I don’t have the patience to write an introduction for this, since any SABR worth his slide rule knows all about the horrible comic TUCK! sez that appears regularly on Hardball Times and also knows any moment spent thinking about it is a waste of time. Tuck’s artwork is terrible, his stories make no sense, and his jokes are so bad they actually might be anti-comedy.
The worst of it might be Tuck’s sheer laziness. Who else would post the exact same comic six times this year only changing the speech bubbles? If you don’t believe me, here’s the complete listing of what I call the “Dragon Ball Z Guy Reads the Paper While Watching TV and after the TV Says Something Stupid and Not Funny, He Shoots a Knowing, World-Weary Look to the Reader, also the Headline on the Paper Changes to an Even Worse Joke than the one the TV Made” series.
- November 14, 2007: Same as it ever was..!
- January 23, 2008: Going, going…still going…
- March 19, 2008: Whoulda thunk, indeed?
- June 11, 2008: Yeah, right…
- August 23, 2008: All part of the game, right, Lefebvre?
- August 30, 2008: Glavine-san???
- September 10, 2008: They have these new things called “maps”
- October 18, 2008: 2008 Playoffs Sketchbook, Part Five
- November 8, 2008: TUCK!’s 2008 Playoffs Sketchbook, part (last)
- November 19, 2008: File under “Duh”
- December 17, 2008: Media blitzed
- January 28, 2009: Cha-ching, 2K9
- March 5, 2009: Fascinating impersonating
- April 2, 2009: no foolin’!
- May 14, 2009: One for Calcaterra
- August 20, 2009: Play ball. Please!
- November 12, 2009: Winner gets the centaur paintings?
- January 11, 2010: How much is that per strikeout?
- March 25, 2010: Another one for Calcaterra
- April 22, 2010: That’s a lot of cabbage
- June 14, 2010: Strasburg Week, Pt 1
- August 19, 2010: There goes my BBWAA membership
- October 14, 2010: Next?
There’s almost no difference from one edition to the next. The biggest change is when Dragon Ball Z Guy’s cigar-smoking dog, Si-Si, first appears on May 14, 2009. Oh and the guy’s hat appears to say “FAN·O,” presumably because he’s a sports fan. Very clever. Anyway, that’s the only change in format between 2007 and now. This is the kind of hard-hitting research you’ll only see at Praiseball Bospectus.
Beyond the stupidity of the jokes or even the stupidity of the whole setup and payoff, is the stupidity of Tuck himself. I don’t think he ever bothered to save a template of the comic, even though he’s reused it nearly two dozen times now. He just scans in a copy of a copy of a copy each time. Comparing the older comics with the more recent, the quality and pixelization definitely has gotten worse over the years. Eventually, we’ll be reading a gray box with two speech bubbles. I don’t know if gray boxes can give withering looks, though.
In the end, this won’t change anyone’s opinion on TUCK! sez. It was total crap to begin with, so what difference does it make if he starts copying himself? Excuse me while I sulk for having spent an hour on this. Next time, though, I’ll give Tuck the Tangotiger treatment, as I investigate the “awards” he’s won.
Update: I don’t why I didn’t do this before. Enjoy this slideshow of the comics. It makes it especially easy to tell that Tuck rescans the comic each time, as the orientation and size never stays the same.
Praiseball Bospectus 
Welcome back! Tuck is no Ricig, thats for sure. Does Ricig still draw cartoons for Sports Weekly or whatever McPaper calls its’ sports weekly these days? Before the internet, I found Baseball Weekly to be a must-read. Now I’m not sure it or its later incarnation exist. I did see Paul White a couple of years back at a SABRcon, so I know that he’s still around.
BTW, doesn’t Mallard Fillmore do the same thing as TUCK!?
Jon, 8 of the last 9 comments on the blog are by you. And the other one was by me. You might need a hobby.
The slideshow reveals at least two more repeated jokes – water being wet, and something about Prince Fielder and Adrian Beltre being paid by the pound / strikeout. I’d look for more patterns but my eyes are bleeding.
Christ, and the most recent one has the exact same attempt at a punchline as May 14, 2009. He used more ink in the more recent “DUH!”, though, so maybe that took effort.
That’s a good catch! I added a slideshow to the bottom of the post too, by the way.
Demo, I used to spend a lot of time at BTF, but it got blocked recently at work. I can’t visit these places like Fangraphs or The Book Blog during the day and I miss being in the loop and get lonely. Does Eric Seidman still sport those seidburns? Who did Keith Law piss off on Twitter. These are things that I want to know. Your site has escaped the notice of the overlords, so I hang out here now. You think I comment a lot now, you should have seen a typical day at the Think Factory.
But seeing how I annoy you, I’ll cut back. Jeez, isn’t one of the goals of blogging having convos like this?
Fangraphs is a treat this morning. First, R.J. Anderson leads off his piece with this gem: Hope is a cheap harlot to employ whenever a mediocre team changes general managers, Then Carson Cistulli continues his series on prospects. It’s less enjoyable than his “One Night Only” series and I really like his writing better when he doesn’t pigeonhole it into some template like this.
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/derek_jeters_on_field_value/
I loved Tango’s first comment on his own post (relevant excerpt):
“On the other hand, my method is to use existing stories as a launching point for what I really want to say and do. My objective is to be timeless.”
Timeless. That makes me giddy, for real. Like a True SABR.