Let the Rosebuds Tremble

Last evening the Wolverines posted their first roster move of June — bumping the 40% 0f Muncy at OH to 2b, to uproot the replacement PAs that had sprouted there and already had 7 leaves; and bumping 40% 0f V0gelbach from the  bench to OH to replace the newly missing Muncy.  But you know those Old Detroiters.  They just cannot leave well enough alone.  They had to end ominously: “Let the Rosebuds tremble.”

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At first I dismissed this as just more Wolverine bluster.  No one has ever paid any attention to it before. Why should I do so now? But there was something about this particular threat… it seemed familiar, like I’d heard it before.   It didn’t take me long to find the source from which Old Detroit was drawing.  Let me quote from the source, Antoine de St. Exupery, slightly edited:

Abruptly, without anything to lead up to it, and as if the question had been born of long and silent meditation on his problem, he demanded:

“A Wolverine–if it eats little bushes, does it eat Rosebuds, too?”

“A Wolverine,” I answered, “eats anything it finds in its reach.”

“Even flowers that have thorns?”

“Yes, even flowers that have thorns.”

“Then the thorns–what use are they?”

I did not know. At that moment I was very busy …

“The thorns–what use are they?”

The little prince never let go of a question, once he had asked it…  I answered with the first thing that came into my head:

“The thorns are of no use at all. Rosebuds have thorns just for spite!”

“Oh!”

There was a moment of complete silence. Then the little prince flashed back at me, with a kind of resentfulness:

“I don’t believe you! Rosebuds are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons…”

I should pause here to explain a problem I am having with the text.  De St. Exupery — these French, with their long pretentious names, so thoughtless of others who have to write them over and over. I believe God wants us all to have short names, preferably 4 letters or less, out of love for our neighbors. So we are going to call him St. Ex.  But that’s not the problem I was going to talk about.

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The problem I have is St. Ex wrote this originally in French.  This was not all bad. I first read Le Petit Prince in French, and it remains the longest work I have ever read in French. Which, of course, qualifies me to translate it into accessible English.  The other English translations keep translating the Rosebud-eating animal as a “sheep.”  But we have no sheep in the EFL.  If I translate it as “sheep” how could you EFLers ever understand the text?  So I have adopted the less-common reading of the text, to depict the Rosebuds’ well-known vulnerability to Wolverines, which will make much more sense in our league context.

But now it is time to interrupt our little tale with some matters of consequence: the latest table of sums showing the EFL standings.

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Portland: “W”, 2 – 2. (37 PA, .194, .270, .355; 2.7 ip, 2 er, 6.75 ERA). As you can see, the Rosebuds are really tender little things, requiring care.

So, he (the little prince) tended the Rosebuds.

So, too, they began very quickly to torment him… One day, for instance, when they were speaking of their four thorns…,

Scholars have long wondered about these four thorns the Rosebuds are so proud of.  What do they refer to?  Perhaps literal thorns.  But if we look at yesterday’s numbers, we can see the four thorns are the four most dangerous Rosebuds, ie: Anthony Rendon (1 homer and a sacrifice fly in 4 PA, for an OPS of 1.583), Tommy Pham ( 2 for 4 with a walk, 1.100), Myles Straw (a walk, 1.000), and… Eduardo Escobar (1 for 4 with a double? 0.750 OPS)? Or maybe Blaine Hardy (2 scoreless innings)?  Sure, Rendon is a terrible sharp sword, and Tommy Pham can hurt… but the rest?  No wonder Wolverines for so many years munched contendedly on Rosebuds.