On Thursday’s PM edition of Hot Clicks at SI, Jimmy Traina linked to a story about Nationals broadcasters Rob Dibble and Ray Knight getting into a disagreement on air. I thought the disagreement (regarding Stephen Strasburg’s two-strike pitches on Wednesday) was rather petty and exacerbated by Dibs. While that story was only semi-entertaining, it reminded me of an even better Rob Dibble story Jimmy linked to last year that I never before shared. This may be old, but it’s too damn good to pass up. Check out this transcription of an exchange between Dibble and Bob Carpenter during a Nats telecast last year:
Dibble: OK, you carry Ichiro’s initials around on your butt the rest of your life.
Carpenter: Wow.
Dibble: You never heard that bet that I lost?
Carpenter: No!
Dibble: Yeah, when he first came over here I was poppin’ off on another radio show about ‘Oh, he’s not gonna be good, blah blah blah, our pitchers are gonna be better than him.’ And he went out and got 242 hits, hit .350, won the batting crown, was Rookie of the Year. So, I lost the bet and now I have Ichiro’s name and number tattooed on my butt in Japanese. And I had to run around Times Square in a g-string.
You should do yourself a favor and read the entire exchange because it’s pretty priceless. Doing some research prior to writing this post, I also came across this old article written by Dibble back when he was with ESPN and it really gives you a good idea of how inferior he felt Japanese ballplayers were at the time. Now that I think about it, the success of several Japanese players in MLB really has destroyed that notion, thanks mostly to Ichiro’s efforts which have been immortalized on Dibble’s butt. For the record, this Arizona fan is not impressed.
