Of interest to maybe no one but me
Toby Hyde is right in the middle of his always excellent Top 41 prospects series, and No. 20 on the list is a guy I’ve taken a particular interest in: 19-year-old pitcher Akeel Morris.
Y’all know by now that I’m often pretty down on prospects and prospecting, especially when it comes to pitching prospects that haven’t yet made it out of rookie ball. Toby reports that Morris throws really hard and “has flashed a plus curveball” but “has control issues,” which couple to explain why finished fourth in the Appalachian League in strikeouts and first in walks in 2011.
But that’s… well, whatever. I’ll concern myself with Morris’ performance more when he hits High A ball or something. What’s unusual about Morris among most Major and Minor League baseball players is that he was born in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and went to high school there.
Three Virgin Islanders played in the Majors in the last 10 years, but all of them went to high school in the continental U.S. The last guy who went to high school in the Virgin Islands to play in the Majors is, as far as I can figure from baseball-reference, journeyman utility guy Jerry Browne.
There’s a bunch more on recent player development and scouting in the Virgin Islands here and a V.I.-specific baseball site detailing the history of the game in the islands here.
The way I see it, the more places that produce successful professional baseball players, the more people that get exposed to baseball. More people getting exposed to baseball means more people realizing how awesome baseball is, which means more people playing baseball and dedicating themselves to baseball, which means a bigger talent pool for Major League Baseball, which means baseball somehow winds up even more awesome. No pressure, Akeel Morris.
Sandwich? of the Week
Weather the pre-baseball doldrums with lots and lots of cheese.
The candidate: Kentucky Hot Brown from Bar Americain, 52nd street between 6th and 7th in Manhattan. Only available at lunch.
The construction: One thick-cut slice of bread topped with turkey, some sort of creamy cheese sauce (Mornay?), melted cheese, bacon and tomato.
Arguments for sandwich-hood: It’s on bread. The Wikipedia page for Hot Brown calls it a sandwich.
Counter-arguments: Since there’s only one slice of bread, nothing is properly sandwiched here. Also, it’s decidedly a knife-and-fork type dish, far from the convenient and portable food concept envisioned by ol’ John Montagu.
How it tastes: Amazing.
Allow me a brief aside: Some significant percentage of the members of my generation, I am certain, have spent some significant percentage of their waking hours sharing, discussing and giggling over a certain set of silly names given to rumored but probably infrequently performed lewd acts. For me, those conversations occurred during slow times at the deli: my co-workers and I tried constantly to one-up each other with the most bizarre and creatively titled bedroom behaviors that we had heard of or could make up ourselves.
And for anyone who has resorted to such discussions to stave off boredom — and, like I said, there are lots of us — I think it is impossible to hear the term “Kentucky Hot Brown” without considering the many ways in which it sounds like some particularly gross sex act: Its nomenclature so perfectly fits the typical place/descriptor convention of that weird set of jokes. But, of course, people eat it anyway.
After this paragraph, I want you to stop reading for a few minutes. First, think of several of the filthiest, most outrageously vile words and concepts you can imagine, then come up with some way to combine them into a singular phrase. Take your time with it and probe the darkest places of your imagination; get creative. It can incorporate the universally disgusting — say, I don’t know, bloody rat mucus — or something more personal if you need — grandma belches. Play around with it in your head until you’re satisfied you have something so viscerally repulsive that just the thought of it would make Chuck Palahniuk vomit, then write it down or type it out. Email it to me if you have to. It’s important that you see what it looks like in print.
Once you’ve done that, imagine going into a restaurant, opening up the menu and seeing that same term — the most revolting thing you could imagine — listed under “entrees.” You work up the courage to say it out loud and ask the waiter what it is, and he tells you it’s a slice of bread topped with turkey, cheese sauce, melted cheese and bacon.
I can’t speak for you, but I’m going to order it anyway. Hell, the waiter could stand over me while I ate it repeating its sickening name every time I took a bite and I’d still enjoy the hell out of it. That’s the thing about tons of cheese and bacon.
Point is — and the underlying problem with this whole exercise, really — is that it doesn’t matter what you call something as long as it’s delicious.
And this Kentucky Hot Brown is certainly that: The turkey is moist and steamy hot. The cheese sauce is rich and plentiful, and reminiscent of the earthy, wine-y flavor of a good cheese fondue. The melted cheese is melted cheese, plus it works to contain the cheese sauce on top of the bread and turkey. And the bacon is crisp and perfectly prepared. Do a strong enough job slicing this thing up and distributing the sweet, juicy tomato and you get an outrageous array of flavors and textures in every forkful. It’s just good.
The verdict: But it is not in any way a sandwich. The Wikipedia can call it whatever it wants, but nothing about eating this feels like a traditional sandwich-eating experience. Not only can you not pick this thing up, but the turkey and cheese are piled on thick enough that it’s sort of a chore to eat with a fork and butter knife. It’s a big, delicious, sloppy mess with not even a pretense toward portability. I move that the term “open-faced sandwich” is an oxymoron.
What it’s worth: The Kentucky Hot Brown at Bar Americain is $18 — a bit steeper than most of the meals discussed here, but not if you’ve got a friend in your industry with an expense account willing to chalk it up as a business lunch. And it is much appreciated.
The Greek Scrod of Walks?
Turns out Kevin Youkilis is fully committed to this Boston thing:
This is supposed to be hush-hush and on the deep down-low, but you know us. It’s time to pop the bubbly because Kevin Youkilis and Tom Brady’s sis, Julie, are engaged!…
Friends report that Youk and Julie met at a postgame party at Patriot Place last year after that other New York team Jet-tisoned the Patriots out of the playoffs. Not a good night for Tom, but a rather good one for his sis!
It will be Julie’s first marriage and Youk’s second. He was married in 2008, but turns out not legally, to Ben Affleck’s ex, Enza Sambataro.
That’s right: Youkilis is engaged to Tom Brady’s sister after having been quasi-married to a woman who once dated Ben Affleck. He has also appeared in a Dropkick Murphys video.
Via Dustin Parkes.
Sandy Alderson is pretty much awesome
Alderson said he had been amused to see another innocuous factoid — his revelation that he would be driving to Florida for spring training — joked about, dissected and in some cases seriously analyzed by some on Twitter and on blogs as a reflection of the Mets’ finances.
So someone in his office suggested he create a Twitter account to respond, Alderson said, and he thought, “Why not?”
“We wanted to play off the absurdity of it,” Alderson said. “Everything we do is viewed through the prism of our perceived financial situation.”…
“There are always some that take life way too seriously,” Alderson said. “For those people, it might take longer for my message to get across.”
- Andrew Keh, N.Y. Times.
So… this. All of this. Click through and read the rest, in part because I feel guilty about excerpting so much.
These are tough times for Mets fans obviously, but you ever stop and consider how much worse they would be if the team had a less competent, less reasonable GM at the helm?
Is it a sandwich?
Today’s contender is the Kentucky Hot Brown from Bar Americain on 52nd St. between 6th and 7th in Manhattan. It is a piece of bread (battered in egg, I think) served “open-faced,” topped with turkey, cheese sauce, melted cheese, bacon and tomato.
But is it a sandwich?
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I’ll be calling in to Airin’ it Out with Bone and Giz to talk Mets tonight. The show starts at 8 p.m. ET, my part a little after that. Check it out.
Sandy Alderson be trolling
According to multiple beat writers, Sandy Alderson joined Twitter today, tweeting as @MetsGM. Here is his first Tweet:
I’m hoping it turns out Alderson’s a massive troll. He’s off to a good start.
New Mostly Mets Podcast
Joe Drugan of TheNatsBlog.com joins Toby, Patrick and yours truly to help with part three of the continuing N.L. East preview.
On iTunes here.