"Old Hoss" Radbourn: "Like J. Santana, I once 'lost' my change up. Left it in a whore's rucksack. That was embarrassing."

You don’t have to love baseball and post-Civil War American history to appreciate the greatness of the “Old Hoss” Radbourn Twitter account, but it helps.

The real Charles Gardner “Old Hoss” Radbourn was a Rochester native and tough-as-nails professional baseball pitcher from 1881-1891, during the Deadball Era. He became famous for winning 59 games (or 60, depending on what stats you believe) in the 1884 season for the Boston Beaneaters. After his playing days were over, Radbourn became the proprietor of an Illinois pool hall and saloon. A book about his life–Fifty-Nine in ’84–has recently been published.

Some unknown wit has set up a Twitter account as “Old Hoss” Radbourn and dispenses commentary on modern sports and culture through the purview of a 19th-century hardass. The results are pretty special. It’s been rumored that one of the guys responsible for the now-defunct Fire Joe Morgan site is behind the Old Hoss Twitter. I’m not sure who it is, but I’m glad it’s there. A few of the account’s tweets:

• One of the advantages of playing armed: hooligans who ran on the field earned a lead bullet and a shallow grave.
• I was never really the same after 1887, the year laudanum was declared a “performance enhancer.”

• I liked “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for my at-bat music. I was of course bedding its author, Julia Ward Howe. Thighs like spun cream.
• This C. Crist reminds me of “Peaches” Delahunt, who was a white, landed slave-owner who claimed to be a Lincoln Republican. He was most tan.
• The real reason people throw back home run balls: in my day a sniper would plug you if you didn’t. Balls were expensive; lives weren’t.
• I once traveled to Rome to see Michelangelo’s Pietà. It was so lifelike and moving. It would make a better out fielder than C. Quentin.
• Just watched “Bull Durham.” Of all the gifts Annie gave “Nuke,” Hoss suspects gonorrhea was the lad’s least favorite.
• 1888. A crushingly disappointing year. Had to go on the DL with a case of the gout. I curse you, sweetbreads and other rich delicacies.
• Tonight Hoss noticed greeting cards labeled “Easter, romantic.” Not sure that is what J. Christ had in mind when he vanquished death itself.