Ichiro Suzuki wants to play baseball until he’s 50. If he gets to do that in MLB, he’s going to end up setting a bunch of age-related records just for showing up on a given day. He got one of those on Sunday, when he started in center field for the Marlins. At 43 years and 246 days old, that made him the oldest player to ever start in center field, breaking a record held by Rickey Henderson.
It wasn’t just the jumbotron. Charleston’s mascot, Charlie T. River Dog, piled it on by wearing John 3:16 eyeblack, the same bible verse Tebow wore during the 2008 National Championship Game against Oklahoma.
The RiverDog’s president and general manager, Dave Echols released a statement via the Post and Courier regarding the antics.
While we believe that our promotions were poking fun at Mr. Tebow’s celebrity status rather than his religion or baseball career, our intent was not to offend anyone, and for the fact that we did offend, we are sorry. Echols said.
Of the many promotional pieces that we executed, there were a handful on Friday’s game that some construed as in poor taste, and we made it a focus to remove those elements and celebrate Mr. Tebow the remainder of his time in Charleston, Echols added.
Tebow went 1-for-4 on the night, and one of his highlights was this unfortunate moment when his bat slipped out of his hands from his swing and went into the stands.
As you’ll see with a couple of these games, I’m cheating and using games I’ve written about extensively. Mayne’s unlikely relief performance has long been a fascination of mine. It’s still one of my favorite baseball stories of all-time.