Okay, so lenticular cards don't scan too well. But in this case, it gives the image an ethereal sort of quality that I like. Besides, Sid Fernandez is the guy who, after racking up a 7.67 ERA to start the 1995 season and being demoted to the bullpen, was quoted as saying: "You just won't see me...I'll be gone with the wind, and that's it." Rather than retire, he hung around until the Birds released him in July, halfway through his three-year, $9 million contract (which was a hefty sum in those days). Naturally, he signed with the Phillies and went 6-1 with a 3.34 ERA the rest of the way. Feh.I look at El Sid's career numbers and try to figure out where the O's went wrong. He was flat unhittable for a full decade with the Mets, never allowing more than 7.4 hits per nine innings in a full season. He was switching to the American League, but there's no reason that the move should have turned him into a toad. Then again, he was pretty chunky, had missed big chunks of two of the previous three seasons with injuries, and was on the wrong side of thirty. Caveat emptor. I also just learned from The Bad Guys Won, Jeff Pearlman's book about the 1986 Mets, that the rotund Hawaiian apparently believed that professional wrestling was real. This absolutely dumbfounded me. How is this possible, even in the 1980s?! I realize that it's not the sort of thing that routinely comes up when a team meets with a free agent, but now I think that it should. If I'm about to sign a guy to a multi-year, seven-figure deal, I think I might like to know that he's afraid of being eaten by Kamala the Ugandan Giant. It's called doing your due diligence.
