evolgen archive: Friday Random Ten (24 June 2005)

Dinosaur Baseball Edition

Carl Everett, Major League Baseball's foremost expert on paleontology, offered up his sage wisdom on the topic of evolution in July of 2000:

"God created the sun, the stars, the heavens and the earth, and then made Adam and Eve. The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs. You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Someone actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw a Tyrannosaurus rex."

Five years later he's expanding his realm of expertise. Recently appointed to Major League Baseball's committee for public relations, Everett offered his plans for alternative family days at the old ballpark:

"Gays being gay is wrong. Two women can't produce a baby, two men can't produce a baby, so it's not how it's supposed to be. ... I don't believe in gay marriages. I don't believe in being gay."

He doesn't believe in dinosaurs or gays (what about gay dinosaurs?) and doesn't think baseball fans know jack-shit about, get this, baseball:

"Fan is short for fanatic -- he's crazy about something he really doesn't know about. And it's proven that 99 percent of baseball fans have no idea what they're watching."

Everett's study, slated to be published by the Society for American Baseball Research, proves once and for all that baseball fans are uninformed bigots. Bill James, who was unavailable for comment, is rumored to be working on two new statistics with Everett -- for batters they propose a metric known as OPTI (Offensive comments Plus Total bases per Inning) and for pitchers they suggests the new stat OPRI (Offensive comments Plus Runs allowed per Inning). Some believe that this will revolutionize Moneyball and possibly revitalize the career of former Braves closer John Rocker.

Am I being too tough on Carl Everett? Well, I may not be able to tell the difference between a curve, a slider, and a slurve, but I can explain the infield fly rule, and I'd say I understand closer to 50% of what's going on during a game than the one percent Everett claims. Leave the biology, the sociology, and the statistics to the experts Carl, and focus on hitting the little white ball really hard.

Without further delay, I give you this week's Friday Random Ten: