The happy fellow you see here beginning a jaunt around all four bases on the field at Oriole Park is Colton Cowser, an outfielder whose season has not gone well at all this year. In fact, even though he hit a walkoff home run against the Rays on Sunday, he took a .191 batting average to the plate with him in the 13th inning of yesterday's Memorial Day matinee.
Wouldn't you know it?! He hit another game-winner, and maybe this is what will get him off the dime on the diamond this year! I hope so. He's a nice, earnest young man, and we are happy for this burst of success.
AND...if you were watching the Orioles telecast, you heard announcer Kevin Brown chirp, "Ain't the milk cold!" as Cowser connected. Cowser's nickname is The Milkman, because of you know why. COWser!
And the other part came from one of the all-time greats in the sports announcing business, Chuck Thompson, whose voice was the sound track to thousands of Baltimore evenings listening to ballgames. Chuck had a great voice and an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and football. His two pet expressions were: "Go to war, Miss Agnes!" when something exciting happened, and "Ain't the beer cold!" when something great happened.
He said he got "Go to war, Miss Agnes" from a golf buddy who never cursed and used that as a substitute epithet. My mother, who was from the same generation...let's not say she never cursed (she did live in the same house as I, so that was a reason right there) but she did limit it. And her version of that was, "Holy go to war, Miss Mitchell!"
I don't know if the expression had anything to do with World War II. Chuck Thompson served as a sergeant in the US Army in the Battle of the Bulge, and if you know history, you know that was "going to war."
And Baltimore is a beer-guzzling town, and the baseball team was owned by National Brewing, so "Ain't the beer cold!" might have reminded people to celebrate with a cold one.
Hats off to Kevin Brown for knowing that expression and working it into the game so well yesterday!
1 comment:
Well. Though I did not like how surprised he was that Blaze got a good hit! I mean he better study Baltimore announcers!
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