So writeth Shakespeare (famous playwright, high work ethic), and so thinketh Shakespeare (glove-first first-baseman, high work ethic), when he heard that another 1B had been called up to the big club. Eric ‘Shakespeare’ Wignes has scuffed his way to a .231 average and a genuinely frighful .312 slugging (luckily, the boy can still walk) but faces some time on the sidelines. While Billy Shakespeare had a neighbour called Thomas Nash, Wignes has a rival called Lance Nash.“Is this a dagger which I see before me?”
Never having troubled the top 100 list, Nash is an Australian 1B who hung about in short-season A-ball until vastly overage, at which point he went ballistic, hitting .322/.462/.656 and winning the hitter of the year award. This earned him a promotion to AAA where he held his own, hitting 23 homers in his first year, and was off to a good start in New Jersey this year before getting his call to the bigs.
Nash will join waiver-wire pickup Tommy Cochran from Las Vegas in a first-base platoon (Wignes, as a bad switch hitter, was essentially a weak-strong-side and weak-weak-side) in an attempt to boost production to, or maybe even above replacement level. The Blazers are Canadian Cochran’s 11th club, and he hopes to breach the 300 homer milestone while in Montreal.
Wignes hangs around in Montreal, refusing demotion, because like Shakespeare’s Richard III, he’s doomed to hang on a little too long, and get massacred by the Tudors, or equivalent. Nash has gone a terrifying 1 for 16 in his first for games. These Tragedies write themselves.
“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of Aldo*”
Lance Nash, bloody will be thy end.
*RAMJACK Timeless Classics reserve the right to copy-edit works of literature to raise better brand awareness