Lou Skizas ostensibly earned his nickname "The Nervous Greek" from a lengthy routine he performed before each at-bat. The Chicagoan outfielder's ritual makes Nomar Garciaparra's pre-batting routine look like Warren Newson's, if you know what I mean.
However, in a rare and completely fabricated interview, Skizas disclosed that he actually picked up the nickname after constantly mumbling to his 1950s teammates about the financial crisis striking his homeland1...in 2010.
Teammates dismissed his ramblings as incoherent babbling and a nervous tic. But Skizas HAD traveled to the future, thanks to a clever device obtained from the back of a cheesy science fiction paperback. While in the future, Lou visited with his still-alive self in 20112 and returned to the 1950s to tell of the great embarrassments suffered by the Greek people in the 21st Century.
After many years of arguing about the future, Lou realized no one would ever believe him, so he settled in to everyday, post-baseball life. He earned a PhD in biology and taught at Illinois State University and the University of Illinois, where he also coached the baseball team.
He's since retired from teaching, though he at times worked a scout for the Chicago Cubs. Today, Skizas lives near Chicago somewhere, sitting on top of a pile of money he's made on sports betting, thanks to a sports almanac he's kept under his pillow for 55 years.
Read Lou Skizas' actual story here.
1 Actually, Skizas' homeland was Chicago, though his parents had immigrated from Greece.
2 The astute reader will mention paradoxes here. The author wonders why this interrupts your suspension of disbelief, but you can believe the plot of any episode of Doctor Who. Sure, it's fine when writers pull magical sci-fi crap to whitewash poor plot planning, but when someone tries to create a fictional account of a real person's life, it becomes unacceptable. Well screw you! We don't need you anyway2A!
2A Please don't stop reading. Although if you do stop reading, our sponsor will send hooligans to your front door with bar mallets in hand.
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