Joe Lavin

I never really knew what a rotator cuff was until I started watching baseball. While I often freely discuss rotator cuffs, labrums, triceps, and other parts of what I like to call "the arm," you should really pay no attention to me. I maintain that a key difference between myself and major league pitchers is that they have things like rotator cuffs, while I just have a shoulder.

Similarly, I'm a little worried that I hear so much about strained obliques, because I'm not entirely sure whether I even have an oblique.

Honestly, I know nothing about pitching mechanics. Should you ever hear me claim -- often in a bar setting -- that a certain pitcher's "mechanics just don't look right," this can be directly translated to: "Wow, the batter just got a hit." Frankly, I'm all about results. If a Sox pitcher rolled the ball up to the plate and somehow got a strike, to me his mechanics would look pretty good.

Whenever I mention that a batter's shoulder is "leaving a little too early" or that his stance is "too open," I have usually omitted the "On TV Jerry Remy said" part of the sentence. Also, I confess that the thought "this would be a good time for a squeeze" has never occurred to me on my own, at least not in a baseball setting.

When listening to any of my analysis, one should always be aware that I never played the game past little league, by which I mean that I didn't actually make little league and instead played on the Princeton, Massachusetts (Population: 3,772!) equivalent of the little league Paw Sox.

Perhaps I sell myself a little short. Back in 1986, I was able to offer some cogent commentary when the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's legs, because I had also lost an important game that way. Luckily, the entire hopes and dreams of a region did not rest on my shoulders. However, in the annals of the Princeton-Hubbardston rivalry (non-little league division), it was significant.

I was also quite good at getting hit by pitches, so I know a thing or two about that as well.

I haven't actually figured out what a gyroball is supposed to do, though I hope to get a handle on it before Daisuke Matsuzaka throws one in a game. I'm really starting to regret weaseling out of my college physics requirement.

I have sometimes referred to a player as being "a five-tool player," although at the time I may have only remembered what three of the tools were. By the way, if I ever accidentally referred to a "six-tool player" or a "seven-tool player," thanks for not pointing it out.

I will sometimes have irrationally favorable opinions about prospects I have never seen play. Just ignore me when I do this.

Once, when I learned that a friend's friend with season tickets was ill and was looking to get rid of some tickets, I fear that I may not have displayed the appropriate amount of sympathy.

Finally, when I'm sitting in the bleachers, I can never actually tell whether a pitch is a ball or a strike, though I maintain that the umpire is still an idiot. More than once, I have complained about a call only to realize that I was the single furthest person in the ballpark from the play. Rest assured that in no way, have I ever let little factoids like this interfere with my opinion.

©2008 Joe Lavin

I have written for Slate, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Boston Herald, Salon, McSweeney's, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Phoenix, The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, and many other publications. I'm also included in May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor, the third volume in the Mirth of a Nation series. Thanks for dropping by. I hope you enjoy my Internet column. -- Joe Lavin

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