Happy Birthday Lou Merloni!

Connie Mack is from East Brookfield, Massachusetts and using the alias Joseph Smith Jr. he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a practical joke while scouring the country for baseball prospects. Mack later went on to become a Hall of Fame manager and husband to 27 wives. One of his wives - Ruth Mack - begat Zebadiah who begat Mary Kate who married Jackson Pollack Hurst. The sixth child of Mary Kate and Jackson Pollack was Bruce Vee Hurst.

Bruce Hurst's famous great grandfather still had many contacts in baseball and some of them were scouts. This came in handy back in 1976 when the Red Sox had the 22nd pick in the first round. When the Dodgers took Mike Scioscia from Springfield High in PA with the 19th pick - the Red Sox were screwed. They thought nobody knew about Scioscia and they had no back-up pick. Luckily one of the scouts in the Red Sox war room was Ike Gilhooley Romney who was the bastard grandson of Zebadiah and who knew of Hurst via the Mormon secret underground railroad and because he was Bruce Hurst's third cousin. Ike Gilhooley Romney suggested Bruce Hurst as the first pick and the Red Sox draft was saved.

And now you know the rest of the story.

 

Rico Brogna is from Turners Falls, Massachusetts and one night in 2000 while on the road in St Louis a drunken Mickey Morandini sexually molested Brogna while singing the Don McLean classic American Pie. Brogna was never the same after that. It got so bad that Brogna had to be traded away from the Phillies.

Its not well known but the Frank Booth character played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet was based on Mickey Morandini.

Morandini was so evil that he once killed the overnight shift at the Plattsburgh International House of Pancakes because his waitress gave him blueberry syrup instead of maple. He killed them all with butter knives through the eyes. Morandini's only known weakness is the fact that he gets easily distracted by any song by Air Supply.

 

This has turned into the Ask Drunk Chris_L thread!

 

Brewers pitcher Chris Capuano is from Springfield, MA.

Capuano has never hit a home run in his 179 at bats but if he does manager Ned Yost has promised to buy him a pony.

 

This is a great thread.

 

I thought I would hate this thread, but instead, I like it.

 

Is it true that 1970s and 80s pitcher John Curtis (Newton, Mass.) played Enoch the Friendly Sleestak in Land of the Lost during the offseason?

 

That's a buckweaver question if I've ever read one.

 

There actually wasn't a real life Sam Malone and the character on Cheers being a Red Sox pitcher was a last minute script change (I think originally he was supposed to be a pilot). There is a connection worth talking about though.

Jerry Remy is from Fall River, MA and it is not well-known but Remy's prize possession is a collection of bottle caps. Remy has a collection of every Haffenreffer beer (green death) puzzle cap ever made and Remy has successfully figured out the answer to all but three of the puzzles. The three he has not solved - he carries with him and in his spare time he tries to figure out what the puzzle is supposed to be saying. Remy gets very annoyed when people try to help him solve the puzzles and is determined to accomplish the feat on his own.

Remy told the story of his bottlecap collection to a friend who wrote for the show Cheers and his story became the basis for the plot to an episode where Sam has a lucky bottlecap that he carries with him at all times. Sam "lends" the bottlecap to a struggling player on the Red Sox who breaks out of his slump as soon as he gets the "magic bottle cap". That episode went on to win an Emmy for best original writing on a comedy. Jerry Remy was given a writing credit for that episode and although many people believe the Emmy on his mantle at home is for the announcing work he does on Red Sox games for NESN - the Emmy is actually for that episode of Cheers.

There is some irony in the fact that Remy does some radio and TV spots for Miller Lite even though Haffenreffer remains his beer of choice.

 

It is true that John Duffield Curtis from Newton, MA did audition for the role of Enoch the Friendly Sleestak but he did not get the role because Marie Coleman (the mother of Kathy Coleman who played Holly Marshall on the show) felt very uncomfortable about the way Curtis would look at her daughter.

Curtis had another off-season job of note specifically he toured with Gary Glitter's band as a back-up tambourine player. In the 1980's Curtis spent many off-seasons traveling the country in a Winnebago with Wade Boggs.

In 1995 John Curtis lost a testicle in what he describes as a "hunting accident."

 

All of which reminds me that we're coming up on an anniversary:

Apr 19, 1943:Bicycle Day - Albert Hofmann intentionally takes (250 ug) LSD for the first time. This is the first intentional us of LSD.