Over the last week, we’ve had a lot of strange Jorge Julio sightings. We saw the journeyman reliever dropping a girlfriend off to get her nails done at a place on W. 25th St in Ohio City. Later that afternoon, we spotted him speeding through Downtown in his black Acura SUV with Florida plates, on his way to the stadium. A couple of days later, we saw him in a side room in the bowels of Progressive Field, surfing the web on a laptop as a lackey shaved away his afro. Later in the week, he was sitting in an empty weight room after a game, his arm iced and gauzed even though he hadn’t pitched in days and wasn’t injured. He glanced up and stared through us with a vacancy only Jorge Julio can pull off.
And then we noticed him pitching, giving up five runs in 1 2/3 early innings last Friday against the Rangers. As in all the outings in which we’ve seen Julio suck, he made us think of a baby that really doesn’t want to play with blocks anymore, but all his mom got him to play with are these damn blocks. Isn’t there some way he could get paid $167,000 per month to hunt turkeys on his Caracas ranch? ….
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2008.