Milk Carton All-Star of the Week

With baseball season right around the corner(Opening Day is Sunday), we felt like it was fitting to give the sports world's highest weekly honor(among athletes of little or no relevance) to a legend of the diamond. Finding a nobody worthy enough to be honored in the sport of baseball is about as hard as finding a hooker for Jesse James. Finding a nobody with a well-publicized birth defect who also doubled as serviceable closer....that's a whole different ballgame. That's why we went to the bullpen and called upon Antonio Alfonseca as our Milk Carton All-Star of the Week.

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Alfonseca was on the come up in 1993 as a member of the then-Montreal Expos, but eventually was drafted in the expansion draft that same year by the Florida Marlins. He won a ring with Florida in 1997 as a setup man, but didn't have a real impact as a closer until 1999 when he saved 21 games. The following season, Alfonseca came in to shut the door for a NL-best 45 saves, which was good enough to earn him the NL Rolaids Relief Man of the Year Award(although, oddly, not an All-Star appearance). He would never duplicate that career year and, after a 2001 season that saw him save 28 games for the Marlins, Alfonseca needed surgery to repair a herniated disc. Alfonseca, always a member of the JaMarcus Russell Overweight All-Stars, showed up to spring training heavy after being on the mend all offseason. The Marlins asked him to drop 15 pounds to ease stress on his bad back. At the weigh-in, however, Alfonseca exchanged words with Dale Torberg, son of then-manager Jeff Torberg. Not too long after that, Alfonseca was sent to the Cubs in a trade that would net the Marlins once-promising pitching phenom Dontrelle Willis.

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Alfonseca had minimal success in Wrigley, saving 19 games in his first year in 2002. The next season, Alfonseca would get suspended five games for bumping an umpire with his stomach(which isn't hard to do at 250 pounds). When that season ended, Alfonseca bounced around the league. He played one year in Atlanta, then moved to Texas for one season, then back to the Marlins and then finishing up with the Phillies. He never enjoyed the success he once had as a closer during those brief stints, though he did save eight games for Philadelphia in 2007.

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For all of Alfonseca's achievements on the mound, he will probably be most known for a birth defect that gave him a extra digit on each hand and foot. This led to several nicknames for the big fella such as "El Pulpo"(The Octopus...which is odd since an octopus has eight arms, not six), "The Dragonslayer"(which is just plain stupid) and "Six Fingers"(which is, of course, stating the obvious and not as good as "Six Shooter", another one of his nicknames).

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So let's give a five-fingered round of applause to the man whose two extra fingers never gave him an upper hand, the poor man's Ugie Urbina......Antonio Alfonseca!