Fecal Clatter Denies Culpability
LaJaquardes N. Pulitzerface, Staff Writer
Tender-winged former Fecal Clatter pitcher Hong Chi-Kuo rarely spoke to his teammates. His coaches were so disturbed by his pitch selection that they referred him to counseling. And so when Kuo finally and horrifying came to the league’s attention yesterday, he did so in committing the worst mass beaning in LOWV history.
“He never threw offspeed once. I’ve never seen heaters with such consistent late movement.”
This is how Jeremy Sowers -- as teammate Matt Capps daubed drool from the corners of the young lefty’s mouth -- recalled yesterday’s horror, when a pitcher burst into the Banana Belt clubhouse yesterday, armed with a bag of batting practice balls, and emotionlessly fired pitches at his teammates’ elbows, thighs, backs and rear ends.
The pitcher, later identified as disabled free agent Hong-Chih Kuo, gave mild contusions to nearly 20 members of the Belt. Only a handful escaped unscathed, including Doug Davis, who hid behind the callipygian Prince Fielder, and Ichiro Suzuki, who wedged himself into the crack of a bathroom stall door.
The vicious attack brought the total number of people beaned by Kuo yesterday to 22.
“He came up to the locker room door with that bag of balls,” said the Belt’s Ian Kinsler. “I didn’t recognize him but Hollidayie [BB left fielder Matt Holliday] tapped me and goes, ‘Isn’t that that Wong [sic] dude who was so nasty on Fecal Clatter next year? He must be bringing us some balls for BP.’”
“He didn’t say anything,” Justin Duchscherer said. “He was very calm, very determined, methodical in his beaning. He started hurling as soon as he opened the door.”
The day began just like any other. In the Fecal Clatter bullpen shortly after 7:15AM, pitching coach Tim Lollar was overseeing Kevin Gregg’s off-day bullpen session and Michael Wuertz crouched under the bench picking up discarded sunflower seeds that had accumulated during the team’s tense week against D’Lucious Bitch Pies.
A man strode into the pen with three baseballs in his hand and side-armed a nasty sinker at Wuertz that started at Wuertz’s neck and broke sharply and struck his lower back.
The assailant then fired a four-seam fastball at Gregg’s $3 right arm and a sharp backdoor slider at Gregg’s hindquarters once FC’s newest SP,RP specialist doubled over in pain.
“My immediate concern was for Kevin,” Clatter GM Yurwurst Nachtmarz said upon learning of the attack. “Wuertz… eh. We were waiting until he finished his chores to tell him he’d been released.
Kuo returns to Taiwan after release from FC in March
“My second thought was, it had to be Hong-Chih Kuo.”
FC moved Kuo to the DL in late spring in order to acquire Wuertz. The pitcher was dropped entirely days later to make room for Gregg.
The initial reaction of FC officials has sparked league-wide outrage. Nachtmarz ordered an immediate lockdown of the Fecal Clatter locker room but failed to alert the visiting team, the Banana Belt, about the attack.
“Based on what we knew at that point,” Nachtmarz said, “we considered it an isolated revenge attack against pitchers Kuo believed had caused his release from our organization. Nobody could’ve imagined he’d be back at the stadium two hours later to commit such monstrous savagery against our opponents.”
Nobody, that is, except former teammates who remember the “grotesque, macabre” pitch selections Kuo displayed in his erratic but often brilliant months with Fecal Clatter.
“Dude would throw high outside cutter for a strike on 3-1, and follow up with a hard curve up and in,” said Orlando Hudson. “That’s simply insane, and it made me so uncomfortable. It was like something out of a nightmare. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he ever harnessed his splitter, I was that freaked out about him.”
His catcher last year concurred. “When I went to talk to him on the mound, after he’d strike out two guys in a row on six straight changes and two-seamers,” says Johnny Estrada, “I was very careful with my words in case he decided to snap.”
Kuo, an immigrant from Tainan City, Taiwan, was portrayed by his fellow teammates and coaches as an insecure loner who sat by himself on the team bus, penned bizarre hate-filled screeds on the locker room Dry-Erase board, and would sign into the team hotels on the road using only a backwards letter K -- a strikeout looking in baseball scorekeeping -- as his name.
He hung no pictures, posters or decorations in his locker, though team officials found “considerable writings” underneath his former locker -- now occupied by Gregg, whom authorities believe was the principal target of yesterday’s beanings -- that included lengthy rants about wealthy teammates and their perceived debauchery, and an apparently autobiographical play entitled “The Ho Who Loved Hong-Chih Kuo.”
Fecal Clatter takes great pride in players who have debuted on its team and gone on to success in the LOWV, and claims to be stunned and ashamed to learn the assailant responsible for the worst mass beaning in league history was a product of its farm system. Team founder and chairman emeritus Galt Varg Sahl described his shock at the events “beyond description.”
A former Fecal Clatter player complained to management about Kuo’s behavior during the team’s pennant drive in the summer of 2006, but the team failed to take action, demurring about “boys being boys.” The new information raises questions about whether warning signs in Kuo’s behavior and problems were handled effectively by the organization.
But the former teammate alleges that he knows the real reason no disciplinary reason was taken: “Dude struck out 71 batters in 59 and two-thirds for us,” said Nick Swisher. “At Fecal Clatter, it’s not about character, just winning.”
In late August 2006, Swisher says he returned to the clubhouse at the end of a game in which he’d played right field to find that his first baseman’s mitt had been re-laced with shoelaces depicting the Taiwanese flag. “Had to be Hong-Chih. Just totally [messed] up, man.”
What could have prompted his bizarre behavior? “I played catch with [recent call-up Matt] Garza before the game, trying to help the kid relax in his first stint in the bigs. And it wasn’t like I’d dissed Hong-Chih or nothin’. We’d never played catch before. We’d never even high-fived before. Dude was a lone wolf, bro, stalking me or some [thing like that].”
Swisher approached the young SP,RP, asking him about the peculiar re-lacing. “He stood up and said he wanted to look me in the eye to see how cool I was, said that’s the only way he could tell how cool I was by looking in my eyes,” Swisher remembers. “And when he looked into my eyes, he goes, ‘I see promiscuity.’ I was like, whoa, decided to leave him alone and just asked [equipment manager] Chappy [Duffman] to get me a new mitt.”
David Wright’s only conversation with Kuo was equally unnerving. “I asked him to toss me a brew from the cooler in the clubhouse after we clinched a playoff spot last year. ‘Hey Kuo, toss me some suds,’ y’know? He yells back at me, ‘I told you, all you rich pricks, my name is BACKWARDS-K!’
“He never did toss me that beer.”
A former Fecal Clatter player complained to management about Kuo’s behavior during the team’s pennant drive in the summer of 2006, but the team failed to take action, demurring about “boys being boys.” The new information raises questions about whether warning signs in Kuo’s behavior and problems were handled effectively by the organization.
But the former teammate alleges that he knows the real reason no disciplinary reason was taken: “Dude struck out 71 batters in 59 and two-thirds for us,” said Nick Swisher. “At Fecal Clatter, it’s not about character, just winning.”
In late August 2006, Swisher says he returned to the clubhouse at the end of a game in which he’d played right field to find that his first baseman’s mitt had been re-laced with shoelaces depicting the Taiwanese flag. “Had to be Hong-Chih. Just totally [messed] up, man.”
What could have prompted his bizarre behavior? “I played catch with [recent call-up Matt] Garza before the game, trying to help the kid relax in his first stint in the bigs. And it wasn’t like I’d dissed Hong-Chih or nothin’. We’d never played catch before. We’d never even high-fived before. Dude was a lone wolf, bro, stalking me or some [thing like that].”
Swisher approached the young SP,RP, asking him about the peculiar re-lacing. “He stood up and said he wanted to look me in the eye to see how cool I was, said that’s the only way he could tell how cool I was by looking in my eyes,” Swisher remembers. “And when he looked into my eyes, he goes, ‘I see promiscuity.’ I was like, whoa, decided to leave him alone and just asked [equipment manager] Chappy [Duffman] to get me a new mitt.”
David Wright’s only conversation with Kuo was equally unnerving. “I asked him to toss me a brew from the cooler in the clubhouse after we clinched a playoff spot last year. ‘Hey Kuo, toss me some suds,’ y’know? He yells back at me, ‘I told you, all you rich pricks, my name is BACKWARDS-K!’
“He never did toss me that beer.”
Dr. Crayton “Cray” Z. Sickough, FC team psychiatrist and an expert on personality disorders and serial beanings, said the delay between beanings may have been a matter of nerves or practical necessity.
But unnamed sources are murmuring of a far more sinister rationale.
“well I no how e-z it is to play bannaa belt,” emailed a league source requesting anonymity. “but teams that arent so nasty as me ad my stars need 2 intimedate w/ beanballs and injurring the other taems.”
Rampant but unproven rumors hint that upon realizing the extent of Kuo’s insanity and beaning skills, and increasingly panicky about losing to long-time rival, Natchmarz promised the jilted pitcher a roster spot in exchange for attacking Banana Belt’s strongest players.
Whether a senseless act of random violence, or a massacre ordered by a desperate front office, the carnage has produced the same consequence -- a petrified opponent with little interest in life’s trivialities.
“How am I supposed to care about playing a silly game against Fecal Clatter when I have a charity to run, insatiable young surfer boys to feed, and fingernails to carefully trim?” mused BB’s Mike Piazza as he cleared out his locker and administered a hernia test on a batboy. “It’s just not worth it.”
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