OMG: Sunflower seed shortage looming

[riverdunesrat]

What will Ryan Klesko ever do without seeds.......

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Seeds of scandal threaten the season

By JEFF MILLER
The Orange County Register

The impending disaster, a calamity that threatens to grab baseball by its stirrups and shake the game silly, might affect them but it won't affect him.

Jayson Werth is guaranteed to survive the Great Sunflower Seed Shortage of '05 because he's allergic to sunflower seeds.

Seriously, a baseball player allergic to sunflower seeds. This is sort of like a jockey being allergic to short. What's next, a catcher allergic to cups?

"I'd been chewing seeds since I was birthed, basically," the Dodgers outfielder says. "I found out this offseason I'm highly sensitive to them. So I don't have to worry about this potentially devastating situation."

He should consider himself fortunate, as the rest of baseball, already too familiar with labor wars, braces for the possibility of its first snack stoppage.

Sorry, we might be getting ahead of themselves. Perhaps you haven't heard about Kernelgate, which, by comparison, could make baseball's steroid issue seem like the trafficking of Flintstones chewables.

The U.S. Agriculture Department recently released figures showing this season's sunflower seed harvest down 29 percent. Experts say that this summer major-league baseball could run out of seeds, something that seems as appropriate as major-league baseball running out of elbow ligaments.

Don't laugh. The players aren't. Not really, anyway. We'd call what they're doing more of a snicker.

"There's a rhythm to every game," Arizona first baseman Tony Clark explains. "Sometimes it's a long rhythm, sometimes it's a short rhythm. Certain things keep the rhythm moving. One of them is sunflower seeds. If the rhythm is changed, there's no telling the ramifications."

This situation was first reported by The Washington Post, meaning it's serious, since The Washington Post usually occupies its time bringing down presidents. According to the newspaper, there are three reasons for the shortage:

1) Bad weather.

2) Farmers switching to soybeans.

3) "Sclerotinia head rot," which we're guessing can't be cured by wearing a looser batting helmet.

The Post also quoted Nationals equipment manager Mike Wallace, who divulged some of the shell-spitting games players conduct. We believed him, Wallace being a man of pointed honesty.

See, this is the same Mike Wallace who, while working for the Marlins, was ejected from a game for something he shouted from the dugout. Afterward, asked to explain himself, Wallace said, "I don't want to talk about it. All I do is wash jocks."

Baseball's seed supplier is David, a division of ConAgra Foods, which likes to point out the dietary pluses of sunflower seeds, like a high concentration of vitamin E and an absence of cholesterol.

In the interest of equal time, we'll point out that ConAgra's brands also include Big Mama Sausage, Butterball and Reddi-wip, a dessert topping that in 1947 broke the barrier that foolishly separated food products from aerosol.

So if this tragedy indeed envelops baseball, what will pinch hit for seeds? What will be the Manny Mota of munchies? Werth suggests toothpicks and Clark pumpkin seeds. No and no, claims one of Werth's teammates.

"Tootsie Rolls," catcher Jason Phillips says. "Or something like that you can ball up and suck the juice out of. But I'd have to brush my teeth more often if I started doing that."

For the record, and this story is all about setting the facts straight, Phillips rarely snacks during games.

"I don't even chew gum," he says. "The only time I'll put a piece of gum in my mouth is if I'm trying to break out of a slump."

Naturally, a struggling player would think that way, that consulting Bazooka Joe would be more effective than spending time with, say, the hitting coach. Baseball can be quirky. In the Dodgers clubhouse, for example, no one seems to notice that you can find Eric Gagne's Rolaids Relief Man trophy in one locker and a stuffed squirrel in another.

The squirrel is wearing a tiny glove and throwing a tiny baseball and even has a name: Strike. He belongs to reliever Kelly Wunsch, who received Strike as a gift from his wife's uncle. The man is a taxidermist and, perhaps, a lunatic.

But enough nonsense. The history of sunflower seeds in baseball is sketchy, but it is known that before the Civil War, spitting wasn't even permitted. Then again, neither was pitching overhand.

Specifically, there is no recorded moment when seeds became as much a part of baseball tradition as Curt Schilling opening his mouth. But there is no denying their significance today, a significance that soon will be on display in the Hall of Fame.

When officials renovate the "Today's Game" exhibit, the artifacts will include buckets of David seeds. This means a sometimes-salty food will make it into Cooperstown before a sometimes-salty fool - Pete Rose.

Meanwhile, today's players are left pondering a future not unlike that of a young green grape - seedless.

"There have to be warehouses full of sunflower seeds, I'd think," Werth says. "They should have stockpiles of them for a time like this, a time of national crisis."

Apparently, they don't. And now the sun in sunflower could be setting.

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[padrefanforever]

back to chew.......... *spits*

[Kobe]

but we all know what chew..... *spits* does to you though :p

[HollywoodLeo]

I'm already stockpiling

[TheDeafbolt]

but we all know what chew..... *spits* does to you though :p

makes you look cool?