"Where's Dale?" giggled Darling, before asking us to repeat the question. This time he appeared genuinely shocked. "Porcello is just 20 years old? That's preposterous! He pitches with the veteran savvy of a man between the ages of 29 and 32!"
Indeed, the rookie pitcher delivered a strong performance which could jettison him into a favorite for the discussion of AL Rookie of the Year. A statistical website, superawesomemegarealstats.com had metrics Wednesday morning showing that Porcello threw the fastball of a 29-year old, the slider of a 30-year old, the curveball of a 33-year old and the changeup of either a 36-year old or a 22-year old...which is still older than Porcello by a minimum of 14 months depending on when that fictional 22-year old would have his birthday.
When asked why he couldn't just throw "like a 20-year old, already", Porcello said "Two days after Christmas I can drink beer! My dad is taking me to the bar!"
Sadly for TBS, now it's too late. The youngest player in the American League this year, pitching that well in a game of that magnitude with that kind of confidence and savvy, well, that's a trough that Carey and Darling weren't able to go to time and time again, over and over until it was beaten into the ground, into the minds of the millions of baseball fans across the globe until it was so automatic and so engrained that they would be able to predict when the announcers would bring it up again and therefore want to vomit or at the very least turn it into a running joke that was still funny two days later.
"I can't believe we missed that chance," cried Darling, sobbing into his hands.
"My name is Chip," said Caray.