Well, its time. Time for the Grisslie gloves to come off. Friggin' 4-game losing streak. Bats made out of cooked pasta, gloves chiseled out of stone. Maybe I'll feel a bit better if I pick on someone.
Lance Freakin' Horgan....meet the league. League, meet Lance Horgan.
If you don't know Lance, he's this guy
Some of you know Lance as the quiet, happy, always smiling Center Fielder of the Grisslies. Not many of you know that he has a past. A dark past.
I know that there have been lots of rumours that his name has been slightly altered from Hogan to Horgan in order to hide that past. I get it....lots of famous people including politicians (Stephane Simard) rock stars (Gord Robertson), actors (You'll find that one out in July), wizards (Kevin Boston) and former paper boys (Chuck Cragg) have resettled in Tottenham after their careers have wound down. Its easy to believe that this would be the case here.
Despite the eerie resemblance I can assure you that Lance Horgan and Col. Robert E. Hogan are in fact, different people. The reason I know this is that I went to a Hogan's Hero's convention last fall in Lafayette, Louisiana and I paid a small fortune for a strand of the Colonel's hair. DNA testing proved negative.
So who is this athletic whippet of a man? I mean, who is he really?
I know! I thought so too!!! But no one, and I mean no one knows more about wrestling (pronounced rassling) than Robert Farah and he swears that the size of Horgan's biceps when compared to Hogan's are merely a coincidence. When I sit back and think about it, he's probably right. I've never seen Lance wearing yellow before anyway.
We dig here at the BLOG. No stone is unturned in uncovering the truth. The implausible is never dismissed.
Ben Hogan wouldn't be the first celebrity to fake his death and retire to Tottenham in order to play slow pitch in the finest league in the world without any fanfare. And Lance IS a scratch golfer. Hmmmmm we might be onto something with this one. He IS kind of quiet like a golfer. And I have seen him wearing the funky tam. However, our Lance would never be caught dead in pleated pants. For that reason alone, we move on.
Paul Hogan? What? To obvious? Too crazy? Think about it....maybe Lance is so quiet so that we don't pick up on the Australian accent??? Too thin a rationale? Well, what about this then: What did Crocodile Dundee use to kill the croc and save the girl? If you said a long knife you'd be correct. Now Websters Dictionary defines a "Lance" as: A thrusting weapon with a wooden handle and a steel blade. That can't be a coincidence.
Then it hits me. The CROC got me on the right page; but there was no Horgan / Hogan relationship at all! But there was fame or infamy involved with our young Lance. He really is............
JOE DIRT!
Lance's (Joe's) fame is quite obviously his hair and the notoriety started at an early age. It's sort of a Sampson thing with Lance, although there are stories that he was bald at an early and his mom crazy glued a toupee to his head. Personally I don't believe those stories but they're good conversation starters. 
It was weird how a seemingly innocuous job would still attract attention. When they had the "shiniest school" in the province award, who won? Lance. Who evacuated the school when there was the stink-bomb threat? Lance. Who saved the kid with the peanut allergy? Of Course. Lance.
The attention just got too much so moved on to something safer and less in the public eye....
As Lance describes it, some people are just meant to wrestle crocs. It was in his third year of wrestling these critters that Lance saved the little boy who had fallen into the croc pit. Pretty cool, eh? However, the newspapers total misrepresented his heroism. The shame of it all is that he was dangling the younger baby to simply DISTRACT the croc from the other kid, not offering a trade. Lance's joke afterward to the paper was taken out of context too. He said, "Well, the baby was only 3 months old; the parents couldn't have been THAT attached to it yet. That little boy was darn near 5 years old. That's a good trade in my eyes.".
Poor Lance was asked to leave his gig.
Where does one go after the Janitorial Engineering and Croc wrestling? The carnival circuit. Obviously. Lance's hair was still getting him gigs wherever he wanted. Being a free agent he had MULTIPLE carnival companies bidding for his services. Ultimately he worked for company around Hamilton; hoping that his hair would blend into the more established mullet community there. However; when you have Lance's hair - there is no blending in. Lance's dramatic rescue of the family stuck on the Ferris Wheel and of the child choking on candy floss are legend.
His attention was world wide now. In fact Rob Farah's well painted son had a tattoo done in Lance's Honour:
That was crazy respect (peace out). But when other famous people started emulating him, he knew it was time to head to Dodge and find some peace and relaxation.
Of course, the now well known Andre Agassi copy cat hair cut is what finally pushed him over the top.
But now Lance and his hair can play ball away from the maddening crowds and the paparazzi. And most importantly, away from Andre Agassi.
THE SPEECH
Rob: I'm thinking of retiring the speech.
Doug: Shut up, you are not!
Rob: No, I'm serious. You probably won't really understand this because you just write that foolishness crap off the top of your head; but the speech takes a LOT of work. You know I don't type so good and then here is all that rhyming. My god, do you know how hard it is to find baseball related words that rhyme with "love".
Doug: How about "glove?"
Rob: Oh. That's actually a good one. But still. Its tons of work. I need a break.
Doug: Well, do you want me to do one for you?
Rob: No, that wouldn't feel right. Besides, people already suspect that I do the whole BLOG thing and you're just some kind of figurehead. Face it, people read the BLOG for the speech, not that .... whatever you call what you do.
Doug: Yeah, that's a good point. But I'd hate to see you give it up. People have come to expect it. We've done songs for every Grisslie game for over 3 year now!
Rob: I know .... that's the problem. I feel this obligation even though I'm so stressed out with the rhyming crap.
Doug: Yeah I get it. Maybe you need to go back to your roots.
Rob: Lebanon?
Doug: Not that far.
Rob: Oh, so Brampton then?
Doug: No, I mean, what do you listen to when you're driving?
Rob: The radio
Doug: Hmmm, well what do you listen to when you're alone at home
Rob: Computer. No wait, sometimes the TV music channels. Okay, I'll go with computer. Did I get it right?
Doug: Its not a right wrong thing. And its not a what I was getting at. I was more asking about what kind of music you grew up listening to. What got you motivated? First dance song? First kiss song? Whatever. Think of what makes you tick with music and you'll have no problem.
Rob: That's a good idea.
Doug: Thanks Rob
Rob: But you better not be thinking that I'm going to start writing your crappy part of the BLOG.
Doug: Of course not!
And with that, our Young Robert found his roots. Without further ado, here is Rob's rendition of Dancing Queen. Now you know Robbie's musical 'dirty little secret' . Music ===> HERE
Dancing Queen
You can run, you can dive, having the game of your life
Ooo.. see that guy, making that play, diggin' the Baseball Dream
Monday night and the lights are low
Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right baseball, getting in the swing
You seem like your a king
Anybody could hit that guy
Pitches are low and the arc's not high
We need a bit of theme music, everything is fine
You're worked the pitcher into a trance
And when you get the chance
You live the baseball dream, you're an athlete, feeling seventeen
baseball dream, feel the beat, balls hit off the back screen, oh yeah
You can run, you can dive, having the game of your life
Ooo.. see that guy, making that play, diggin' the Baseball Dream
You're so fast, you turn the jets on,
They think they have you and then you're gone
Looking out for another, any base will do
You're worked the pitcher into a trance
And when you get the chance
You live the baseball dream, you're and athlete, feeling seventeen
baseball dream, feel the beat, balls hit of the back screen, oh yeah
You can run, you can dive, having the game of your life
Ooo.. see that guy, making that play, diggin' the Baseball Dream
THE GAME
Dog Catchers Part Deux.
Its been a bad patch for the home town Grisslies. The last 4 games have seen an 0-4 record and getting outscored 61 to 40. 61 to 40! My only question is how the hell did we score 40? We needed a shakeup in a bad way so Rob and I made some changes.
First we have our first road game of the season. We've sucked as the home team, so hopefully this would do the trick. Just in case it didn't we decided to give the Sagert's and Chuckles the night off.
Then we moved Rick Cudnik to Short Stop and batting lead off. We moved Lance Horgan to Second base. Giving up your two starting Center Fielders is a bold move! So we moved Dave Argue to Center to play along side super sub Anicete. We brought Jamie McClean up from the minors to handle RF duties. I was supposed to hit the bench but ended up playing 3rd because we were short.
We changed the batting order too. Ricky leading off. Gary batting cleanup. Everything else was sort of similar. Sorta.
Funny thing happened. We scored 3 runs in the 1st inning and then played some good defense. We had a really "Grisslish" type of game. The infield defense was crisp. The outfielders hit the cut off men and the Grisslies won one!
I've got to admit, I hate pointing out when Ricky-Bobby does well, because we have to hear about it over and over and over and over and over and over. Just in case you didn't know, Rick is pretty self assured. In fact he brings an extra chair to the bar for his ego to sit down and have a drink.
KIDDING people! Ricky is a humble man. And Rick had a night to remember. Mr. Cudnik hit for the cycle! He got the homerun leading off the 7th inning! Nice game Rick, you might get a star out of it!
I did pretty well going 4/5 with two doubles and a triple and 3 runs and Gary Basso had the exact same hitting line as well while he played great in a pretty busy left field. We were aided hugely by two super subs on this night. Anicete Goncalves and Jamie McClean were fantasitc fill ins for Charlie O'Leary, Jeff Sagert, Art Sagert and Scott Pritchard. They did the work of 4 guys!
Not that the monkey is off our backs....here is what needs to happen for the next game....
- Rob and Doug need to wear retro Grisslies jerseys again.
- Ricky hits lead off
- The superman hat stays.
Did I mention the final? Grisslies 17; Dog Catchers 10.
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