‘Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.’ – Babe Ruth

We have all struck out many times in our lives, haven’t we? And there is no shame in a good old fashion swing and miss, is there? Why? Because you stepped up to the plate and gave it a go and that’s what is the most important thing to do in life as you are pushed along with every spin on this old rock, right?

You get into the batter’s box, take your pitches, swing at some, foul tip others, and hope to make some solid contact, am I right?

Now in the first edition of this Friday’s WTF Blast From The Past, we take a look back in the old Bird archives at a big millennial shoulder shrug emoji strikeout from the great Alfredo Griffin.

The date was September 27th, 1992. The place? Yankee Stadium.

Now if you don’t understand the context, you will most definitely wonder if Griffin maybe had one too many greenies before the game, so let’s JUST take a look at this WTF strikeout before we move into the details:

So this might seem like the absolute biggest piece of trash (are you goddamn kidding me) strikeout that you’ve ever seen, and it probably is, BUT let me share with you the context because without it, this Griffin swing and miss is just bad like a vegan’s dinner.

The Context

The Blue Jays were beating the pinstripes off the damn Yankees jerseys that day with a 9-0 lead heading into the top of the 5th inning. And Mother Nature was starting to washout the old church in the Bronx. The rain was coming down hard when Griffin stepped into the box and his approach at the plate was to get the cuss out so that the game would be made official. Makes sense, right?

But holy shit, c’mon, Griffin – you just got to sell something like that a little better because that performance was about as bad as Ashton Kutcher’s in The Butterfly Effect.

Life Lesson

So here’s the lesson we can all learn from this, if you’re up at the plate in life and making a real attempt at getting on base and you strikeout – don’t hold your head down because you stepped up to the plate and that’s better than sitting on your ass.

… BUT if you are intentionally trying to strikeout because you don’t want to step up to the plate in life, well, sell it better than Griffin did because you’ll just look like a clown.