I think the brilliant Josh Wilker has covered an important angle here.
Wilker talks about how Gene Pentz, a relative nobody in 70s baseball, had a fan club. Of one person. But better yet, someone (Darren Viola) knew who this person was:
He was one strange kid . . . muy intense and singleminded in his adoration of all things Pentz!
I remember asking him WHY GENE FUCKING PENTZ? And he told me that he liked the way he threw and he felt bad about his record and how he wasn’t appreciated or something. I was shocked that Pentz would even give him the time of day, but they used to correspond regularly . . . and when the Tigers/Stros would come to town he would visit this kid and his loony parents for dinner in North Bergen, N.J.
My friend (Fester) did get invited over for a glorious Pentz dinner with the nutty kid/family and he told me that Pentz sorta welled up over the love shown by this derango. Of course, Pentz would give them freebie tickets at Shea.
Isn’t that cool? Well no, obviously on many levels it isn’t, but on others it really is. Nice, maybe. That someone should feel bad at the mishaps of one athlete, and dedicate himself to supporting this athlete through the bad times ahead.
In the same way, isn’t there something fun about supporting someone like Joe Kamara, the poor man who, despite having cost a fortune, really can’t consistently do anything useful? He prances around and tries to get involved, occasionally runs at defenders, usually loses the ball, and always falls to the floor. Repeat until final whistle/substitution.
I find this sort of thing mildly diverting and quite amusing. Less so with Baird, whose mistakes might put us in real danger and isn’t as inherently funny as a character, but the same point generally holds.
