John Brattain
From Wiki Gonzalez
John Brattain was a baseball writer who led Baseball Think Factory in rimshots. He was also the biggest boob not located under the nose of Jose Lima's wife.
Brattain was a typical Canadian small-town boy who enjoyed activities native to the species.
[edit] Writings
John was on the staff of The Hardball Times since January, 2005 (what were they thinking?) as well as Sympatico/MSN Sports where he complained about the Toronto Blue Jays. Before that, he contributed some articles to Baseball Prospectus. He recently re-entered the blogosphere with "The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort" where he paid tribute to an old pain in the URL.
John also contributed to Replacement Level Yankees Weblog although nobody is exactly sure why since he was a fan of the Jays and Montreal Expos (God rest their souls). Many feel that Larry Mahnken felt it was his civic duty to keep Brattain off the street and in front of his computer where he could do less damage following Mahnken reading a sign that said "Keep Canada Beautiful."
He also felt Lisa Gray's Dugout is one of the more underrated baseball blogs around--well worth a look.
[edit] John on BBTF
According to Jim Furtado, Brattain was a member of Baseball Primer from the very beginning. He was a very regular poster who usually signed his Primer posts with "Best regards, John".
Jon Daly always thought of John as Dave Barry with a toque. He also used to provide Primer with humorous top ten lists, disarming ripostes, and the occasional serious yet incisive posts about baseball, Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi, Bud Selig, and Marlins GM David Samson.
John was universally noted as the most self-deprecating of any Primate. He always tried to find the humor in a topic on any particular thread, however controversial it may be.
It came as a shock to all in the Internet baseball community when Brattain passed away due to complications during heart surgery in March 2009. A tribute thread was posted to BBTF on March 24 to discuss his legacy. A thread that marked some of John's best work was the Nomar Garciaparra thread of October 2005.
His final handle, which heads all surviving posts at BBTF, was "The Bones McCoy of THT". There's a story behind that....
John will be greatly missed by many, many people.
[edit] Also see
- Random dope
- The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort - John's personal blog
