The Genius of Lou Brown

I'm a little off my game today. Kind of tired. It's probably because last night, while flipping through the channels falling asleep, I caught Major League just as it started. Everyone has a stable of movies that they always watch. It doesn't really matter where the movie is when you turn it on, you're always going to watch it until the end.*

*This theory explains why I can recite nearly every line of Braveheart. I seen it approximately 400 times, never in it's entirety though. And since I know you were wondering, my favorite line in the movie is when Longshanks is discussing instituting the right of prima nocta and he says, "the trouble with Scotland is that it's full of Scots." That gets me every time. Not because the jokes is funny, but because all of his cronies laugh like he just said the greatest thing ever. Cracks me up. Also I plan on having several kids and naming the oldest one Argyle so that when they have kids they'll call him Uncle Argyle. That's a badass name. Hopefully my future grandchildren will have Scottish accents.

Anyway, Major League is one of those movies. I love it. Easily one of the top three baseball movies of all time (the three obviously being Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and that. I was trying to decide the order and as luck would have it Bull Durham was on this weekend and I'm ready to say that it is definitely number 3, and Field of Dreams is number 1. Because it makes me cry.), so I almost always watch it until the end. Well this time I got to think about something that had never occured to me before, and it sort of bothered me. Not enough to make me stop loving the movie, but bothered me none the less.

Do you really mean to tell me, that in spring training when the Cleveland Indians were putting the team together and teaching everyone the signals that they actually had a signal for: Call your shot so that the pitcher will throw up and in and knock you down with a fastball, then on the second pitch after the sign the runner on second will steal, you lay down a bunt surprising the infielder who is playing deep, when the infielder charges, the runner (who was attempting to steal third) will never stop running, and hopefully score because of the throw to first. Call me crazy, but it seems a little ambitious to presume that all of that would happen as planned often enough to actually have a sign for that play.