Classic card of the week

Ernest Riles, 1991 Score

Here is Ernest Riles, displaying the cat-like quickness he was famous for. And by “famous for” I mean “not that famous for.” Still, I wonder if these feline reflexes translated to any other aspect of his game:



Ernest, who was a pussycat at bat as a starter in ’90,

Cool! Playing baseball like a pussycat is awesome! Wait—is it? I’m not exactly sure. Are kitty-cats good at hitting?

turned into a tiger when he went to the plate as a pinch-hitter.

I guess not. I learned in school how to infer things using context, and because everybody knows that tigers are good at sex and baseball, it must mean that pussycats are not very good at either. Oh well.

Weird how Ernest Riles could not sustain his tiger-esque abilities as an everyday player, but only in small sample-sized situations. One would think that all bench players would be great everyday players, but it appears that is not the case, which is probably why they are bench players. Again, weird. What say you, San Francisco Giants manager Roger Craig?

“He has confidence he can hit,”

That is good. For a hitter. A higher compliment I cannot imagine.

“He’s a very calm hitter.”

I stand corrected. Calmness is the indeed the most treasured virtue, to be found in only the rarest of hitters. I’d rather have a guy strike out calmly than hit a home run intensely, which can be rather unnerving. One may also notice the discrepancy here between the calmness of pussycats (bad hitting) and the roaring of tigers (good hitting), but let us ignore that for the time being. This complicated paradox is too heavy for a brief discussion of Ernest Riles. Let’s stick with the easy stuff for now.

Ernest, whose nickname is “Easy,”

There. Better.

Did you know?
According to his wife, Ernest Riles is a tiger in the bedroom only on Monday and Thursday evenings.