There is a mysterious newcomer in Atlanta Braves camp this spring, an enigma who will need to be unraveled. One day, he didn’t seem to exist, but now, he is there.
His name is Melvin Upton Jr., and he is a mystery. Where did he come from? How did he get here? And what happened to B.J. Upton, who he is replacing in the Atlanta outfield?
I don’t know, I don’t know if anybody knows, but his presence is disturbing. After all, he is apparently 30 years old, and yet there is no record of him playing anywhere before! Not in the Majors, not in the minors, not in the indys or overseas, not even College or High School! For all we know, he never even played as a kid!
And now, he’s supposed to be a starter on a Major League Baseball team? How did they find this guy? Did they find him in some back alley throwing stuff really far for whatever reason and think “Hey, this guy could be an outfielder!”? Did he win some sort of contest?
And, really, they expect us to believe that there was a third baseball-playing Upton brother all this time and we didn’t find out until now? And that he apparently was B.J’s identical twin? Is this supposed to be some sort of “Parent Trap” thing with previously-unknown identical twins? I mean, jeez, if they wanted to, they could just say that B.J. changed his name or something. It’d make more sense.
Wait, what? He did? That is B.J. Upton?
Oh.
Wait, the Braves got rid of Justin Upton but kept B.J./Melvin? That seems…backwards. Hopefully for them a new name will bring a new dawn for the “Player-Formerly-Known-As-Bossman-Junior”.
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LINKS:
Bryan Curtis looks at the continued fighting over analytics.
Jeff Passan on the long recovery of Matt Harvey.
Jeff Sullivan on how everybody has a chance-even the Phillies.
SELF-PROMOTION OF THE WEEK: Some people really, really dislike Alex Rodriguez. While he’s far from my favorite player, he’s not the monster some make him out to be. So, to parody the more-over-the-top of A-Rod “hot takes”, I made a fake one for the Yankee installment of “30 Teams, 30 Posts”.
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“Parks and Recreation” ended this week, after seven hilarious years (okay, one “meh” year followed by six hilarious years). It always had a connection to baseball, even though they never did get around to saying whether Pawnee had a minor league team (personally, I always got the feeling it was more of a Indy-ball town). Co-creator Michael Schur (who once ran the “Fire Joe Morgan” blog) and his friends loved to sneak baseball references into it, whether in a book about Pawnee, as the name of partners at the local law firm or in the form of the greatest pseudo-holiday of all.
So, we salute you, “Parks and Recreation”, for daring to do weird baseball-related jokes. Godspeed, old friend, and may you live forever in the land of reruns and Netflix.
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As always, you can see more of my work over at Baseball Continuum.
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