DON'T BLOW IT, JERRY!

Veteran utility man Jerry Hairston Jr. is one of those players that hard-core baseball fans have to love...they hang on in the majors for lengthy careers because they are versatile enough to play many positions.

Jerry Hairston on all fours, March 15, 2012...

Jerry is no exception to that rule: he's logged time at seven different positions over his fourteen-year career. But he's never been quite so visible as was the case the other day, when he was playing third base for the Dodgers (who would be his ninth major league team) and literally got down on his hands and knees in an attempt to change the direction of a slow roller near the third base line.

Now, of course, this play is strictly illegal according to baseball rules, the Lords having inserted a clause in 1981 after Lenny Randle (once called a "punk" by his own manager!) successfully used his lung power to alter the path of a bunt from one side of the white line to the other...

But our crack staff of researchers has uncovered a disturbing trend regarding Hairston. It's now clear that Jerry suffers from a rare condition that causes him to get down on all fours and forcefully exhale whenever he sees a slow-rolling spherical object near a chalk line. For shocking evidence of same, we point you to our second image, which provides incontrovertible evidence of Jerry's rare affliction.

"Mildred!! He's at it again!!" Jerry Hairston, April 26, 2011...

We hope that the Dodgers will be able to take appropriate and humane measures to correct this rare and strange disorder, and that it can be handled without having to cut him loose from the team. Lord knows the Dodgers need a decent utility man now that they've let Jamey Carroll move on. Of course, they could simply not play Jerry at third base, but that would be a case where they'd be too severely limited their options--because, let's face it, they don't have a third baseman.

Or they could do what so many do these days when confronted with such a situation: ignore it. In fact, one wouldn't be surprised to see them attempt to exploit it, which of course would be doing a disservice to all those "serial blowers" out there desperately in need of help. Our pal Buzzin' Fly (who clearly gets around, as you can imagine...) tells us that someone in the Dodgers' PR department is already considering a Jerry Hairston Jr. bobblehead to "commemorate" Jerry's strange compulsion, using the reasoning that it will be a product innovation...

Yes, folks, the very first horizontal bobblehead.

Alas, this is just another example of the price we must pay for progress...