Game 17 - Had A Bad Game

The Intro
You know the expression, “shooting fish in a barrel”? Read on.

Meet the fish, This is your life!!!

It isn’t lying if the intention is humour! Yes, we make things up here at The BLOG; I think that is well established. The BEST though, is when the truth is better than the fiction. Take the Mark Doyle head smack with Cliff Tucker. The fact that I didn’t have to change a thing made it hilarious for me! The fact that most readers wondered how much of that story (if any) was true made it only better. Other stories like the Danny Chiasson and Brett Mabee bully episode appeal to my sicker sense of humour while remaining patently untrue. (or is it?)

Rarely, however, is a person afforded the opportunity to write about someone who is so comical in so many ways that no one if their right mind would think that it is anything other than a hundred percent fiction. It has taken a year and a half to the get the full 360 degree view on this one, there is simply that much data. In addition to Google (my main investigative search tool) I also exploited resources on Wolfe Ave, Fraser Ave, Metcalfe Cres, O’Leary Ct and yes, Hammell Blvd, Rexdale and Wood(a)bridge. Hours of research at the Library also came in handy as well as some impromptu interviews in the clubhouse.

As you read, bear in mind that this is ALL true!

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the subject of this week’s exposé is none other than the early pick for Grisslie MVP, Piero Del Greco. One quick thing off the top is that Piero is like a sponge for abuse. Let’s face it, this league has some characters that will take a shot (verbally of course) and I have to say that those who take shots (myself included) fully expect to get the same in return! Piero is a little different, he absorbs the verbal barrage like a Mike Tyson punching bag and when he opens his mouth to say something he almost always piles on with more jokes about himself!

Let’s start with a soft one. Piero was in the club house one night and he’s going on and on about eating ‘cob on the corn’. ‘Cob on the corn’ this; ‘cob on the corn’ that. Finally I said, “Piero, it’s called ‘corn on the cob’ it’s like you’re orally dyslexic.” Piero’s response? “No, I don’t throw up after I eat”.

Now this may come as a surprise to you, but Piero NEVER played baseball until last year! I know, I’m still reeling! Additionally, he never played hockey except for one pickup game when he was 12, never tobogganed, never camped, and never fished until he was an adult.  To this day he can’t walk by a bathroom vending machine without dropping a toonie and a loonie on the vial full of 1/256th of an ounce of Polo cologne. (actual market value is about six cents)

So big deal, lots of guys have never played hockey. Sure, most of them live in Central America, but they do exist. And lots of city kids don’t camp. And Rexdale hardly has ANY hills so it is completely understandable that a person could miss out on the childhood experience of tobogganing. And who hasn’t caught themselves “dabbing on 3 dollars worth of that bathroom polo” right before your own version of Carrie Underwood took a Louisville slugger to both headlights and slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

But all of these “never did’s” pale in comparison to never swimming. Piero’s abject fear of water is legendary. He showers with a life jacket. It has gotten so out of control that he keeps an inflatable raft in the truck when he goes through the car wash (just in case the window cracks and he can’t get out). Piero only drinks dehydrated water bottles during ball games.  He won't listen to the "barbie girl" song because its sung but Aqua. 

Piero in the backyard pool (its hard to see the tears)

Being from Rexdale and ethnic (or as he says, ‘et-nik’), Piero has long tried to pass himself off as being from Woodbridge. I asked him about this. He said “what’s the big deal? They’re the same height.” After waiting a few minutes to allow for the latest abuse of the English language to fully register, I said, “do you mean that they are the same distance above Toronto? The same latitude?” He says, “yeah, same distance, but I don’t care how they act”.  I started to say "no Piero, not attitude..." but really, what was the point.

The sad part is that I wanted to tell him that Woodbridge wasn’t exactly the upgrade that he thought it was over Rexdale, but my brain hurt by then.

Remember the song by SNAP called Rhythm Is A Dancer (click the name if you don't recall it)? Well then, using simple logic, if Rhythm is a Dancer and Rhythm is not Piero then Piero is therefore not a Dancer. I was only joking earlier in the year about Piero being a club kid. I guess sometimes you can just tell (like Ingofiche and boating) because he was a serious 80’s disco-scene club-boy! Every self respecting club-boy (self respecting club-boy?) had to have a shtick. Piero, of course was no different.

Piero in da club

Note the look he was going for. Being a child of the 80’s he was stuck between Ally Sheedy’s character (Allison Reynolds for the pop culture freaks) in The Breakfast Club and Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure. Oh, by the way Piero, the letter “G” as in ‘singer’ is silent.  FYI, the "G" is also silent in 'sandwich'.

Role models?  Ally Sheedy and Robert Smith

Piero the club boy actually tried to hit on chicks that looked like Ally Sheedy while dancing to the tortured music of The Cure. Back in those days (25 flippin’ years ago) DJs used to take morbid songs and put the same New Order dance beat over it and call it ‘techno’. I’m sure I’ve lost many of you at this point, but the point is that you could be at a club for 6 hours and never hear the music change.

Despite the constant, endless, monotonous repetition of bad music Piero tragically, some would say, never learned to dance. That might be one of the reasons why Samantha and Piero’s first song at their wedding was the Hokey-Pokey. Or maybe it was just Piero’s childlike sense of humour.

Wedding Guests doing Hokey-Pokey

Because "that's what its all about"!  Piero's brother (right)

thinks there is a prize.

I recently had the pleasure of conducting a phone interview with Piero’s mother, Annalia. She’s a sweet lady, kind of reminds me of great grandmother, Francesca DeMarco. One thing I’ll say for Annalia is that she babies her boy in a HUGE way.

Annalia: You’re-a doing a feature on-a my boy.
The BLOG: Yes ma'am and thanks for giving your time today.
Annalia: Its-a no-a problem. Better you speak-a to me than my Piero, he’s-a very stanco!
The BLOG: Sorry, he’s smelly?
Annalia: No-a, No-a, No-a, he-a smells wonderful, like-a da 'polo', but he’s-a tired, stanco, Si?
The BLOG: Oh! Apologies, so why is he so tired?
Annalia: Nessun problema....it’s-a da home, Piero, he lavoro too hard.
The BLOG: Lavoro? Is that ‘work’?
Annalia: Sì, sì, sì
The BLOG: Well you know one of his daughters has the measles. And the other has the mumps!
Annalia: Sì.
The BLOG: And you must know that Samantha has pneumonia!
Annalia: Sì, they’a will-a be okay, but my poor-a Piero, he must-a make his own minestra di pollo!!!
The BLOG: You got me again, ‘minestra di pollo’?
Annalia: Coq-a Soup

Piero’s mom is devoted to him beyond any mother I’ve ever seen or heard of. She even had a wax statue of him made that she takes EVERYWHERE so she can get ‘pictures’ of Piero with famous people. It was actually very well done, note how “life-like” the Piero statue looks in the pics (which can be found hanging in the Del Greco living room).

The only give away is that the statue is always wearing the same shirt!  Otherwise, its perfect!

Cal Steeves (séance master) has a sense for how people are in tune with spirits and whether they are potential conduits to see in the beyond and communicate with the dead. He identified Piero’s potential during the first game of the year and Cal has been calling him his “young Padawan” all year. Here is picture of when Piero reached stage 3 of his training. 98 stages to go!!!

I see dead people!

Not to give TOO much away on Piero, but he’s studied at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Princeton (and in case Joy is reading - also at St. Francis Xavier). Sorry, typo. He has BEEN studied at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton and St FX. Piero was born with more hair than your typical human.

Piero, 3 months

Piero has actually lost hair since birth. There was some thought in his toddler years that he may be “the missing link”. A throwback, if you will, to a time just after we were swinging in trees but just before we walked upright. It turned out after years of research that he was just obscenely hairy. The condition is called Pelosoisis. Take a look at the pictures below. One is of Piero’s hair and the other is of a brillo pad. While I don’t pretend to be a scientist, I simply can’t tell them apart.

Which one is the brillo pad?

Piero shows off his “living proof of evolution belly”

CAM:  "holy crap Piero, does Sam vacuum you???"

Being Italian comes with heavy obligations. Piero must be front and centre when any manual labour is being done in the neighbourhood particularly if it has anything to do with cars or cement.  Once, James Taylor was going to buy a $139.00 dollar shed from Home Depot.  Over a beer and snack (genoa salami on a calabrese bun with a drizzle of olive oil...bellisimo!), Piero explained how they could build the shed in half the time for half the price!  James was wary, but Piero eventually convinced him when he recruited the labour of Mike Olliffe. 

By the time they were done, Piero had broken 2 rented cement mixers, left cement to harden overnight in a wheelbarrow, and continued to lift his shirt to scare off neighbourhood children.  You can see in the picture below that James went to Home Depot, bought the shed and assembled it himself and was inside watching a Blue (not Brew) Jays game while they guys worked all day trying to get Piero's hand out of the mixer.  The concrete pad in James' backyard is now referred to as Piero's $22,000.00 patio. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time!

One thing that I can say unequivocally is that Piero is full of ideas.  Some of them are good.  The odd one is well formed.  On rare occasions they are thought out.  But, regardless, the boy has ideas and that's a positive thing.  One day I opened the Tottenham Times and saw the picture below under a headline saying, "UNIDENTIFIED TOTTENHAM MAN THINKS ITS FUNNY TO SPRINT THROUGH TOXIC DUMP"

Mike Olliffe:  "I get this comedy for FREE!"

Piero is quite the outdoors man!  I had the pleasure of hanging with Piero while he was camping this past weekend and I have to say that not being a camper myself, I learned A LOT about how deal in the wilds of Fergus Ontario. 

The 'woodsman' cooking

A picture is worth a thousand words.  At least.  There a couple of things worth noting here.  One, notices the jaunty angle of the BBQ.  Two, notice the child (mine) behind Piero with the BBQ slowly sliding across the picnic table toward him.  Three, notice Piero distracted by a pretty butterfly or maybe something shiny.  Also, and this is a nit-picky kind of thing, but they are called "tongs" NOT "thongs".  

TEN MINUTES LATER

The aftermath

Nearly as legendary as Piero's aqua phobia is his pain tolerance!  Oh, don't go thinking that he got burned trying to save a child from the sliding BBQ.  No, it was something far more tragic than that.  You see Piero was watching the butterflies and was somewhat hypnotized by the floating colours and started mindlessly chasing them around the campsite; all the while trying to snap them in his tongs (not thongs).  Of course seeing this, the dogs started chasing him around the campsite.  Six dogs on leashes criss-crossing in front of him was an accident waiting to happen!

 

At this point, are you REALLY surprised that this happened?  Piero was bound six ways to Sunday in dog leashes and pinned for about 20 minutes.  When we stopped laughing and caught our collective breathes, we undid him.  The picture at the picnic table with the Kleenex on his leg is from a 'burn' mark caused by one of the leashes.  He squeezed it for about an hour trying to get a drop of blood out of it, but to no avail. 

The stories are endless and adventures are many.  I didn't event use half of the stuff that was provided.  I have a strong suspicion that we'll be revisiting this one.

Oh...holy cow, I nearly forgot! 

A cake for the pieman!!!

So there you have it.  Shooting fish in a barrel.

Happy Birthday Dude!

The Speech

Being a sub in the game before ours had me very rushed in the few minutes between games and I have to say that Rob caught me a little 'usnsuspecting' with this song!  I guess when you've had enough of losing you just know its time to break out the heavy artillery.  This is to to tune "had a bad day" which you can hear by clicking the link. 

Had a Bad Game

Where is the big play when we need it the most?

You kick at the dirt and the magic is lost

They tell me your blue skies fade to grey

They tell me your lightening speed has gone away

And I don't need to carry on

You hit it on a line but it still finds a glove

You look in the mirror and its that guy you'd shove

You tell me the bases are way off line

You're falling between them every time

And I don't need to carry on

Cause the Joints will have a bad game

But you don't need to frown

If you were a "Rounder" then you'd really be down

You say you don't know

You tell me don't lie

You work on your throws, it only takes time

You had a bad game

The Donini stars don't lie

The playoffs are coming and your game you will find

The Joints will have a bad game

They'll have a bad game

Well you need a blue sky holiday

Playing the Cleats would be okay

Save the Units for another day

We'll win our next game

but you don't need to frown

If you were a  "Rebel" then you'd really be down

You say you don't know

You tell me don't lie

You work on your throws, it only takes time

You had a bad game

The Donini stars don't lie

The playoffs are coming and your game you will find

You only had a bad game

You just had a bad game

Sometimes it make you stop to think

And the whole thing turns out wrong

You feel you're not on track and you know

But then is when you need to be most strong

And I'm not wrong

So where is the big play when you need it the most

Do you kick at the dirt and feel the magic is lost

Cause there's no more bad days

You hit it downtown

You sang a stupid song and you turned it around

You say you don't know

You tell me don't lie

You worked on your throws, it only took time

There's no more bad games

The Donini stars won't lie

And how does it feel to hit the playoffs on a high

No more bad days

No more bad days

The Game
After a month of ....

"I think we're coming out of it..."
"The score makes it sound worse than it was...."
"We were a couple of breaks away...."

The Grissliess win, the Grisslies win, theeeee Grisslies win!

I want to be fair to the Joints here, but the final score is not reflective of the game.  We gave up 8 runs in the 7th inning, making the final 17-14, but until that point we absolutely dominated!

There are a few things that we learned when we were going bad that we stayed with and a couple of things that we tried differently last night.  One of our 'tried and true' measures is the top of our lineup.  Its now been 7 games in a row where we've scored 2 runs or more in the first inning. Its a good combo.

Last night we were stuck a little with the lineup and I had Radar and Simon following the triumvirate of Ingo, Greg and Piero.  As it turned out, we Piero was 4 for 4 and Ingoight we were stuck a little with the lineup and I had Radar and Simon following the triumvirate of Ingo, Greg and Piero.  As it turned out, we Piero was 4 for 4 and Ingo and Greg were on another 5 times between them.  Radar had all kinds of RBI chances and cashed them in.  Having Simon behind him to pick up the pieces was perfect and the line up turned over smoothly. 

Danny boy sat out the last inning which may not have been the best coaching decision of the year.  The outfield rotation of Radar, Danny and Cal was excellent and moving Ingo to 3rd base solved a lot of problems for us.  The infield was as good as I've seen it all year.  Brett played second and he looked as comfortable as I've seen him all year.  With Dave at short and me at 1st the infield was tight and we turned 2 double plays and very nearly had two others. 

Way to go Grisslies, everyone contributed last night and we were full value for the win.  However, I'm not going to think of it as winning 17-14. I'm just going to remember it as 17-6 six inning affair. 

Rest up lads, double header next week and no Danny!