spatch

The Metro today had an article on the Red Sox pitching woes. The headline was "Schilling, Then Wakefield, Then Two Days Of Rain" and I immediately thought oh, this must've been ganked from an AP feed or something because I refuse to believe there's someone on the Metro staff canny enough to recognize and use an old Bostonian chestnut such as that.

The familiar old mantra (admittedly known and chanted outside of Boston) is "Spahn, then Sain, then pray for rain" and dates back to 1948. That's the year that the Boston Braves won the NL pennant, partly on the strength of their two star pitchers, Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain. The rest of the pitching staff was pretty weak, however, and the following poem was written by Gerald Hern in the Boston Post, illustrating the best way to get the most out of the Braves' pitching rotation:

First we'll use Spahn
then we'll use Sain
Then an off day
followed by rain
Back will come Spahn
followed by Sain
And followed
we hope
by two days of rain.

Given that the Red Sox currently have several floundering starters, it seems only appropriate to hope that the team's good pitchers should get to do their thing, while the chokey choking likes of Clement and Beckett get rained out.

Tune in next week, when I explain how the most famous reference to a double play, "Tinker to Evers to Chance," was coined by Algonquin Round Table regular Franklin P. Adams. No foolin.