So Brian has decided to start writing his blog again. This of course means I have to start writing mine again. I'm not sure how that makes me feel, but I don't have much of a choice.
When Brian's wife is out of town, he blogs. That's sad.
I don't know what to make of the choice to name his blog after Henry Cotto's mustache. Several jokes about the sexual innuendo of this choice come to mind, but I generally try to stay away from jokes that are too easy. In this case, what I find interesting is that Brian chose Henry Cotto, when all of his pre-adult life, Brian had a poster of Alvin Davis in the TV room of his basement. If you want to hold up a mustache as the pinnacle of manliness, I would have gone with Alvin Davis. He was more successful and more handsome than Henry Cotto. And I think Brian is selling himself short by suggesting that he is only an average sports writer. I think Brian, like Alvin Davis, would be the star sports writer at a crappy paper, and maybe even win Rookie of the Year and make the All-Star game once. But I understand that the point of Brian's blog aims to be self-deprecating... a tactic used to set the bar as low as possible. I fully endorse this approach. I just think Alvin Davis should have been the choice.
More interesting to me is the inclusion of Joe in this version of the blog. Joe has a job as a sports writer, so theoretically he should bring some professionalism and talent to the writing on this blog. To be honest, I haven't read much of the blog so far, so I can't comment on Joe's contribution. But I did start wondering... if Brian is Henry Cotto, who is Joe?
After an exhaustive 2 minutes of research, I came up with this: Joey Cora. I thank Wikipedia in advance for all this material (Joey is the one crying, which I thought was particularly suiting).
To begin with, who can pass this up: Joey Cora first came to national attention in 1986 for thwarting an attempted murder. While playing for the Beaumont Golden Gators and waiting to board the team bus in Texas, he was stabbed twice by two men for no apparent reason. The attempted murder he managed to thwart was, in fact, his own, and he thwarted it by being rushed to the hospital and surviving. Can you think of anybody more likely to be stabbed at random than Joe Tone? I sure can't.
NOTE: after my own racial profiling experience in Texas, this is just further proof that nothing good will ever happen there, and further reinforces my conclusion never to return to Texas.
His official nickname: "Little Joey" (this speaks for itself).
Little Joey did have one amazing season, 1997, in which he had a 24-game hitting streak as a switch hitter. He batted .300 for the year with 11 home runs and 54 RBI (I want to make this RBIs, but I'm sure that would be redundant). Just like Cora, Tone is capable of having one amazing year. I'm not sure if that year has come or gone, but Tone's version of the Cora hitting streak has to have been when he insulted that player for the Cavs in the locker room (wish I knew the details of that story but I don't).
Incidentally, there were persistent rumors floating around Seattle in 1997 that Cora was on the juice. While these have never been substantiated, I am pretty sure that Joe was on human growth hormones as a child.
Lastly, and I'm guessing here, but if I had to put money on it, Joe Tone played second base in Little League baseball.
So Brian, here's my suggestion. If you're going to co-author this blog with Joe, you need to rename it. Change it to A Lot Like Alvin Davis and Joey Cora.
