Classic card of the week

Bobby Higginson, 1999 Topps

I don’t know a lot about Bobby Higginson. But I have heard things. Crazy things. The reputation of Bobby Higginson – one that we are all too familiar with, I am sure -– speaks to his ferocious competitiveness, and also to his competitive ferociousness. He plays baseball, I have heard, like a fighter who fights things. He fights baseballs, ferociously, and wins. This is his reputation. And not that I would ever doubt Bobby Higginson in a million, trillion years, but still, I must ask, in a strange grammatical fashion: Does Bobby Higginson come by his reputation as a ferocious competitor honestly?



Bobby Higginson comes by his reputation as a ferocious competitor honestly.

Whew! For a second there I was very worried that I had Bobby Higginson all wrong. But now I am okay. I knew a guy in college who did not come by his reputation honestly, or, rather, did come by his reputation dishonestly. It was not cool.

He is the grandson of boxer Gus Dorazio, who faced Joe Lewis for the Heavyweight Championship of the World in 1941.

Bobby Higginson is a ferocious competitor by way of genetics. (Ferociousness, traditionally, skips a generation.) He has literally been grandfathered into his reputation, but that does not mean we should consider Bobby Higginson’s reputation to be lesser than a person who has attained a reputation as a ferocious competitor on the merits of their own ferocious competing. Anyway, how did grandpa fare?

Gramps was KO’d in round two but,

He competed ferociously?

a half century later, Bobby gets in his licks.

Oh. Take that Joe Lewis! Sayeth Robert Higginson before each game: I will avenge my grandfather’s defeat in the boxing arena by virtue of my ability to hit baseballs. Behold!

Last September 14, he delivered a pair of haymakers:

These boxing metaphors are knocking me out with their grammatical punch!

a game-tying single

Single = haymaker.

in the ninth inning followed by a game-tying, two-run homer in the 10th against the White Sox.

And with that, Bobby Higginson avenged his grandfather’s defeat. Except for the fact that the White Sox, a.k.a. Joe Lewis, won this game.

But all is not lost, because this only means that Bobby Higginson’s grandson must avenge both defeats by competing ferociously in his chosen field of expertise, which will be “computer programmer at a mid-sized law firm.” Go Hank! (This will be his name.)

Did you know?
A haymaker is a type of farm machine that treats hay to cause more rapid and even drying.