MLB Mound Visits: John Sterling needs to be stopped

A lot happens during every week of baseball. Too much to keep track of sometimes. It’s a long season and nobody wants to miss any of the fun that goes down.

So in pursuit of not letting you miss any of the best stuff from the many, many baseball games you don’t have time to watch, this column exists. Welcome to Mound Visits, where you can catch up on all of the week’s goofs, late night weirdness, and random baseball moments.

With 13 games of baseball on Opening Day alone (thanks for nothing, Reds and Tigers) there’s a lot to catch up on if you missed anything. Between that slate of games and some leftovers from Spring Training, baseball season is off to a great start.

Here are this week’s Mound Visits.

I’m putting this here because yes, it’s a funny quote in or out of context. But also because there’s a 99.99 percent chance that Showalter says or does something at some point this season that flies directly in the face of the straightforward quote “I’m not a baby.” And when that time comes, we’ll be ready.

If you’ve been following the whole Marlins Man mess in Miami — no. You know what? We’re not doing this. Nobody in the Marlins Man situation looks good, it’s not even fun, and everyone would be better off if it just ended. This is a Marlins Man-free zone.

Spring Training doesn’t matter and besides the occasional funny error or weird quote (see above) there’s not a ton to pay attention to unless you’re really obsessed with small sample size stats. ESPN mic’ing up players during some of their pre-season broadcasts made watching it worth it though and no one proved that better than Mookie Betts.

Mic up everyone. I want to hear catchers swearing at passed balls and veteran second baseman groaning when they stretch for a double play. Betts admitting there’s no way he’s reaching a ball is just the tip of the iceberg, and it was great.

Friend of the column Grant Brisbee tried to guess what Sterling’s home run call would be for new Yankee Giancarlo Stanton and even his brain couldn’t descend deep enough into the weirdness crevasse to reach where Sterling found his saying for Stanton’s bombs.

There was much fanfare that it would be something Italian and that it would rhyme, the latter detail being obvious because this is Sterling after all. He got to debut it right off the bat (heh) when Stanton hit a home run in his first plate appearance as a Yankee and ... it was terrible.

That means “Giancarlo, you can’t stop him!” or “he can’t be stopped!” and to reiterate: it’s real bad. Now, we knew it would be a terrible rhyme. The internet merely adopted terrible rhymes. Sterling was born in them, molded by them.

But he needs to be stopped. It’s time. This might be the worst Sterling call since he tried to shoehorn a Finian’s Rainbow reference into things and, I mean, I adore musicals and even I don’t make references to Finian’s Rainbow. But this is too far. It doesn’t sound smooth either, and Stanton isn’t even of Italian heritage to make the stretch worth it.

Sterling is a legend, but he’s a legend who needs to maybe have some boundaries. It seems like he knows it too, since he hedged his bets on the first call by including “It’s a Stantonian home run” afterwards. That still makes no sense but at least comparatively, it’s acceptable.

This is the entire reason I watch baseball in one clip.

One player called another player fat before he stepped up to the plate but the second player is a gold-hearted barrel of fun (most of the time) so it didn’t turn into a whole thing. It was just fun. And then Springer jacked an Opening Day dinger for the second time in as many years. Baseball’s great.

Jeets rolled up to Opening Day looking like the spoiled son of Andy Garcia’s Ocean’s 11 character, and stayed that way throughout the whole game.

What was better about the intermittent cutaways to Jeter in his seat? The look on his face that was a split between regret and wondering what day his Ferrari would be out of the shop? Or Hannah Jeter’s half-smirk of not caring about baseball and wondering why her husband wouldn’t just invest in a fast food chain instead? To me, it’s a tie.

Seattle and Ichiro together again? That just feels right.

That’s all for now. Have fun moments you loved? Tweet me your favorite baseball things during the week (they can even be actual mound visits!) and I’ll include ‘em next week.