Orlando Hudson and The Big Lebowski

On Wednesday the Padres found themselves in the eye of the Yu Darvish hurricane as the Japanese star made his stateside debut in Peoria, Arizona. Yesterday the usual commentary commenced and as I read through Steve Henson's article on Yahoo! Sports a quote by Orlando Hudson caught my eye. The O-Dog opined:

“That’s a big Asian dude,” said Padres second baseman Orlando Hudson, who had the other hit against Darvish.

 You may not have known it but during his brief tenure as a Dodger Orlando Hudson attended the Los Angeles based Walter Sobchak School of Preferred Nomenclature.

But I'm not sure he picked up on Walter's lesson. Let's begin with cultural insensitivity and geographical abominations . . .



Asia is a pretty big place -- nay, a pretty big continent! Would you refer to a Russian as a big Asian? A Palestinian as a big Asian? An Israeli? A Kyrgyzstanian! I suspect not! Yet Orlando Hudson gives the guy from Japan the "big Asian dude" treatment.

What if diminutive Padres minor-leaguer Kyung-Min Na walked through camp at the Peoria Sport Complex? Would O-Dog bark, "That's a little Asian dude."? I would hope not. It bears mentioning that Na is freakishly tiny but he's a little Korean dude. Preferred nomenclature, dude.

Let us also not forget that Yu Darvish is only half Japanese, his father hailing from Iran -- another locale in Asia. I don't know how seriously baseball is taken in the Islamic Republic of Darvish's father but something tells me the slight by Orlando Hudson might be . . . fatwa worthy? Maybe that's a bit extreme. He's no Salman Rushdie.

While Orlando Hudson may never work by Walter Sobchak's side he is still very much a man with a future once the hardball days end. As I continued reading Henson's column Hudson remarked:

“I know some guys on the Rangers and they say he’s a great teammate. He likes to have fun. I think he’ll do a helluva job.”

With hard hitting evaluation like that I immediately knew where we'd see the O-Dog come retirement day . . .