Gus Simpsky?

Watching "For Love of the Game" last night, the baseball movie with Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel, the baseball player who must choose between the woman he loves and the game he lives for, and it's also got John C. Reilly as his longtime catcher and friend. Great supporting role, but nothing of note... until, that is, you see the name on the back of his jersey. Gus the catcher's last name is Sinski.

You may not know "Mike Semsky," but he goes by many names: Simpsky, Semisky, Oopsky, Drinksky, etc. It would not surprise me at all to hear that at one time someone called him Sinski.

If you don't know Simpsky, you should make a point of it. I've known him for approximately 23 years, and those years were immensely better than the first 5. Seriously, I'm a fan. As I recently said to him in an inebriated state on the deck of his beach house in Rhode Island, I consider myself fortunate to be in his universe.

The similarities between Sinski and Simpsky go beyond the sounds of their names. For instance, when Sinski comes into Billy Chapel's hotel room and there a bunch of empty mini-fridge bottles of alcohol and Chapel's obviously hung over, he observes, "You know, a lot of little bottles makes a big bottle, Chapy," which is totally something that Simpsky would say, and he'd be right. Simpsky's right most of the time.

Later in the movie, Chapel's throwing a perfect game but he's old and tired and tells Sinski he doesn't know if he has anything left for the last couple innings. And Sinski tells him, "You just throw whatever you got, whatever's left. The boys are all here for you. We're gonna be awesome for you right now!" Ah... Supportsky.

Feel free to use the comment section to further compare and contrast Sinski (or catchers in general) and Simpsky.

(One thing about the movie that irked me, though: the premise is that it's the end of the season, the owner has sold the team and the new corporate owners want to trade Billy Chapel to the Giants, so he has to decide whether he wants to be traded out of Detroit, where he's pitched for the last 19 years, or simply retire as a Tiger. The problem, though, is that if he'd pitched his whole career for the Tigers he'd qualify as a "10 and 5" guy, with 10 years of MLB service who's been with the same club for the last five years, which means that he would have to approve any trade to another team. I know it's a baseball-nerdy thing to point out, but, well... I'm a baseball nerd. I even looked it up to see if it was a recent phenomenon, but the 10-and-5 rule was collectively bargained in 1973, so it should have applied in a current-day movie that was made in 1999.)