Please forgive me for the delayed reaction. I honestly have no idea how I missed it -- it's the kind of sports headline that we here at Instant-Replays.com live for (of course, there's really only one of "us," but never mind that). The story I'm speaking of surfaced last week, and inexplicably I glanced right past it, which is kind of like failing to notice a deer carcass on your front stoop.
Apparently, Cubs' left fielder Moises Alou pee-pees on his hands in the offseason in order to make it easier for him to grip his bat with no batting gloves. It seems that Mr. Alou thinks that urine toughens up the hands. Never mind that this is the first recorded instance of "urine" and "tough" being used in the same sentence; this is horrifying. I have so many questions about this, I don't know where to start. First of all, how did this story get out to the papers? Did Moises "leak" the story to a local beat writer? If so, why? I'll tell you one thing, if I'm regularly mictorating on my hands during the long and lonely winter months, I'm not going to be sharing that info with anybody.
Secondly, at what point do you decide that maybe it's just a good idea to wear batting gloves instead of drizzling your excrement all over your palms? Mightn't that be a more appropriate course of action? And furthermore, isn't there some kind of a salve or a tonic that one can rub on his hands to toughen them up instead of urine? What about gasoline? Castor oil? A cheese grater? Murphy's oil soap and a brillo pad? I'd like to believe that Moises Alou tried several methods to toughen up his hands and settled on urine as a last resort. But somehow I don't believe it. You've gotta believe that on some level Moises is proud of his dirty little secret, or he never would have told anybody about it.
The worst thing about this whole thing is, now I'm suspicious of everyone in the major leagues who doesn't wear batting gloves. I see Brewers' infielder Craig Counsell striding up to the plate clutching his bat in a weathered pair of palms, and I'm picturing things...
You know what? I'm going to let that rant lie right there before it goes somewhere we will all regret. Besides, I kind of need to use the restroom...
