When Stephen Strasburg blew out his arm last August, MASN analyst and former big leagues pitcher Rob Dibble told him to “suck it up” and play through the pain. When Strasburg’s rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery started moving ahead of schedule, Dibble said there was absolutely no reason to bring Strasburg back. The reason I bring this up is because that is a picture of Stephen Strasburg dressed as Papa Smurf from “The Smurfs”, and right now Dibble is hunched over his computer somewhere hammering out a paragraph about how the Nationals front office has no idea what they’re doing, and how the Snorks, specifically Tooter Snork, would’ve been a much better choice. Because Strasburg isn’t ready to be Allstar. Uh, cough.
According to the Nationals, this is the best thing that has ever happened.
“This is what baseball is about,” Marrero said, “being a rookie and being able to do this with my friends.”
Dress like Smurfs, he meant.
In case you were wondering, yes, that sentence fragment masquerading as a paragraph from the D.C. Sports Blog reports Chris Marrero as having said that “painting yourself blue and pretending to be a Smurf because the veterans made you” is what baseball is all about.
Jayson Werth appeared to be the ringleader, and the Smurf theme song played in continuous loop in the clubhouse during the dressing. F.P. Santangelo said the episode was “definitely” the best rookie hazing he’d ever seen in his baseball life.
I feel like somebody should’ve gotten Jayson Werth to dress up like Gargamel, because getting 10 million dollars to bat .233 is about as helpful to the team as tracking the rookies into the forest and cooking them to death in a cauldron. Maybe next year the rookie hazing theme will be “don’t finish in fourth place”.
[h/t Sportress of Blogitude]
