Enough with the David Wells play-on-words already. It’s been done to death.
Sure, the “Fill-in-the-blank-team is Snake-bit by Diamondbacks” puns are more prevalent, but there are 25 Arizona baseball players, and only one David Wells, thankfully.
To review, here are some of the lines that America’s headline writers have seen fit to bombard us with, just over the past few days:
There’s “All’s Wells for Dodgers,” from Yahoo Sports; “Wells done, old man” from The Los Angeles Times; and “Going to the Wells one more time,” courtesy of the Virginia Pilot.
The Los Angeles Daily News has been responsible for both “Has this Wells gone dry?” and “All is Wells with Dodgers; and the New York Daily News, this little ditty: “Mets count ‘L’ as Wells done — fail to sweep in David’s debut.”
Oh, well. Use a pun, go to jail, I always say.
But there’s something going around even more right now, and that’s the discussion about what constitutes a “must-win” game. In clubhouses across two leagues, players are debating whether or not their next series of games is must-win. They’re careful with the labeling, because if they lose a must-win game, or a must-win series, then what?
Well let me tell you something, the Padres just took a must-win series from the Dbacks, winning three of four. It was huge. This next set, beginning tonight at Petco, is more must-win for Los Angeles than it is for San Diego, but neither team can afford to be swept. And the Dodgers really can’t afford to be swept.
“One game at a time” is as cliché a line as any of the Wells references, but it really does fit the baseball pennant races. Tonight, the Padres throw Jack Cassel, he of three major league innings’ experience, against the recently-departed Padre David Wells, who now toils for the Dodgers. I’d say the Pads were “going to the well” in choosing Cassel, and then “throwing him right into the fire,” but that’s two too many clichés for my taste.
The clubs match up Saturday night with Jake Peavy and Derek Lowe and Sunday afternoon with Justin Germano and Chad Billingsley.
It’s going to be a fascinating series, and all I’m predicting is two out of three for one team or the other. I have no idea who. Talk to me Monday and we’ll debrief the must-winners and the all’s well that ends well for whomever played particularly well.
— HOWARD COLE