Today, a caller phoned into Mike Francesa’s show asking about Al Alburquerque, who, as you likely know, is a relief pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. Well, it seems that Francesa … actually, we don’t want to spoil it. Just see for yourself.
Later, Francesa tried to explain his way out of this, but really, just made things even worse. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think this was all a prank on us.
Our favorite part is the “Maybe they do call him Al Alburquerque” line, as if this was some underground nickname for the guy the baseball world knows Alberto Jose Alburquerque. Here’s the other thing: Even if you hadn’t followed the Tigers at all this year, and even if you hadn’t at least learned before the ALDS began that Alburquerque had struck out 13.9 batters per nine innings, and even if you weren’t really paying attention last night (even though the score was still 4-1 when Alberto Jose entered the game), it wasn’t as if this was Alburquerque’s first appearance in this series. You may recall he gave up a rather important home run to Robinson Cano in Game One. And we’d think that if you’ve seen Alburquerque pitch even just once, you’d remember his name. You know why? Because his name is Al Alburquerque. Seriously, this is just a big prank on us, right?