My Favorite Faces During the Adolis Garcia Cartwheel
Every Frame a Painting
First, let me briefly promote some writing I’ve done over at Merry-Go-Round Magazine. As I’ve mentioned before, I went to Portola Festival and wrote about it. I promise it is the only review of the festival that talks about the shitting in the bathroom experience. I also went to go see Dumb Money at CityWalk and I wrote about that as well. I don’t talk about shitting in the Dumb Money review. Journalism is alive and well.
One of the great things about watching thousands of baseball games is that you will still, quite regularly, see something you’ve never seen before. During game two of the ALCS, Framber Valdez was pitching to Adolis Garcia and he threw a cutter that cut too much. I’d like you to think for a moment about your involuntary reaction to getting hit by a baseball going 90 miles per hour. No matter how much you physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared for this, I reckon the initial response would be to crumple to the dirt. I am quite certain I would cry. The trainer would have to reassure me amputation is not necessary and that I will see my family again.
Adolis Garcia didn’t do any of that. He decided, instead, to work on his gymnastic floor routine.
One of the other great things about baseball is that the standard framing through which we watch every pitch allows us to also watch the fans sitting right behind home plate. I always took this for granted until the 2020 season when fans weren’t allowed in the stands because of COVID. Baseball without fans in the stands is incredibly strange and strips much of the texture from the viewing experience. But luckily for us, COVID is over and who’s to say if it ever really happened in the first place and surely we learned a lot from the whole experience. Let’s look at some funny faces.
We’re going from left to right. This woman is sitting in the second row; I don’t even want to bother looking up how much these tickets cost but rest assured every face we look at has exorbitant amounts of money and cannot be more than two degrees of separation from someone extremely responsible for the Enron collapse. This lady is a textbook example of the Stop! Stop! He’s Already Dead! Onlooker. Open and shut case. Moving on.
I’m quite fond of this little triad. The woman in the front wasn’t even watching the pitch, but started paying attention once Garcia went upside down. She looks like she just smelled something that can’t exactly be classified as bad but certainly isn’t good either. We’ll call that The Strange Smell Stare. The man behind her is wearing a polo which is borderline death penalty behavior at a sporting event in my eyes. He walked into his closet that is likely bigger than my apartment and landed on this little number that operates in the liminal space between orange and pink. I don’t know why people wear polos to sporting events but I’m guessing this guy attended an SEC school and 18 year olds are very impressionable people. His brain calcified by junior year and he’s a wear polos to the ballgame guy now. Simple as. And of course, we gotta talk about this lovely lady in the back, who is far and away putting the most stank on it of the, by my rough count, 68 people captured by the Fox broadcast. This was basically how she was sitting prior to the pitch, making a slight adjustment to her hand placement and only slightly letting her mouth go a touch more agape. She was more or less locked into the damn son where’d you find this pose. Extra props for rocking the most acceptable ballgame look according to the Ryan Moloney Ballpark Fashion Guidelines: team t-shirt with an unbuttoned team jersey. She opted for the no hat variation which I think is acceptable because she has a lot of hair, she is inside, and it’s night. I would’ve worn a hat even if it is bad for my skin.
Her damn mouth is trying to escape her face! This woman is rocking a supercharged racism fit with whatever the word for that collar is and a blazer. She has said truly unspeakable things at the yacht club. Meanwhile, our guy in front is absolutely frozen off that gas. He’s way too high to be in public right now. One time, I smoked a joint and took a train to the ballgame and arrived in the second inning. I was zooted and enjoying some hot dogs and it was not until the sixth or seventh inning when I realized Sean Manaea was throwing a no-hitter, which he ended up completing. So I can technically say I witnessed a no-hitter in person but really for two thirds of it I was witnessing the magic of ballpark hot dogs.
So sick lmao. Shocked to the core by what’s transpiring. Gotta love seeing someone go Edvard Munch mode in real life.
She’s doing the reaction gif face! It’s also important to note that prior to the pitch she looked bored out of her gourd. Baseball will sneak up on you.
This guy rules. He maintained the sip throughout the entire ordeal. This guy didn’t put his drink back in the cupholder until Garcia started walking normally towards first. Commit to the sip. We applaud you sir, I’m sure your drive home did not break any laws at all.
My man is drowning in the front row! He looks like the result of a breeding program designed to find the perfect synthesis of classic style aliens and Red Forman. Mission accomplished.
By now, there is a well established gender-based reaction binary. The men range from mildly interested to stone-faced. The women look like they are witnessing the start of the rapture. I do not know why this is and I will not be doing deep dives into gender on this Substack because I am not a weird, disgraced professor from the British Isles. This dude is the most confused of the bunch and I truly do not want to know what his internal monologue is cooking here. Both of them are wearing what I imagine they wore to work and I just don’t understand living your life like that. You probably have millions of dollars; where have you forsaken your capacity for joy?
Sorry to be nasty, but this guy is jacking off. Furiously. There is no other context in which the human form makes this face. He’s the Enron of publicly masturbating at an American League Championship Series game.
You’ve done it again