Old Time Family Baseball

By now, you’ve probably all seen the footage of an Astros vendor bringing his snow cones into the bathroom, setting them down on the floor of the stall, and letting nature take its course. 

Today, after being fired by the club, he speaks out: 

Hey there. I’m Ted, the Snow Cone guy. That’s actually what my friends and family call me, Ted, the Snow Cone guy. I know a lot of you think that this is a big joke or, conversely, a public health issue up there with Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ and let me tell you—I get it. But you’re wrong. 

Let me ask you a question: have you ever served Snow Cones before? And served them at the highest level? Because I have and it’s different. Sure, maybe you man the Snow Cone machine at the “Fun and Games Carnival Night” at your daughter’s elementary school, but this is real. This is thousands of people, charging at you once, paying $5.75 for Snow Cones. 

Yeah, that’s right, $5.75. Why are they so expensive? The damn service and the high quality ingredients. Sure, you can get a $2.00 snow cone, but what are you really getting? You’re getting ice, and syrup. No service, no pizzazz. But me, I’ve been training for decades for this. With me, a pro, you get perfectly shaved ice that’s a refreshingly cold 22 degrees. Your syrups are perfectly divided into three quadrants: tart blue raspberry, tangy lemon, and sweet cherry, each mingling with each other and nipping at your taste buds. And when I serve it to you, you know that you’ve just had a cosmic connection with another human being. 

My grandfather was in the snow cone game, my father was in the snow cone game, and now I am. Hell, I had to work my way up, selling sodas in rookie balls with two dozen people in the stands to hawking personal-sized pizzas in Poughkeepsie. I busted my butt to get where I am and I take nothing for granted. 

So when you see me run to the bathroom, pants at my ankles, snow cones on the floor, don’t deign to think I’m not concerned about your safety, your enjoyment of a Snow Cone. That’s all I’m thinking about. Ever. When I sleep: snow cones. When I’m awake: snow cones. 

But, sadly, I’m not made of ice. I’m made of flesh and blood and waste byproduct. And while my first duty is to you, the snow cone consumer, sometimes that other duty calls. Doodie. 

I look forward to serving you soon,

Ted Snocune

Former Snow Cone rep for the Houston Astros

What makes Miguel Cabrera so joyous? 

Could it be the elimination of injustice? The introduction of a new menu item at McDonald’s? 

And at the same time, what could make Michael Bourn so unhappy? 

What strange tether ties these two men together? What event could evoke such joy from one, misery from another? 

Oh, right. This: 

Well, better luck next time, Mr. Bourn. If we were meant to catch everything hit our way, we wouldn’t need gloves in the first place. 

On the whole, I’m fairly pessimistic. I tend to expect the sun to burn out billions of years before it’s supposed to and humanity to kill ourselves off because of a great new product that tastes great and is less filling! But the one golden idea I can cling to is that people can change and change for the better. Like at the end of romantic comedies where the schlub gets his life together and wears things like polo shirts. But what Jeremy Affeldt has done is much more important. 

In an interview with The Huffington Post about his recent book, which already detailed that he returned $500,000 to the Giants because of a contract mistake, Affeldt says: 

“There’s a chapter in there of me coming to San Francisco and being hesitant because I had homophobia, and now I don’t,” he said. “I see more San Francisco as a city of love and a city of passion and compassion. It’s unbelievable this city. To see that and to have my heart change as a city I didn’t ever want to come to, to a city that I’m so thankful I’m going to be part of for a long time, it talks about that.”

Not only is that remarkably honest (Affeldt very easily could have not mentioned his homophobia at all), but he was open to changing as a human being. We’re all bumbling idiots, bouncing around for however little time we have, and if we can leave this world as a better person than when we came in, well, that’s about the best you can hope for.

And, as pointed out on Hardball Talk’s comments, I really appreciate the rhetoric Affeldt used while describing his homophobia, referring to it almost as if it were a disease that he was afflicted with that he has now overcome. Hopefully the ever dwindling minority of people who are still homophobic can have similar revelations. 

For a time, before his Twitter was basically taken over by some pretty terrible joke writers (I would be shocked if his AMA or painting of Bud Selig were actually created by Canseco), Jose Canseco was kind of amusing. In the harmless drunk uncle mold who would tell you “Hey, why not grab the wheel while I piss in this ginger ale bottle.” (Note: None of my uncles ever did that.)

However, it’s important to remember that beyond the steroid use, which does not really matter in the grand scheme of things, Canseco has been charged with aggravated assault, was arrested for hitting his ex-wife, and was charged in an aggravated battery case during a nightclub fight. Yesterday, Canseco added another line to his record when the police interviewed Canseco as a person of interest in a sexual assault case. While Canseco may be innocent, having not been charged yet, his response on Twitter was to out the accuser, posting personal information about her including her name, photo, telephone number, and where she works out. This is meant to humiliate and intimidate the victim in a culture that far too often takes the side of the accused. Stephen Goldman of SBNation has some of the tweets with the information redacted. 

It’s time to stop thinking of Canseco as a lovable buffoon, one who says ridiculous things while traveling from independent league to independent league, and recognize that he’s a human being who has done a series of disgusting things. Needless to say, while I may post more to do with this case, there will be no more “Wacky Jose Canseco” posts that will ever show up on this site.