An examination of quirky, excellent and legendary names from the sport of baseball and their most-made-up stories. Also covered: Baseball, not baseball.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Bris Lord: All your pork are belong to us
Philadelphia Athletics outfielder Bristol 'Bris' Lord played on Connie Mack's legendary teams of the early 20th Century.
An average career hitter, Bris at some point picked up the nickname "The Human Eyeball." This nickname is a bit mysterious as his walk rates aren't terribly impressive and he struck out quite a bit for the Deadball Era, calling his eyesight and strike zone judgment into question. Maybe it came from his ability to spot a fetching prostitute from three city blocks away. Or perhaps it, uh...
...hmmm...that's an odd...wait...is that?
HOLY SHIT1! This man's middle name is Robot Ham! And his last name is Lord! He was the Robot Ham Lord!
What could possibly drive parents to christen their child with such an incredibly conceptual name? Is Athletics teammate Ossee Schrecengost responsible? Was it time-traveling, sentient porcine bipeds incubating swine flu? Was it related in any way to the assassination of James A. Garfield two years before the Robot Ham Lord's birth2? Who succeeded Bristol as the next Robot Ham Lord3? And why was his nickname synonymous with the Jewish circumcision ritual4?
All of these questions will be answered in my forthcoming speculative historical conspiracy theory book "Eye in the Sty: Rulers of the Underground Autonomous Mechanical Pig Society in America, 1860-19945."
1 Pardon the profanity, but a more splendid name has never reached this hack writer's eyes.
2 It is not unreasonable to think that Charles J. Guiteau, himself of French (!) descent, acted in the interests of God, who had clearly told him to kill the president. Some people say, however, that this was a misinterpretation of Guiteau's confession, in which he claimed that he had acted on orders from the "Robot Ham Lord." Of course, as the word "robot" was not yet introduced (Guiteau's words are evidence for the time-traveling porcine biped theory), it was all dismissed as gibberish except for the bit about the "Lord."
3 And what was the method for determining succession? Was it birthright? In my soon-to-be-published book, I will give details on how the Athletics' acquisition of Bris Lord from the Cleveland Indians in 1911 was actually the method for secretly passing the title to Shoeless Joe Jackson, who would attempt to infect America's game in 1919 during the Black Sox Scandal. Historical accounts consider Jackson a dimwit, but few know that he actually masterminded the whole scandal.
4 Some astute scholars have also claimed that the Robot Hams were sent back to the 1860s by pork farmers from the future (part pig themselves by this time) in order to spread the use of futuristic and kosher bacon. Unfortunately, the pigborgs sent back in time almost immediately failed to spread the neo-bacon gospel and instead got distracted by the Machiavellian workings of inner-city politics and the vices that come with it.
5 No psychotropic drugs were harmed in the making of this post. This post has been brought to you by Extreme Boredom: Now in Audio Form!
Robot Ham: A legitimate alternative to Robot Chicken.
ReplyDelete"The Human Eyeball" nickname was probably bestowed by the Robot Ham overlords.
ReplyDelete