Is there a Market for Competitive Retro Gamin'?

In the wake of Andrew Gardikis's unshatterable Super Mario Bros. 1 world record (which was THE benchmark for gamin' records) being shattered as of last June, it seems like a great time to venture into the world of competitive retro gaming, see if there's a market out there for this spectator sport, and whether or not it would or could be the next big thing that hits society.

Essence of a Spectator Event

It's not always polite to get all philosophical and shit...but one must ask...what is a spectator sport? What are the inherent and ubiquitous requirements for something to be regarded as a spectator sport?

Well, you need a competition and you need spectators. That's about it. In its base form as long as someone is watching a group of somethings or someones engaging in some sort of competition than yessiree that something is a spect sport.

Take this game known as "Pooh Sticks" from the smash hit television show Winnie Da Pooh,

Pooh Sticks Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q0gectxDNQ&t=3m12s

Now, some might question whether racing sticks down a river is really a spect sport...yet in this fictional case the spectators do seem to be enjoying themselves as they watch the sticks race down the river.

F Apple, F Orange. GO BANANA!

Similarly, one might question why on the smash hit television show The Simpsons...Bart, Nelson, and Ralph raced an apple, orange, and banana down the school bus floor. As it passed by all the other human units on the bus they all seemed to cheer the fruit on (well maybe not the banana which found great difficulty in gaining momentum) as they rolled down neck and neck. Some may have rooted for the apple, some for the orange....in the end there could only be one winner of the bus fruit race just like there could only be one winner of Pooh Sticks.

As long as the viewer doesn't know what the end result is...then it's great fun to watch it unfold. Yet, Pooh Sticks and Fruit Racing are just primitive forms of spect sports. To up the enjoyment of the spectators watching the event you need to up some key factors.

1. The Skill
2. The Drama
3. The Stakes

1. What if the sport in question wasn't a random event between sticks and other inanimate objects? What if two or more humans decided to test their skills at something against each other? It would make the event more enjoyable to watch. The more the skills are of a legendary nature the better. I know I can't hit a 500 foot homerun, so when I saw with my own two eyeballs both Henry Rodriguez and Vladimir Guerrero do it live...I was like "holy shit, man. He hit that ball really really far." That is The Skill, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

2. I know wrestling is fake but that doesn't mean I still didn't enjoy watching my boy Bob Backlund back in '94 put that pretty boy jabroni Bret "The Pink Boy" Hart in the inescapable Cross-Face Chicken-Wing until Bret's mommy had to throw in the towel so her precious little baby boy wouldn't get his precious little arm broken. I knew it was a shtick but it didn't stop me from cheering on Backlund, laughing at that diaper-baby Bret Hart, and thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. You know what that is? That's The Drama, that's what that is.

3. Sometimes your pride is on the line, sometimes your wallet is on the line, maybe the belt is on the line, even your career might be on the line...or is it something even greater that is on that line? There will come a time where maybe you are traveling through a great wasteland in a post-apocalyptic future and you may stop by at a barter town governed by Tina Turner....and maybe you'll wind up fighting in some manner of a "Thunder Dome" where a midget riding on the shoulders of a giant retarded man will be your opponent. You know what will be on the line in that case scenario? Yeah, your friggin' life, dude. That's what I call...The Stakes.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEHE4E_I5FM)

 Sometimes the stakes are just too high and you gotta back outta the deal...

The Wizard...

There once was a movie which made playing Nintendo into a spectator sport. The Wizard. Anyone of the ages of 25-35 remember this movie? Yeah, I bet you do...and if you said "no" then forgive me if I accuse you at this juncture of being a filthy liar...because everyone knows this movie, everyone.

There's a great divide between how people regard this film. Some look at it as a horrible film which boiled down to being a 2 hour long info-merical for Nintendo to promote some crappy products it was hawking (i.e. The Power Gluv). Other people (me included) view this as the movie which initiated the template for Retro Gaming as a Spectator Sport.

The picture starts out a little slow, but after the scene where Beau Bridges starts smashing up a car with a shovel...the audience gets pretty pumped...and it really starts gettin' goin'.

This movie changed the way I played video games. I used to in pre-1989 days play video games in an area where behind me was a sofa, a table, and some wood paneling on a wall. Yet, when I played Mario 3 after seeing this Masterpiece...I never played to an audience of wood paneling ever again. That wood paneling before my very eyes morphed into 12,000 screaming people...12,000 screaming people watching me play Super Mario Bros. 3 in the depths of my mind. After gettin' 3 stars in row and getting the 5 Up screen...I didn't turn to wood paneling to raise my fist, I didn't turn to the sofa and acknowledge its feverish applause...no way...I turned to the 12,000 screaming people to raise my fist...I got those 5 Ups for the people!

The Wizard changed the game.


Documentaries 

Competitive gaming has had a good spotlight in the form of some very well made documentaries that have been done in the last decade. King of Kong and Ecstasy of Order: The Masters of Tetris are good examples.

Kong features the rivalry between one Steve Wiebe and one Billy Mitchell, while Ecstasy showcases various Tetris legends including Thor Aackerlund.

Now before we get any further, it should be noted that being a movie that wanted a certain formula to itself, The King of Kong obviously shticked it up a bit. The rivalry was intensified as the hero/baby-face/white-cowboyhat (Wiebe) was pitted against the villain/heel/black-cowboyhat (Mitchell) character.

Anyone who knows movies knows that you don't have a movie without a good villain character and Billy Mitchell is one of the best on-screen villains I've ever seen. Even if the fans of the film identify with and root for Steve Wiebe...it was not Wiebe who made this film what it is...Billy Mitchell made this film what it is. I know it'd be weird to give an Oscar to a documentary film actor due to the fact that people don't act in documentaries but the King of Kong to me has so many Spinal Tap elements to it that it's not exactly a straight up documentary....it's a movie. That being said, I was somewhat astonished that Billy Mitchell did not get nominated for any Oscars for his portrayal of "Billy Mitchell" in the King of Kong.

The second example mentioned, Ecstasy of Order: The Masters of Tetris, is a more straight doc than movie. I think they at some point fiddled with the idea of making Thor Aackerland a heel but probably scrapped the idea. Thor looks like he's a good candidate for heel throughout the film by constantly claiming to be able to get to the holy grail of level 30 in Tetris but never offers any proof to these claims. You think he's being worked as the "Billy Mitchell" of Tetris...but then they get into his backstory and you start to really like the guy...and then at the very end of the movie....guess what? I don't wanna spoil it but...ok I will...(SPOILER) at the end of the movie that fucking Thor gets to level 30 in Tetris and your face will be all like "No WAY, he actually can DO IT!!!!!? WOW!"  (/SPOLIER)

Masters of Tetris is still an interesting look at retro gaming and the whole scene and it is great that it gives good screen time to the two female masters of Tetris (one of which is a pretty cute lesbian). Maybe you were thinking that retro gaming is all ugly old male nerds but there's some chicks doin' this too.

Twin Galaxies vs. Speed Demon Archives

In the King of Kong film we are also introduced in to an institution which is dedicated to documenting feats of skill in video game history. What I can't figure out is whether the "Walter Day" character being presented here was actually himself (i.e. a real dude) or not. Was it a shtick? Was that pretentious demeanor all an act? I don't think his character was shticked-out at all to be perfectly honest. The pretentiousness and general oddness of this "video game referee" and self declared "authority" of video game records seems to be the real deal. I don't think it's an act.

To me the fact that the Mario 1 records are not even counted on Twin Galaxies because of "glitches exploited" by the gamers is so silly. The record on Twin Galaxies for Mario 1 is listed as being 5:08....they don't even accept the fact that now TWO human beings have cracked 5 in Mario. What kind of fucking bullshit is this? Twin Galaxies can go fuck itself.

I keep up to date with the masters of retro gaming and the video game heroes of the age with that great site Speed Demon Archives Dot Org.*

Twin Galaxies? I have no respect for your operation...not in the least.

 
* Note: All these years I thought this site was called Speed Demons Archive but it looks like there's no "N" and it's actually Speed Demos Archive which sounds suuuuuuuuuper lame. Whatever though, it's still better than Twin Galaxies.


So This Retro Gamin'...Is It?

Is retro gamin' a Skill? Look, kids these days don't know what we went through. These days the companies make the games at an enjoyable difficulty for all ages so they can get the widest audience range and sell the most units. Back in my day, gamin' was brutal on your eyes, mind, n' brain. Yo, if your kid could beat Mega Man 2 at 10 years old back in the day....you had to get on the phone with Mensa as soon as it occurred to let them know that society had a "prodigy" on its hands and hope to the heavens that the child didn't mature into an evil genius. If you had a kid who could get 500K points in Tetris you were obliged to fill out a government report indicating that you had a "biological weapon" in your premises because many world governments of the era classified a brain of that magnitude as a nuclear threat to civilization.

Fuck, man. Watchin' a dude like Gardikis or the newly crowned Mario King runnin' through a Mario 1 game and seeing all the roll-stoppin', the quick-housin', the back-tubin', the 21n frame masterin', the pirahna clearin', and the threadin' of the the needles. You can see that and pretend that what is happening isn't a skill? I don't think so, pal.

A basketball player who can hit big threes gets into a "zone," a baseball hitter who can in a split milli-second pick up a 96 mile an hour fastball and jack it down the left-field line is in a "zone," what about a Tetris Master who can achieve 290+ lines, a 999,999 MAXIMUM score, and get the level 29 variable to switch over to level 00...is he in the Zone?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6mvDOKOIqY)

Oh yes, he's in the Zone. He truly is.

What is the Zone? Have you been there? Have you ever got so good at something that your brain became so efficient at it that you actually forget your even doing it while your doing it? That's the Zone. It's like...you just beat Mario 2 in like 10 minutes and you think to yourself afterwards...

"Wow, I just beat Mario 2 in the last 10 minutes but I wasn't even thinking about it. I was thinking about that one time my friend threw a full milk shake all over my other friend and I started to laugh and laugh...I wasn't even thinking about Mario 2 at all whilst I beat it in the last 10 minutes." 

-A theoretical quote from someone that was "in the Zone."

It seems as if your brain has found such an efficient way to accomplish a given task that it deems that the only thing that can get in the way at this point in achieving the task is over-thinking the situation, so naturally the brain distracts itself from thinking unnecessary thoughts and it accomplishes this feat by making itself think of things not related to the matter at hand whilst the matter at hand is efficiently taking care of on auto-pilot. Wow.

Take Exhibit A over here...

Climbing ladders...or something much much more?

Luigi has climbed up a ladder (narrowly avoiding being shot) and now has come to TWO ladders...one on the left and one on the right. Now...whether you chose left or right HAS NO BEARING on the outcome of the situation. Yet, your brain will take a few miliseconds/frames to ponder whether to choose left or right. Why would the brain waste valuable frames deciding on an action on a situation in which both paths lead to the same outcome? Because our brains are stupid, that's why. Yet when you're in The Zone, the brain doesn't deal with that shit...it just bounces up a ladder (ANY LADDER) and gets where it's gotta go.

Damn, when we're not in The Zone...it's almost like we're these victims of some sort of a collision on the open seas as our brains struggle to make routine decisions which ultimately have ZERO bearing on the future. Call it obsessive compulsive disorder, call it fear of choice, call it what you want. It reminds me of that dog who found these two bones this one time in Ancient Rome and he picked at one and then he licked the other...and then he literally went in circles until he dropped dead.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU)

Oh man, Video games are hard work sometimes.

People say video games aren't for real because they are just "games" and games aren't for real. Games can for real too though...like basketball, soccer, baseball...people know those games are for real. If you told a retro master gamer that he or she is just playing a "game," I'd bet they'd disagree with you. When your that good at something it's no longer a game anymore for you to enjoy leisurely. Let legendary relief-pitcher/philosopher John Wetteland expalin this phenomenon,
  

"[Baseball is not a game] for me. It’s something I need to execute. There’s a whole different perspective I have and that’s why maybe I can’t enjoy it the same way. I only watch baseball to learn from it, not to enjoy it."

-John Wetteland

Mario Runners, Tetris Masters, Donkey Kong Experts, Pac Man Wizards, Asteroid Champions...these people don't play these "games" to enjoy them...they play them to find the most effective way to function. They execute functions in a divine flow is what they do, they do not "play" them at all. They find the most efficient series of functions to execute in order to create a Flying Divinity of Mental Togetherness which becomes an awe inspiring event for spectators to see. You better believe it.

Now let me ask you this, does it got The Drama? Yeah, it does.

Riddle me this, if King of Kong was about just Steve Wiebe beating Donkey Kong and getting the highest score ever would you have watched it to the end? I wouldn't have. I watched that movie because of Billy Mitchell. Why did I watch it because of Billy Mitchell? Because he's Billy Mitchell.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6kiLK0Idc)

 "...Because I'm Billy Mitchell." -Billy Mitchell

All that's left is The Stakes. Some compete for the money, some for the fame, some for the thrill...but some just compete to be the best....the best that there never even was. There can only be one "The Best" and you're either it or your not. You're either Thor Aackerlund or you're not. What are the stakes in retro-gaming? What do you think?

It's about being the fucking greatest.


Conclusion

We know retro-gamin' has the skillz, the drama, and the stakes. All its missing is a venue and some media attention. It needs a place to compete, some camera people, some key grips, some dolly grips, and a handful of announcers and play-by-play people. That's it.

Years ago, a man named Chairman Kaga went through gallons of blood, sweat and tears to build his one-of-a-kind Kitchen Stadium to give a venue for his Iron Chefs to compete against all challengers this World had to offer.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TdA_yP8sV8)

Retro Gamers of all corners of this World of Worlds are asking themselves at this very moment...where's our Chairman Kaga? Where's our Video Game Stadium? When will I get to show the world my ability? When is it my turn to shine on the global stage?

When will the 7 Iron Gamers assemble on Television in the famed Retro Gamin' Stadium and do battle? That's the question on everyone's mind.

On Larry Walker (of the Montreal Expos)

Spring is here, and Warren Cromartie is on the radio and t.v. talkin' Expos so now I'm all happy today. I find I'm writing a lot about baseball again in the last little while (WBC, steroids, etc.). Baseball is something I like and it's nice and positive to write about it. I'm gonna try and write about more positive things (science, sports) in the future and try and stay away from politics. You get too negative when you get dragged into the drudges of the political world.

Larry Walker

I was listening to an interview on Mitch Melnick's TSN 690 radio program today and he was talkin' to Cro. The Cro was mentioning that his Montreal Baseball Project is well into Phase II as he is launching an economic forum/feasibility study, and he also mentioned that next year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1994 Montreal Expos team. Many know the history of that and really believe the disbanding of that squadron was the first step in the death of the Expos.

To mark the anniversary of the 1994 Expos, Montreal Baseball Project is re-uniting the team for some sort of festivity here in the city. He mentioned Pedro, Moises, Grip, Felipe, and others are gonna be part of it. I hope others show up too. Mitch asked him about Larry Walker and neither thought he would come. Cro proceeded to say that if anyone is in touch with Larry to call [him] homie, and let him know they want him there for the reunion.

Mitch mentioned that relations with Walker and Montreal are somewhat sour and I want to try and explain why that is.

Rabbit Ears

Warren mentioned that "players have rabbit ears" and I want to to try and elaborate on what he was saying.

Remember that episode of the Simpson's where Homer gets benched for Darryl Strawberry and Bart sits behind him in the rightfield stands and heckles the Straw until he sheds a single tear? That's rabbit ears.

In fact, Bart (or whichever writer wrote that bit) did not invent the "Dar-ryl" chant...fans at Fenway did (as evidenced by this video care of MLB.com):

Dar-ryyyyyyl, Dar-ryyyyyyyl.

Okay. Now, before moving on to how this relates to Larry Walker, I want to first talk about another Expos outfielder.

In the mid 1980s, the owners of each Major League club colluded to agree to not sign any free agents in order to drive their salaries down. Expos outfielder Andre Dawson left the Expos and signed a blank cheque with the Cubs. The fans had no way of knowing about the collusion that was going on, and when Dawson came to play against the Expos with the Cubs in 1987...the Expos fans booed him. The fans should have been booing the owners for colluding but with the information they had, they could only believe that Dawson jumped ship and thus they booed him under false pretenses.

Now, the same would occur in 1995...to one Larry Kenneth Robert Walker. After 1994, Claude Brochu dismantled the Expos following the cancelled season. Walker, Grissom, Wetteland, and others were traded or released. Larry Walker was let go and signed on with the Colorado Rockies. We now know that Walker wanted to take much less money to remain in Montreal but was still let go by the team in order to cut salaries. To the fans however, who had already been shafted out of a playoff berth for the first time in over a decade, were already understandably bitter and were very unfriendly to Larry when he came to Olympic Stadium to play against the Expos as a Rockie in the 1995 season. They booed the heck out of him, heckled him every at bat, and the fans in the right field bleachers gave him the Dar-yyyyl treatment something fierce.

So when Cro mentioned that "players have rabbit ears" that's what he was talking about. The fans gave Walker the Dar-yyyl treatment but who could blame them? Just like in 1987 when they booed Dawson, the fans had no idea of the back office politics going on which led to those players leaving the club. All they knew in '95 was that they just had their World Series contender team dismantled and were as bitter as hell. Once again the jeers were undeserved by the outfielder yet it is easy to see why the fans did it. How were they to know otherwise?

My sources for these two events are: I was present at the Walker "Dar-yyyl" game and very clearly remember the length and intensity of the jeers directed at Walker. While my source for the 1987 Dawson boos comes from a very reliable Expos historian (Wayne).

So,

The Walker and Montreal sourness is from a big misunderstanding by the fans, that's all. The 1995 season started on an incredibly sour note here and I don't think anyone can blame the fans for being pessimistic and quite angry that season.

It would be cool if Larry attends the Montreal Baseball Project's 1994 team reunion next summer.

Why Hasn't John Wetteland ever Wrote a Book?

I've been a fairly large fan of the game of baseball since I was little, and I've gathered a lot of information on the sport over the years.

I've also been a fairly large fan of kooks over the years, and have gathered a large amount of information on that subject as well

Sometimes it's nice when both topics collide and synthesize together, then I can read one book or article and gather information on both baseball and human kookery at the same time.

The Story of Baseball

I look at baseball as just one long story. One long history. The weird thing about it is that the records, annals, statistics, and data recorded on this story are probably more immense and accurate than any other historical collection on earth, which makes it a pretty accurate story (unlike the rest of history subjects). It's an interesting collection of data dating back to the 18th century and this story has a total of 17,786 characters in it, which is a lot to keep track of.

Guan Yuncheng

One of the first stories I encountered which had an abundance of characters (more so than I was used to) was Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms story which was written in the 14th century. It's still popular to this day, many may be familiar with John Woo's Red Cliffs film which is based on this work, or the dozens of video games based off it by Koei. Most Chinese historians will agree that the names recorded in this novel have stood the test of time (Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Jian, Guan Yuncheng, Zhang Fei, etc.).

Guanzhong's story had 978 characters in its 4 volumes...and I must say, it seemed excessive at the time. Yet, compared to the Story of Baseball, 978 doesn't seem like many characters at all. The Story of Baseball has roughly 18 times more characters involved in it than Three Kingdoms.

Each and every one of these characters has a backstory. Each and every player who has been involved in the game was an individual human person with their own unique contribution to the story. Thousands of them have died now and are just memories but at least some facet of their contribution to the Story of Baseball will stand the test of time.

Burt Lancaster

For example, many of you have probably seen the film Field of Dreams (starring James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner). In this film Jones and Costner attempt to track down a man by the name of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (portrayed by Burt Lancaster) who played only one game in his entire major league career and didn't even get to bat. Jones and Costner want to bring him to their field of dreams and give him a chance to step up to plate.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was indeed a real man, who in real life, did indeed make it into one game in 1922 for the New York Giants when he was sent in to replace George Brown in right field for one inning. Like the movie suggests, he did indeed go on to be a doctor after his brief stint as a contributor to the Story of Baseball.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Graham)

Graham is just one of the 17,786 characters involved, and though he just stood in right field and did nothing for 5 minutes, his name has stood the test of time.

Books

Pitcher Jim Bouton and his 1969 book Ball Four seems to be the likely culprit that lead to a domino effect of every ex-player writing his memoirs and sending it off to the printing press. After players set the ball in motion, soon after it was coaches (Lasorda), then umpires (Luciano), and anyone even briefly associated with baseball wanted to contribute their opinions and memories of their time being associated with it.

Now we don't just have stats, records, dates, and other stuffy facts but we have opinions, thoughts, regrets, observations, and other empirical data. We basically have a big Talmud of baseball writings containing everyone's associated personal interpretation of it. It's kind of interesting, I guess.

I've read some bad books, ok ones, good ones, and some really really good ones over the years. For instance Dick Allen's "Crash" is very good, Dock Ellis' book "Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball" is great, Bill Lee's "The Wrong Stuff" is top notch, Warren Cromartie's "Slugging it Out in Japan" is very interesting, Curt Flood's "The Way It Is" also is very interesting. Oh and No Big Deal by Bird Fidrych is real good too.

I think what makes a book written by an old baseball player good is when they are a bit eccentric and fun. I was thinking about which guys should write books before they die (in order to contribute their opinions to the Baseball Talmud). I'm sure Darrell Evans probably has some funky shit to say, seeing as he has claimed some fucked up stuff over the years. Evans hit over 40 homeruns in two seasons, once in 1973 and again 13 years later in 1985. What rejuvenated his swing to make him belt 40 homers again at the age of 38? According to him, aliens came down to earth and shared with him, and his wife, the secrets of life. I can see him having some interesting things to write about.

It's a boring dimension...

Then there's Darren Daulton, who claims to have seen the 5th Dimension of space-time while lining a ball down the third base line back in 1993, and who claimed to have traveled to the 4th Dimension on several occasions, has just put out a book. It's called If They Only Knew, and I don't think I want to read it because I think his kookiness is just a shtick to sell the book. I don't think he is a genuine kook at all and I'm sure he's just in it for the money. Darren Daulton is a bozo. Besides, everyone knows the 5th Dimension is just a bunch of boring old intersecting fucking tesseracts anyway.

What About John Wetteland?

This guy was a good pitcher.

You know, honestly, one dude who should just sit down one day and knock out a book or two is that guy John Wetteland.

I saw John Wetteland pitch for the Expos at Olympic Stadium when I was a ten year old kid. He used to come out of the bullpen and walk over to the mound while Wild Thing played in the background. He'd come into the game to shut it the fuck down and preserve the lead that the other players took eight innings to create and hold. The man threw 100+ mile an hour fastballs, sliders, and curveballs. His arm was a highly potent and highly efficient strikeout tool.

I watched him again as a thirteen year old kid on T.V., when he joined Tim Raines on the 1996 Yankees and was the MVP in the World Series that year.

Any data or backstory on Wetteland is kind of odd. Any article written about him, or any interview with him, is equally odd. I don't mean it in a bad way though, I mean it, like in way like, that this guy probably thinks about a lot of stuff, you know?

He's absolutely right in what he says around 3:20 in that video. I mean, John could just tell a kid what he did, but maybe if said kid stepped off the mound and stated "chicken salad sandwich" then the advice wouldn't work out for him. It sounds strange at first but John is trying to explain the chaos theory and the effect that tiny minute micro-cosmic actions can lead to a chain of reactive effects that can alter outcomes of future situations...

Chaos Theory:

"Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.^[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.^[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.^[3][4] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos."

(From Wikipedia)

He seems pretty honest and down to earth in his interviews. In any interview, John seems to be able to get off topic and onto some pretty cool tangents. Here's an excerpt from an interview by Baseball Prospectus where he gets to talking about not believing all information you hear,

"Even in science. Just because somebody has PhD next to his name, I don’t just sit there and nod my head. That’s one of the things I hate, and one of the things that really disappoints me about us as a society. We seem to be so spoon fed. “Spoon feed me the information and I’ll nod my head and go on about my day”—disseminate it without even thinking about it. The Big Bang Theory. How come particles exceed the speed of light in the amount of time that they do? Now, you have to take half, because it comes from a single point; it can’t go one end to the other. It’s relative, so you take half. But it still exceeds the speed of light. We all know that. There’s a convenient explanation, but it doesn’t tell me anything.

I want to know, you know. Even the questions I know that I’ll never answer. That’s why I love Michio Kaku. He has this book that I read about things we thought that we would never do, like go to the moon, fly in an airplane, and yet we did, mostly over the last 100 years. What’s in store for the next 50 years that isn’t a part of our reality now? I mean, who would have thought 20 years ago that ion engines are something we’d be using now? And that’s really cool to think about, because we need alternate sources of fuel. You can’t do solids if we’re going to do any real traveling up there. The problem is that you have one hydrogen atom per 10 square feet of outer space. So there are all kinds of things. Garrett Olson and I were just talking about that. We spent about three innings, me, him, and Brian Sweeney.

          -John Karl Wetteland

I think the question asked by the reporter was about the difficulty of changing from a starter to a reliever early in his career, but I don't think it mattered what the question was, because either way, J.K. Wetteland was going to unload a narrative of human mental restlessness that was cooking up in his noodle all day. I know, 100%, that this is not a shtick. He's just an honest guy who thinks about the future. Wetteland is just contemplating the inherent roadblocks associated with light-speed space travel. Oh, like you haven't?

Here's John responding to question about the homerun Edgar Martinez hit off of him back in 1995,

"That was a watershed moment for me," he said of Martinez's grand slam. "I detested failure and all of 1996, I pitched with the memory of my failure in '95. From then on I understood how to process certain things because I kind of went through the fire. You get refined. I'm the kind of guy who likes to kick my own rear end."

"I remember this was before [John] Elway won his Super Bowls and I was thinking, 'Am I going to be another Elway and be great in the regular season, but just can't get it done in the postseason?' " Wetteland asked himself. "So I decided in '96, that I don't care if I throw the ball 30 feet up the screen, I'm just going to let it go."

         - J.K. Wetteland (source)

Such poetic language. Why doesn't he just sit down and write a few books? What does he have to lose? They'd probably sell millions of copies. Might as well keep going with some more quotes while we're at it,

"I was always a little different, I'd go to the library, read up on tepees, build one in the front yard and sleep there." (source)

"I’m the black sheep. Everyone else is doctors or presidents of marketing for big companies and all this stuff and I’m just a baseball player." (source)

"There’s so much more going on in this world. Sports is not an escape for me. OK? And I think therein lies the difference. For many people it is. It’s the Roman Colosseum all over again. And that’s OK. It’s awesome. It’s healthy, cathartic. It’s not that for me. It’s something I need to execute. There’s a whole different perspective I have and that’s why maybe I can’t enjoy it the same way. I only watch baseball to learn from it, not to enjoy it." (source)

"I understand sequencing and all that sort of stuff..." (source)

"It’s the small things that count, the tiny tiny things.Wade Boggs ate chicken at the same time every day. Do you think that eating chicken really made him a 330 plus hitter? It’s the fact he did it always at a particular time and after that he was “Everything’s OK.” For me it was getting to the park and doing all the crosswords. That was my transition from my home life. Now I exercised my brain at something that was neither here nor there. Now I could get into my work..." (source)

This next quote needs a bit of setup first. John liked to write quatrains and couplets of poetry on the lockers at Dodger Stadium as a 22 year old rookie. This is a sample of some of J.K. Wetteland's early free-style writing,

          INVISIBLE COWS CONTROL MY DESTINY.
          COSMIC WARLORDS MAINTAIN MY SOUL.
          THE ROOM SMELLS OF BURNT PLAID.
          I AM SERVING DOUGHNUTS ON ANOTHER PLANET. (source)


Conclusion

If there's one of the 17,786 characters in the Story of Baseball who needs to contribute a full length book to the repository (or reliquary) of data which compromises the Baseball Talmud...it looks like its John Wetteland. I guarantee anything he writes is going to pretty interesting.

A Suggested title for the book..."John Wetteland in the Chaotic Cosmic Universe of Baseball"

Wiiiiiiild Thing!