Home
While researching an article about Miguel Herrera's new gig as coach of Club Tijuana in Liga MX, I came to a startling realization: he and New York Mets pitcher/human empanada Bartolo Colon share a resemblance. In fact, it was uncanny.
Methinks they might be the same person. An investigation ensued.
If you need any background on who Bartolo Colon is, he's the greatest baseball player there is, was and ever will be, in terms of meme-ablility. If you don't know what meme-ablilty is, you live in a far more philosophically advanced but far less mildly amusing world than I. Watch this video.
And this one.
And this one.
Having met Bartolo Colon, if you need any background on Miguel Herrera, he is also a titan in his sport in terms of being "memed," as these next two videos show.
I began my investigation by comparing side-by-side images of the two (see feature image above). Just as I suspected, they were identical enough for me to justify spending work time writing this article. In fact, a talented makeup artist could easily alter the appearance of either one to look like the other.
My colleagues agreed with my assessment of the pictures, so I pressed on with the investigation, but I couldn't decide where to go next. It was clear that we needed to devote fully half of our full-time editorial team to this investigation. We must find the truth.
We began, as does so much of journalism these days, with Twitter.
Question for Twitter: have Bartolo Colon and Miguel Herrera ever been photographed together in the same room at the same time?
— Sam Klomhaus (@SamKlomhaus) November 3, 2015There were no responses (my only having 78 Twitter followers might have had something to do with that), and my tweet is apparently the only one in history to ever mention both Bartolo Colon and Miguel Herrera. I'll take your silence as a "no," Twitter.
So I tried Google Images. Nothing. I tried several googling tricks that I've learned throughout my years in the journalism industry. Still nothing.
From there we decided to focus the full attention of The18's investigative journalism department on the Miguel Herrera/Bartolo Colon case. This was quickly becoming the movie "Spotlight" but for things that do not matter in the slightest.
It is evident to me now that Bartolo Colon and Miguel Herrera have never been photographed together, or at least there are no images of them together on the internet.
Surely none exist, because the sheer sports meme-ability of that photo would be enough to create a singularity and destroy the universe. At least, that's what my math points to.
Regarding the math, I checked with my writer colleague Ivan who has a physics degree. "I don't know man," he said in the tone of voice the parents of young children use when their four-year-old asks them where babies come from. "This is in a theoretical range of physics I just don't have the knowledge of. Your equations are too advanced for me."
Smartass.
I then went to my other coworker Saul, The18's crack accounting department, who has the benefit of following both American sports and Mexican soccer very closely.
"Uuuuuhhhhhhhh I don't know. I guess there could be a relative or something? Not really?" said Saul, with the air of someone who wants the person he's talking to to turn in his expense report on time.
It occurred to me that maybe I had been going about this all the wrong way. Maybe I needed to ask someone who didn't follow either sport.
I asked Joel, part of The18's crack graphic design squad, who occasionally refers to soccer as "sportsball" and has a good eye for visual things.
"You see, I'm a really visual guy, so I can see all the little differences," Joel said in the tone of voice a parent would use to tell a young child their puppy was just run over. "So I would say no."
"But could a professional makeup artist make one look like the other?" I asked, clinging to any little slice of hope I could find.
"I guess so," Joel said.
So that was a yes.
It was here that I decided this investigation was getting too pressure-filled for my pay grade. I had to take it to the boss.
I asked Matt, who runs The18, if he thought Bartolo Colon and Miguel Herrera could be the same person.
"No Sam," said Matt, sounding like someone who really wanted me to stop dicking around and get back to work.
I better do that. To be continued.
Contact The18 Staff Writer Sam Klomhaus at Klomhaus@The18.com or follow him on Twitter @SamKlomhaus
