MARK PRIOR: A TENDER CHA-CHA?

by Andy "Writeasaurus Rex" Kerns, kerns333@aol.com

Mark Prior, you are a tender vagina. You act like one, and now that's how you're treated by the entire Cubs organization. They lotion you and massage you and tell you how cute you are. They tell you they want you to stay forever, because it's what you tell tender vaginas-they're nice things to have. The fact of the matter is this, Mark: you're useless to a ball club. When did “some shoulder tightness� become a disabled listable injury, never mind one that sidelines a guy from early February to early May and God knows how far beyond that?

Grow up Mark, you're being a vagina. When you decided to be the guy on raised earth who starts with the ball and gets all the attention and stands to take all the credit for a big win, you agreed to suck it up a little and to deal a lot. Every pitcher has some physical discomfort to overcome; pitching is unorthodox and uncomfortable. Pain goes with shoulders like seams go with the ball. In some limited time I've spent teaching the game, I've come across ten and eleven year olds with more bullish grit surging out their just-descended nuts than the pair you've had twenty-five years to grow. I also used to play with this stud lefty when I was thirteen and fourteen--whose Dad had him throwing elbow-wrenching hammers right out of the womb--and this kid used to strap half a bottle of Tiger Balm on before going out and giving us six good ones against any team in the area. Take note of that, Vagina. I won't even get into some of the stuff I saw much older pitchers do--stuff that would make a pirate cringe.

I know, I know Mark. It's not all your fault. You were groomed to be a vagina from the start. You see people, Mark's one of those build-a-prospects from Southern California. A Dad in his early thirties, on a nice, prosperous career track got selfish and hatched a plan to retire early. So he went out in search of a female mate with big calves, bought her a swell ring, boinkity boinked one night, then it was doctor! doctor! here he comes, and were halfway to the Cy Young! Right? Well, six years in, Dad is obsessively grooming and overanalyzing arm angles, social disposition, and bowel movements. Grooming bowel movements? You betcha. Anything for stardom.

So then the kid shows promise, and Dad calls in Tom House and a crack team of twenty other scientists to up the ante and really take this kid as close to robotdom as they can, without of course, spending the three million big ones and forty hours of surgery it would take to replace the seventeen year old's bone structure with the T-1000 frame. A frame which, by the way, a certain Roger Clemens (who you, Vagina, have been exhaustively compared to) has built through good old hard-nosed, Texas-style work.

So, after the “greatest college career ever� and an admittedly impressive 2003 campaign, what are we left with? A nervy labia majora who's better at aligning his body within hundredths of an inch on the ASMI lab's super-cam than he is at picking up the ball, going all out, and pouring a couple cold MGDs on the old sling afterwards. That's the way the game is supposed to be played, and it's what the pitcher's position requires and deserves.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that Larry Rothschild has you throwing in “simulated games,� Mark. Your entire physical and mental development as a pitcher has been a big fucking charade-a simulation…an over-hyped, over-thought, mind-raping of the generally practiced principles of athletic development. This is a call to Little League Dads. You gotta get grassroots bitches; you gotta let boys be boys and play stick ball until its so dark noses are breaking every other throw. That's what we like, and that's how we avoid Vaginitis.

To tell the truth, I never really liked you from the start Mark, but because I'm a die-hard Cub fan, I sucked it up, bought one of your shirts, and went “rah-rah� every fifth day. Which was fine, when you were out there furrowing your upper lip, acting like an entitled prick, and at least registering some outs.

But for me, the big emotional shift came when I saw a picture of you with your wife at a charity golfing event, and you two were wearing matching white golf gloves. Do you think Maddux and his wife wear matching golf gloves? Fuck no. He won't even let her come to the event cause she talks during his fucking back-swing. Hell, Todd Walker rocks up with two hotties in tow…neither is his wife. And the only time he's got a glove on is when he's playfully spanking one of their asses after they chunk a drive ten yards and giggle like theiy're three Long Island Iced Teas deep, which they are. And don't think I missed the pleated khakis you were wearing, Mark. That's very lame and forty-five-years-old-of-you. Before I wrap things up here, I should probably address a question that's undoubtedly been wood-peckering at the skull of every enlightened reader out there: what about Kerry Wood? What about him? He's my favorite baseball player of all time, one of my favorite men of all time, and on a very short list of the people dead or alive that I'd want to have over for dinner and a thousand beers.

Sure, Wood has been a porcelain doll for a long time--certainly throughout his Big league career, and probably since that fateful day in 1995 when he got big, tough, and Texas as a senior in high school and threw both games of a State Championship clinching double-header. I heard he also hit six bombs that day and fucked three of the opposing players' Moms in the dugout between games, just to stay warm. This is my kind of guy, Prior, and he could never in anyone's wildest dreams be considered the tender vagina you are now considered. He got ticketed for streaking during his Rookie of the Year campaign and a few weeks later, struck out twenty Astros with a tendon-exploding slurve that would be marveled at by an alien species scientifically advanced two-hundred and fifty years beyond us. Oh yea, his favorite band is Pearl Jam. And if I know my man Wood, he's probably already got the sweet tits “Severed Hand� guitar solo down pat on his Fender. The album came out yesterday, vagina. He stayed up all night to make sure he nailed it. Can you rock with that? I didn't think so. Now why don't you rinse off the Vagisil and go help the team that needs you.

Tell you what: win us 15 games, starting now, and I'll host a BartmanBQ at my place (yes, we'll find him and cook him-Moises can come too). It'll be great: you and your wife can pull up in matching red Beamers, have one Strawberry Breeze Bacardi cooler each, and then leave by 8pm to “check on the kids� we know you don't have. No one will care if you just sac up and get us some Ws, man.

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