I tried my best to make this blog a Charlie Sheen Free Zone, but that was before he brought one of the top St. Louis Cardinals prospects and outsized-expectation-disappointments into it—apparently our latest tiger-blooded meme and 140-character train wreck has declared Todd Zeile, of all the people in the world, a "Gnarls Gnarlington", apparently one of three sports figures worthy of the title. That's right: It's apparently a good thing, although my goal is to never, ever be mentioned by Charlie Sheen, even in a complimentary way.
↵Zeile, who played catcher a little like Rube Baker and then third base a little like Roger Dorn but proved to be a capable hitter for 16 MLB seasons, began life as a slugging-catcher superprospect in the post-Whitey, pre-Tony era before moving to third base after his first full season and not appearing at catcher again until his retirement tour in 2004. He was traded to the Cubs, in a rare in-rivalry challenge trade, for none other than Mike Morgan, who led the Cardinals to an improbable World Series victory in 1995, and was later traded in deals for or with Garrett Stephenson, Mike Piazza, Bobby Bonilla, Gary Sheffield, Jeromy Burnitz, and Pete Incaviglia.
↵He is not an F-18 so much as one of those jets that gets traded from nation to nation because it's not quite fast enough to be a dogfighter and not quite strong enough to be a bomber. He is also a Gnarls Gnarlington. And unless his next move is to start a pro-wrestling feud with me, which is a distinct possibility, that is that last time I will mention Charlie Sheen on this blog.
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