Here’s To The Pitching Panda Of Staten Island

Nearly everyone here at Blogbucket Local 571 is a fan of some sporty thing or other. Whether it be a lifelong or even temporary devotion to the Aces, Angels, Angel City, Athletics, Bears, Blaugrana, Canucks, Celtics, Charles Leclercs, Dodgers, Dolphins, Eagles, Falcons, Flyers, Gators, Giants, Hatters, Heat, Herons, Hotspurs, Hurricanes, Jets, Kings, Knicks, Lakers, Lewis Hamiltons, Liberty, Longhorns, Mariners, Marlins, Mets, Miscellaneous Olympians, Nationals, Nuggets, Panthers, Penguins, Pirates, Pistons, Rangers, Reds, Red Wings, Seminoles, 76ers, Steelers, Tigers, Timberwolves, Toffees, USMNT, USWNT, Vikings, Warriors, Wizards, Wolverines or Yankees, there is a corresponding soft spot somewhere in the masthead. Even Comrades Laughlin, Hampton, and Imbler, who give almost no indication that they ever want to see any kind of sport for any kind of reason save free beer, have a favorite team, and it is Bye—the week when a team has no game. Hey, know what you like and like what you know. Respect The Void.

The exception, here, is your peripatetic author, who long ago eschewed traditional (read: obnoxious) forms of fandom for both personal and professional reasons. Not caring who wins, not even caring who covers without a clear fiduciary interest, permits a level of clearheadedness and freedom that those among us mentally filing adoption papers on any Phillies with an OPS+ over 82 can never fully know.

Until now, anyway. And only for a few moments. We got the Staten Island FerryHawks, and only Saturday night, when this happened:

Yes, that is the original Pablo Sandoval, the almost original Kung Fu Panda, the strikingly ovoid former Giants, Red Sox, and Braves third baseman most noted for his athletic rotundity, a couple of All-Star teams and a smattering of MVP votes, and a three-homer game in the 2012 World Series against Detroit. His need for the game transcends borders—beyond the ones you’ve heard of, he has played for teams in Venezuela, Mexico, and Puerto Rico—and levels, from Low-A to the bigs and then back down to his present resting place in ferry-adjacent independent ball. He’s moved around some on the field, too, from catcher to third base and, on Saturday, to the mound—not for an inning of tragicomic mop-up duty, but as the actual man in the arena. He is the pitcher we all imagine ourselves to be, right down to the silhouette.

The performance you see here was Sandoval’s first start ever, after two earlier relief appearances with Staten Island and two with the Giants in 2018 and 2019. The two big-league appearances were, as you might guess, mop-ups in games long ago lost. Saturday's was a designed start against the playoff-bound Lancaster Barnstormers, and probably the only way that the FerryHawks were going to get mentioned on MLB.com, let alone with a headline as glorious as “Panda tries hand as two-way starter (and pitches 5 1/3 scoreless!).” It was a decidedly Atlantic League affair—Alejandro De Aza had two hits and three RBI for Staten Island; Shawon Dunston Jr. batted leadoff for Lancaster—but a win is a win. The FerryHawks finished their season on Sunday with a loss using regular pitchers, which suggests that they wasted their best starter either one night early or one season too late.

It matters not that this was probably a marketing ploy. This is the Atlantic League, and the FerryHawks play as the Staten Italy Gabagools every year on Italian Heritage Night; this is just how it works, and Comrade Roth attends those Gabagools games in full knowledge of the why as well as the what. More to the point, Sandoval got 16 outs against a better baseball team, and if he never pitches again, his lifetime ERA will be 0.00. Beat that with a stick. It’s apparently much harder than it looks.

Now that the FerryHawks are done with their season, we can return to our normal state of mind, which is having no rooting interest for anything or anyone. Still, just in the interest of transparency, we are mildly interested in the red-hot Chicago White Sox—they won two games in a row over the weekend, for the first time since the end of June—and would be obliged if they would stop screwing around and get to 121 losses so we can stop paying attention to them. It would be a waste to be this wretched this long and this consistently and not have something—in this case, something historically appalling—to show for it. Maybe the Sox can bring in the Panda to start the final home game against the Angels; he’s a free agent now, after all, and it's not like one last Chris Flexen start is going to start the rebuild. Might as well give the people what they want, the misery-addicted bastards.