The Fire of Savviness

Doug Jones, 1991 Score Dream Team series

I don't know anything about Doug Jones -- let's pretend; I obviously know everything there is know about Doug Jones -- but I do know that he obviously has a blazing fastball. I know that because the baseball he is holding in this Score Dream Team card is blazing. Like it's literally on fire. Remember, these are the days before Photoshop, so everything you see is real. And if Doug Jones can set fire to a baseball by merely holding it gingerly, one can only imagine what his blazing fastball does. I just imagined it, and his blazing fastball explodes before it reaches home plate, only it just appears to have exploded because in actuality it was going so fast that it time-traveled to the past and successfully prevented the assassination of Gerald Ford. WHEW!

Anyway, let's find out more about Doug Jones' blazing fastball.

Doug is an anomaly among stoppers.

Think about everything you've come to understand about traditional stoppers. How they don't like to eat spaghetti. How they only go to matinees because they are so freakin' cheap. How they come from broken homes but were then adopted by two dads who aren't gay but just living together. How they are called stoppers. Now forget all of that because Doug Jones doesn't fit into that box, yet he stops nonetheless. Weird, right? The only trait we know for sure that Doug Jones shares with traditional stoppers is that he has a blazing fastball, which is optimal for stopping.

He doesn't have an overpowering fastball that blows batters away.

Oh, that is kind of weird because

What he does have is plenty of savvy

My mistake. I made an assumption by thinking the fire protruding from that baseball represented the heat generated by speed, but it is actually the fire of savviness. The fire of savviness burns deep in the heart of elite stoppers, and tells them things like, "He's looking for the heat, which you don't have, so throw this one slow and outside or whatever. Actually, maybe throw it first base now to disrupt his timing. Whoops, no runner on first. My bad, that was weird. Pretend the ball is dirty and ask for a new one."

and a dominant changeup that he mixes in with his with average fastball.

Have you guys ever seen how the Score baseball card company interprets an "average fastball?" Here:

Let's find out what Wikipedia has to add with regards to Doug Jones' blazing fastball, which is often represented accurately with fire:

A changeup specialist, he was known for keeping hitters off balance by throwing extremely slow pitches.

What's cool (opposite of hot) about this card is that, not only did Doug Jones not have a blazing hot fastball, he was actually renown for throwing the ball extremely slowly. Score was like, "How do we accurately represent the slowness with which Dream Team stopper Doug Jones throws a baseball?" and then another person at Score was like, "Sarcasm."