"Cover Your Eyes! Giambi Is In A Slump!" (now with update)

This morning I made myself a good pot of coffee and was sitting by the window enjoying the beautiful morning weather here in Philly and reading junk online. Today was a good day to read articles online because the Red Sox didn't play yesterday so they weren't able to lose and thus I was able to enjoy net surfing without being reminded how crappy the Sox are playing. But, after one sentence, I digress.

So, I'm reading about music, and books, and the upcoming baseball draft, (a.k.a. reason #4,876 why the Pittsburgh Pirates are run by incompetent boobs) and I come across this article about Jason Giambi and his current hitting slump (link coming in a second). Giambi is hitting .181 on the year, which sounds terrible (and kinda is), but he's still getting on base (.341 on-base) and hitting for power (.438 slugging) so as to make him a decently valuable player (though not worth the $26M the club still owes him). Still, the baseball establishment, often including players, seems to measure hitting success in terms of batting average. This means Giambi thinks he is in a slump and the main stream media agrees with him.

So, how do players get out of a slump? Many take extra hitting practice, listen to advice from their hitting coach, peers, or trusted advisers, etc. There are many different ways to do it and of course it varies from player to player. Some players are more superstitious than others, and this is where this story takes a turn for the worst.

So, I'm enjoying my coffee and I come across a story about Giambi and his slump in an online magazine called Portfolio. The article is by someone named Franz Lidz. The fact that the number of Zs in the author's name exceeds one should clue you in to the fact that Lidz likely knows far more about soccer than baseball. I mention this because its quite possible that Lidz isn't aware of the social norms that we have here in America (pronounced: "Um-ur-ika"). So he might not know that what Giambi told him was, um, strange.

At this point, I'm just going to quote from the article:

Jason Giambi has a deep, dark secret. Deeper than his compulsion to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the door, and darker than his dream of growing up to be a heavy-metal musician.

The deepest, darkest secret harbored by the New York Yankees first baseman is that whenever he is in a prolonged hitting funk, he wears a gold lamé, tiger-stripe thong under his uniform. "I only put it on when I'm desperate to get out of a big slump," he confides.

Snarf! Coffee on the computer screen and on my new Ovechkin shirt.

But wait, it gets worse. Apparently Giambi's understanding of one of the kindergarten rules of conduct, sharing, is, well, going to make me hork:

Over Giambi's checkered career in the Bronx, he has left the "golden thong" in the lockers of slumping teammates Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon, Robin Ventura, and Robinson Cano. "All of them wore it and got hits," he reports. "The thong works every time."

There are a couple other choice quotes from Giambi, all which serve to make him look like an even bigger doofus. Such as, "As long as I can have a fast boat and a margarita machine and can light my hair on fire, I'll be just fine." Also this: "He loves strip joints, cites Letters to Penthouse as his favorite work of literature, and lives by the motto "Party like a rock star, hammer like a porn star, rake like an all-star." (Maybe he should add "dress like a phague" to that list.)

All of those only serve to obscure the point, which is Giambi wears a tiger-striped piece of women's underwear under his Yankee uniform because he thinks it has magic powers and then shares the same piece of underwear with other men because they also think it has magic powers.

Still, there are even more questions to be answered, like, 'what the hell is 'lamé?'' and, 'if its really his deepest, darkest secret in the whole wide world, why is he telling Franz Lidz, journalist?' Maybe he assumes Lidz only speaks German.

But back to the (forgive me) meat of this. Jason Giambi gets out of slumps, big slumps, not by taking more hitting practice, or by studying video tape, but by wearing a gold lamé, tiger-stripe thong. Then, when one of his teammates gets into a slump, he loans the gold lamé, tiger-stripe thong to them and they *gulp* WEAR it.

This revelation on the series of tubes of the dubya-dubya-dubya (and possibly on actual paper) is bound to make Giambi even more popular in the clubhouse than he already was. ("You told who what?!?") You never know what crazy shit is going to come out of his mouth. The lesson here is it might be something so gross that it causes whatever is in mine at the time to come flying out.

Twenty bucks says the next time Giambi goes to Fenway he gets pelted by tiger striped thongs. Now I gotta go clean off my wife's computer screen.

**Update**

From the NY Daily News:

Derek Jeter agreed that Giambi's thong works, although "it's so uncomfortable running around the bases." ...

Asked if the thong got washed between wearings, [Jorge Posada] gave a cringe-worthy answer. "Ask Jason," said Posada. "Jason is a little strange."