Dock Ellis and Renee Thomas: A "Week" Connection

This blog is feeling rather lazy tonight, so it's just going to give a "clip post" here and let other sites do the work for Pun City. This blog should bring out a normal-quality post later this week.

For openers, we named Renee Thomas the former cheerleader of the week again, so that's the photo.

Conversation of the week is from this blog's workplace, some nutty conversations when swabbing the deck:

(Background: This blog's boss bought ice cream for the crew one week prior to this conversation, at which point the civilian known as "Private Parts" had ordered and received mint ice cream with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which is a bizarre and seemingly poor-tasting combination. Another round of ice cream was being commissioned, and Private Parts switched his order, this time excluding the Peanut Butter Cups).

Private Parts: I'm not getting Reese's this time.

Pun City: See, (this blog) told you it was a bad idea.

Private Parts: It was good, I just...

Pun City: This proves it, bad idea.

Private Parts: I'm getting (the Reese's) now. I'm changing.

2nd-Best website of the week: www.officepirates.com This blog just noticed it the other day, and it's right on the money. Many many deck swabbing experiences are comparable to the site. (obviously www.puncity.blogspot.com took website of the week honors).

Radio Stunt of the week: WLUM 102.1 in Milwaukee switched their format to "Quick 102.1," playing 5-second clips of over 400 songs per hour. This was pretty annoying to listeners, who were assured that these clips were "their favorite clips from their favorite songs." Positives of the stunt were that bad songs wouldn't last very long, and a game could be made of it, in trying to name artist and song title before the clip ended. Negatives were that when one heard a good song, it switched in 5 seconds instead of finishing off. Still pretty hilarious in that they kept it up for 2 days, and to this blog's knowledge, it is still going.

Question of the Week: From frequent Pun City Commentator Moike - In their ugliest form, would you rather face the minimum (27 batters) and give up lots of hits, or throw a no-hitter and give up lots of walks and hit batsmen, errors, etc.? Question assumes that both games are won.

This blog thinks that one's a no-brainer. Throwing the no-hitter gets you into the record books. Facing the minimum gets you out of there quicker, but doesn't have much historical significance. And, since this blog would ultimately want to leave a mark, the no-hitter is the choice.

Incidentally, A.J. Burnett had a no-hitter that could be described as pretty ugly. Here it is. Nine walks. This blog remembers Michael Wilbon of PTI commenting "Of course he threw a no-hitter. He didn't give them anything to hit." His fielders even backed him up with no errors, so it was all him.

Dock Ellis had this no-hitter where he later claimed to have been on acid. The eight walks he threw and the hit batsman seem to back up his claim. This blog seems to recall that no-hitter was named the greatest drug-induced performance of all-time by another observer, but a precursory search could only find Barry Zito calling him the greatest flake of all-time.

So, in conclusion, this blog would say that throwing a no-hitter is always better than facing the minimum (unless you're a baby about your arm throwing too many pitches or you don't care at all about history), and it is especially good if you can do so under some sort of handicap that makes the accomplishment even more unique. Ideally this would not involve illegal narcotics, but if that's the way you roll, this blog figures, your loss.