Ehren Wassermann Has a Snake for an Arm
By Justin Klugh
Say what you will about the Phillies emptying their cupboards of young prospects or whatever the cliche is, but give credit where credit’s due: the ones that are left know how to party.
It’s just a matter of the party they choose to attend. Some, like Brody Colvin, show up at the chance to go ten car bombs deep down Shitshow Drive. Others, like Ehren Wassermann, like to party by disemboweling college baseball teams with a dominant, wildly angled pitching style.
Meet Ehren Wassermann, a side arming ex-knife salesman with a history of pitching the hell out of opposing players as a Samford Bulldog. Oh, and when he was six, he had an unassisted triple play. So he was already as good at baseball as Eric Bruntlett. When he was six.
His last year in college, as a closer, he showed up in 25 games, saved three, threw 91.1 innings, and maintained a 4.04 ERA with 65 K’s. On March 26, he turned eight batters into hamburger meat in a 6-2 victory against the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This was after he spent 2001 with the Jeff Davis Community College Warhawks, going 8-1 with a 1.85 ERA.
Those numbers are high and low in the right places.
The 2003 White Sox agreed with me, retroactively, and signed him as an undrafted free agent. He was an exciting prospect, possibly capable of blowing the doors off any minor league challengers, and the anticipated day of his premiere with the Bristol White Sox soon rolled around.
He promptly went 0-1 with a 14.23 ERA in four appearances. The numbers were now in the wrong places.
But this wasn’t enough for the White Sox to give up on him, for some reason, and he spent 2004-06 going on tour through a series of minor league clubs in Kannapolis, Birmingham, and Winston-Salem.
He popped in the majors on July 7, 2007. A brief surfacing, but long enough to retire both the batters he faced in Fenway Park.
Watch him twang that ball in there. Twang. Twaaaaannnng. He looks like he’s triple jointed, or… made of… slinkies.
After spending 2008-09 with the White Sox affiliated Charlotte Knights, the Phillies winked at him and a minor league contract appeared before his very eyes, along with several of his other Spring Training nonroster invitee cohorts: Ozzie Chavez, Ryan Vogelsong, Kevin Nelson, and Dane Sardinha.
So, I don’t know what Wassermann’s got planned for his next arm trick. Maybe snapping it off and watching it turn into a snake. Either way, his signature style was both eye-catching and paramount enough to set off klaxons in the heads of the Phillies brass. We may see the 29-year-old righty and his sentient being of a right arm chuck a ball or two. If it doesn’t try to escape from him while he’s asleep or something.
Ha, ha! Who’d have thought this much time would pass and we’d still be making Eric Bruntlett jokes?!
Everybody, that’s who. God, he was a terrible baseball player. Let’s not talk about him.