Wall Street Journal Warns of Chris Young’s Giganticism

Hey, no one’s going to sit here and type a list of tall-related zingers they came up with last night.  As a guy who once wrote an article for the local paper in high school called “No, I Don’t Play Basketball,” I am very familiar with unfair stereotypes that are assigned to people of a certain height.

“Why aren’t you good at sports?”

“Why are you always running into the ceiling fan?”

“Why don’t you fit inside of cars?”

These are the challenges we face in an unmerciful, relentless society where height is endlessly linked to athleticism.  So a 6′ 10″ guy like tonight’s Mets starter Chris Young, whom the Wall Street Journal says is so tall that he can reach closer to the plate from the mound than anyone else, is basically a traitor to his kind.Yes, like most mid-80s fastballs, Chris Young can reach out and drop his in the catcher’s mitt.

Of course, if you ask ESPN New York, the Mets have the advantage anyhow, based on Cole Hamels’ “struggles” with the Mets last season.  I guess I should have put the quotation marks around “Cole Hamels” and not “struggles” because the “struggles” were never really “Cole Hamels'” fault.  Why I put those second sets of quotes in there I have no idea.

You can’t look at a bunch of games where the Phillies didn’t hit for Cole–and one in which Cole had the only hit–and say that he didn’t do his job.  As the Mets found out a lot in 2010, scoring one or two runs wasn’t the same thing as “guaranteed victory,” and as the Phillies found out, scoring zero runs guarantees it even less.

So I can’t really accept the argument that the reason the Mets have the advantage tonight is because Cole Hamels doesn’t pitch well against the Mets, because that’s just not true.  The Phillies didn’t play well against the Mets.  Actually, that’s not even true.  The Phillies didn’t play well against anybody when Cole Hamels would pitch.  I have no idea why.  Neither does anyone else, so don’t leave this blog and go clicking around for some thought-out analysis on Crashburn Alley or something.  God, Bill probably has it all figured out by now.  That blog is like a calculator mixed with a… guy.  Its not even fair.

You’d like to think that the way the Phillies are swing the bats right now–namely at the ball, and then hitting it–it wouldn’t matter what mythical creature was standing on the mound, whether it be a giant or a centaur an ill-tempered gryphon.