Dan Reichert Leading League in Assassinations

Dan Reichert is and always has been a trendsetter.  In 1997, he was the first of eight consecutive first-round picks deployed by the Kansas City Royals on starting pitchers.  In 2008 he became the first Southern Maryland Blue Crab to have his contract purchased by a major league club.  (He never made it back to the bigs.)  And now Dan Reichert is at the head of a new fad: abandoning one’s own name, likely because of espionage.

The 34 year-old righty, who hasn’t been in the majors since 2003, signed a contract with the Uni-Presdient 7-Eleven Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League of Taiwan (league motto: Nice Play).  He was cut before the season, but renegotiated a week later for a reported $9,000 a month.  Thus far in the 2011 season, his Lions are in first place (out of four teams) and he leads the league with 8 wins and a 2.39 ERA.  He also sports a 62.8% GB% in 83 innings.

But what’s interesting about Dan Reichert is that he’s no longer Dan Reichert.  The CPBL, in an effort to acclimate foreign-born players to the local fan base, provide these gentlemen with new monikers on the back of their jerseys.  Reichert, for reasons that do not officially exist, goes by “Robert 38”.

I searched for Robert 38’s performance on the CPBL website, enlisting the feckless aid of the Google Chrome translation feature.  Doing so provided me with the greatest box score of all time:

(Click, as always, to embiggen.)

Based on these statistics, I can declare in complete candor that Taiwanese baseball is my kind of baseball.  Any sport that features garrison opportunities, assassinations, lost markets, failed rescues, and complete votes can only be amazing.  It reads like the script of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.  What, one must ask, is a “pirate of the base resistance kill?”  Is it something that gets you extradited?

I’ll close this story with a passage from the Lions’ website, detailing the team’s recent loss on April 25th.  I suggest printing this section out, and reading it under the flickering light of a lone candle in a hurricane glass, while outside a coyote bays mournfully at a waning moon:

Today’s starting pitcher Robert quite satisfactory performance, pitched eight innings, hit a nine hits, but unfortunately was Lin Yi Bulls hit home runs all by surprise, the next three innings Bulls hit by a series of three hits, and pitcher Robert bad place, leading to loss of a quarter of a surprise attack by a single Board, as the game’s most critical inning.

The game play third base defense forces the Lions as a starter by the Liuyu Chen, Chang Tai-shan did not rest because of back problems with the team race. Lions face the Bulls pitcher to show the military stability of bench depth, the whole game hit 12 total hits, but unfortunately can not effectively fire serial, capture only one-third. One Jansson string, Guo Qi Dai, Liu Yuchen, Zhou G still maintain very hot hand, are single-game hit two hits, but unfortunately center wire Panwu Xiong, was to suppress high Day, ca not concatenate fire, take the overall situation.

Lions whistle 3 to 5, two-point defeat to swallow the war, the Lions tomorrow in Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium Army for Shang Banji final rescheduling, adjust the Lions will introduce recent developments in the fight starting Lei Peng, and Xing Cattle farmers will launch a rookie starting Luo Cheng-lung.