Susan Slusser* in today’s Chron describes baseball pitcher Joe Ross of the Washingtons as a “tarter”. Ross, a Bay Area native who led Bishop O’Dowd to the CIF North Coast sectional quarterfinals held the Giants my favorite team to five hits and no runs over eight innings.
I know that “tater” can be baseball jargon; home run. Lord knows why; the batter got the whole russet, eyes, skin and all?
The first thing I did after Duffy and I got done with our morning rounds was to fire up the laptop and tap the word “tarter” into an online dictionary (My trusty Webster’s Ninth is upstairs, with its protegee and successor, Webster’s Eleventh).
I noticed that “tartar sauce” is spelled differently.
There is no noun form of “tart”. Tart can mean strong — is she saying that Joe Ross shut down Yaz and Crawf by being a thing sharper than chedder?
My mind leaped to something vaguely Shakespearish? Her writing is strong sauce, or strong meat?

No, it’s a typo. Ross was the starter, the starting pitcher and not a reliever. He was just the second starter to throw seven or more innings against the good guys this year, and it was the best outing of his career. He also K’d nine and walked none.

I quote from Othello above, using “meat” and a concordance (big word for list of Shakespeare’s words). “Green” in this case and my headline can refer to both the name of the Chronicle’s sporting pages and its hue. It also vaguely references the outfield at Boston’s Fenway Park, The  Green Monster, which is vaguely a pitcher amenity.

Sour dough bread requires a starter, if you excuse the Steve Dalkowsky.

In the big inning, there was darkness. And God said “humm baby”.
Remlinger, Remlinger, Remlinger. My finger for a horse. Rollie?

*Slusser is the successor to if not the protegee of Henry Schulman who I once berated for confusing or conflating Jeff Tesreau for Jack Chesbro. Like myself, Mike Remlinger and Kyle Hendricks of the Cubs, Tesreau was a Dartmouth man. Forsooth. (Henry VI, Part 1, IV:1:25)

and1: I want to caution readers and writers (catchers and pitchers, of idears) about the distinction between tartars (they of the sauce) and tartans (they of the kilts — Scottish people wore such, more a MacBeth thing than a Hamlet; I went thru a similar mind trip yesterday watching the North Macedonians in the Euro 2020). 

andand: At Jack Hirschman’s 80th birthday event at City Lights they handed out a broadside of his in which the former SF Poet Laureate mentioned a “Prince Hal” and I wonder if that was a baseball reference (Newhouser of the Tigers) or the Bard.

andandand: I’m still here, because the Giants and Dbacks don’t start for another seven hours — we are going with Matt Peacock who is from Southern Alabama, close to Mobile, where Hank Aaron, his brother, Willie McCovey and jazz bow Billy Bangs hail from, as compared to Westfield Alabama where Willie Mays was get or got four hours north, really Birmingham — but I forget my actual point. Not Mudcat Grant, from Florida not Mississipi actually, though we note his passing, but now I know: I was sussing about the fact that “iron sharpens iron” from the Bible, according to Robert Alter of Cal, really means, if you check your Hebrew, something more like increasing the magnetic quality. Stay tuned, y’all. 

edit to adle: If Ross “K’d nine”, did the Giants have a “dog day afternoon”?