Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: Analogy predictions

Enough of the serious fate-of-print-media-in-a-digital-world posts. Alright? Let's get Cuckoo for Nick Canepa . . .


Yesterday Nick Canepa wrote a column about Padres pitching and the scarcity of health within the entire staff. A commentary on the wrath of Tommy John and the hold the miserable ex-Dodger has over our youthful arms, so to speak.

The column was good. It was fair. It was inquisitive. Wait . . . let me read it again. No, it was good. Aside from the allusion to farts in Spring Training it did well to mention the rash of arm injuries but also to ask why such arm injuries are occurring. After all, these sorts of things didn't happen in Nick Canepa's day. Pitchers were tougher. Nick Canepa didn't say that. I DID!

Jump inside of my head and play a game I've developed called:

Guess the Nick Canepa Analogy NOW, You Present Day Sissy!

If you've read the column then just go along with my premise. Now the column is about arm injuries suffered by Padres pitchers and carries a title of Armed and Endangered. With so many arms injured and unavailable I read in anticipation of a specific analogy that Canepa would surely make. Something about guns and sharks, maybe!

What do you think?

To my astonished Sunday morning eyes, Nick Canepa passed up a sure fire Cuban Missile Crisis/ Cold War/ Arms Race reference. With both Yonder Alonso and Yasmani Grandal (Cuban exiles) taking the field each day, the wealth of arms drafted in the June Amateur draft, and the failing arms at the big league level an Arms Race analogy seemed like a given.

But I was wrong. Nick Canepa surprised me. Congrats, Nick.

Cuckoo for Canepa Analogy:

Call it the Padres Pitching Pandemic. Historic Injury figures aren't readily available, but it's hard to fathom a major league pitching staff that has suffered such a barrage of various arm maladies, some serious enough to require surgery. Instead of the arms of Krupp, this baseball club has been the arms of Venus de Milo.

A freaking Venus de Milo reference! No arms! Ha ha. Didn't even see that coming.

And what of the reference to "the arms of Krupp"?

It could be argued that the Krupp family (German weapons manufacturer) of the Arms of Krupp was the forefather of the Cold War arms race between Russia and the United States. As such, I shall award myself 4 points.

If you saw the Venus de Milo reference coming then you get the maximum allotted points of 7.5*. Congratulations!

*Don't be dim. 7.5 is the number of columns one can read under the U-T's new pay-wall policy.

Thanks for playing today's edition of Cuckoo for Canepa!