Goose...Hawk...Ducky...we're talkin' baseball...

A writer much more famous, and much more talented, than yours truly, once penned a novel titled “The Winter of Our Discontent.” The author’s name was John Steinbeck. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Or maybe you’ve heard of his dog, Charley...

I do not think that “The Winter of Our Discontent” had anything to do with baseball. With that being said, it’s July and we are well on our way through the 2023 Major League Baseball season. Mr. Steinbeck’s novel came to mind as I considered how well my favorite baseball team has been playing this year.

That team would be the St. Louis Cardinals. The last I checked, the Cardinals were in LAST PLACE in the National League’s Central Division. “Last place” are not two words those of us who are Cardinals fans normally would associate with the Birds on the Bat.

And yet, there they are. Behind the Reds. The Pirates. The Brewers. And the Cubs. Yup. The Cardinals were in last place...behind the Cubs. You have no idea how hard that was to write. Oh, well...

So, with apologies to Mr. Steinbeck, based on what we’ve seen so far in 2023 from the Cardinals, we’ll just say this is “The Summer of Our Discontent.” Thank goodness there’s always next year.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s move on to something that might be a little more fun when it comes to baseball. Well, I thought it would...

As you know, I like watching critters of all sorts and shapes and sizes. As I was spotting some critters during the Journey Through Life over the past week or so, sometimes in the company of Bob, I got to thinking about the nicknames of baseball players.

For example, one day last week, I saw what looked like it could have been a starting lineup for a Canada goose baseball team. As it turned out, there were only seven geese, which meant that they would have been a few players short of a nine-critter starting lineup.

Goose, of course, was the nickname of a Major League Baseball pitcher whose last name was Gossage. Never saw Goose pitch, but he played in some big ol’ honkin’ games during his career.

(I also learned while doing extensive research for this column that Goose is the name of a cat which is a character in Captain Marvel’s world. Goose, however, is not a “real” cat, in more ways than one. For one thing, Goose apparently is computer generated. For another, Goose is  some sort of alien creature called a Flerken. Flerkens emit tentacles from their mouths. Hope Bob doesn’t get any ideas.)

We’ll finish up with a couple of other critter/baseball player nickname connections:

I spotted a rabbit in a yard one day last week. Rabbit Maranville played baseball long, long ago. 

On a very, very steamy afternoon last week, I saw a hawk make a stop at a pond and get a drink of water. I had never seen a hawk do that. Hawk Harrelson was a baseball player.

At another pond, I saw two ducks. Ducky Medwick played for the Cardinals back in the day.

I also saw an egret. Couldn’t come up with a baseball nickname connection for that one.

Enough for now...