Tuesday, November 27, 2018

This bugs me

Weren't we just talking about there always being two sides to every story?

Baseball fans (and boxing fans) will remember José Bautista as a good hitter as a right fielder with a poor throwing arm.  He once played for the Orioles, then spent eight years being annoying in Toronto with the Blue Jays, and then last year he drifted from the Mets to the Braves and the Phillies, like the uncle whom nobody wants around but everyone takes him in for a couple of months. He is currently a resident of Washed Up Island but might find some team foolish enough to offer to pay him for hanging around in right field this summer.

I never cared for him because he was a hot dog who always demonstrated poor sportsmanship, acted sullen or braggadocious, went out of his way to slide into other players, and the usual other jerky things that the non-great do.

The picture below is from 2016, just after Bautista slid into Texas second baseman Rougned Odor (say it OhDOOR) and Odor offered him some lessons in better baserunning. Odor used his own right hand to show José how to avoid needless collisions so hard that Bautista is seen here punching himself in the beezer with his OWN right hand.

Image result for rougned odor y jose bautista

AND THEN comes news from Canada that Jose Bautista has a new namesake!

Entomologist Bob Anderson of the Canadian Museum of Nature has bequeathed upon a newly discovered species of beetle the scientific name Sicoderus bautistai after you-know-who.

Image result for bat flip jose bautistaSpeaking of noses, this weevil has a long snout. But Anderson was moved to honor the rightfielder with such a distinction because he (Anderson) can't seem to stop reliving that magic moment in 2015 when Bautista hit a home run to put the Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series, flipping his bat like a high school Harry as he did.

Anderson says, "It was one of those moments in Toronto baseball sort of lore where he hit this big home run. And I thought what a great way to kind of recognize his contributions to Blue Jay baseball and to Canadian baseball, really, as a whole."

A tiny black weevil, the Sicoderus bautistai is found in Bautista's native Dominican Republic.

Anderson, who says this makes 120 weevils that he's named over the years, adds, "One of the nice things about this is that you have some latitude to do something kind of quirky," Anderson said. "(Naming) sort of builds on a history and the names tell little stories."

Maybe his 121st bug will be one that is bigger and tougher than Sicoderus bautistai, and he can name it for Rougned Odor.

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