The Tool Shed: The Mad Hungarian, Then and Now

Ah, Al.  In olden times—you know, the ‘70s—you had an air of toolishness about you.  You spent your career toeing the line between colorful character and egotistical ass-face.  You grew an innovative flavor saver-mullet combo and created a wild pitching routine, storming around the mound, pounding ball into glove, staring down the batter, starting the occasional bench-clearing brawl.

You were, in short, kind of a doucher.

Now?  Well, you’ve lost the overdone hair, kept the overblown ego, and started torturing Cardinals fans nightly with your color commentary and groundbreaking game analysis.  Maybe I’m being hateful, Al, because I miss your Fu Manchu, but let’s break it down:

Exhibit A:  Your broadcasting.  We’ll start with the obvious.  You are terrible.  Every time you talk, a baby seal dies and middle-aged men across the Midwest yell profanities at their TVs while waving their Budweisers.  Your on-air chestnuts have been well-documented in the blogosphere, including here and here.  One of my personal favorites is your nightly insistence that pitch counts don’t matter; easy to say when you’ve pitched a career zero complete games.###MORE###

Exhibit B:  Your website.  Even attention-whore Ozzie Smith hasn’t stooped to this level of shameless self-promotion.  Aren’t your celebrity endorsements enough for you?

Exhibit C:  Your saloon.  In the tradition of drunken radio great Mike Shannon, you’ve opened a gem of a sports bar, perfect for celebrating Skanksgiving, partying post-game, and otherwise cementing St. Louis’ standing as an STD hotspot.  And maybe I’m just a blog-writing, mother’s-basement-living pervert, but the names and descriptions for several of the saloon’s menu items seem a bit salacious.  Keep your chocolate baseballs to yourself, lecher.

Exhibit D:  The photograph on the right.  Clearly, you steal from babies.  Jerk.

Thing is, we want to like you, Al.  We like your nickname.  We like your creative hair stylings.  We like the rumors that you started a barroom brouhaha with my uncle and his boys back in the day. 

We just can’t endorse your senseless yapping and your glory-days reliving and gay-vague relationship with Dan McLaughlin.  But here’s something we can endorse: inducting you in the JSF Tool Shed.  Congratulations, Hungo.