Update re Kerry's Secret Service codename

In February, I posted "What Secret Service codename for Kerry?," in which I speculated on the moniker that our brave Secret Service agents who are protecting Candidate Kerry might assign to him for their radio communications.  Tradition requires that Democrats who are protectees be given codenames beginning with the letter "D," but neither I nor my commenters could come up with a genuinely memorable and apt D-word.

However, my quest — and perhaps the Secret Service's? — has been fulfilled.  Comes now The Sporting News columnist Dave Kindred:

Here in the Toy Department of life, where we play with sticks and balls and cars that go boom-on-fire, it's always entertaining to keep track of our political heroes' athletic achievements, such as George W. Bush falling off his bicycle onto his schnozz.

Imagine my delight, then, to see John F. Kerry throw out a ceremonial baseball at Fenway Park....

Though Kerry scored three goals to help Yale University's soccer team defeat Harvard in 1966, his Scottish soccer coach once told him not to "diddle with the ball," a scolding that led to the nickname "the Diddler." ...

As Kerry came out of the Red Sox dugout to do the first-pitch honors, he carried the ball in a way that foreshadowed the achievement to come. He carried it pressed against his palm with his fingers wrapped all the way around it.

A baseball is God's perfect invention. It fits precisely, cozily, wonderfully, in the space between one's thumb and index and middle fingers.

Perched there, it is supported by the side of the ring finger. Someone once said, and maybe it was Yogi Berra, "Anyone who carries a baseball stuffed against his palm and enclosed by all his fingers is a rink-turning kitesurfing diddler."

Kerry didn't go all the way out to the mound. Perhaps he took a touch of advice from aides who had seen him warm up. He stopped maybe 45 feet from home plate. From there he threw the first pitch.

I say "threw" in the kindest possible way. Here's what Kerry did: He raised his right arm to its full height. From up there, in an athletic movement seldom seen on a baseball field, he let the stiffened arm fall forward. At the same time, he splayed open his fingers in a way that allowed the ball to fall out. It bumped against the ground short of the catcher and in the right-hand batter's box.

Now, anyone working in life's Toy Department dare not suggest that a presidential vote be decided according to how a candidate throws.

Still.  President Bush threw a World Series strike from 60 feet 6 inches while wearing body armor the month after 9/11. And he threw another strike opening this season in St. Louis.

So if we need a fastball at Osama bin Laden's ear, I know which guy I want on the mound.

A-yup.  "Diddler."  Suh-weet!   (Hat-tip to the temporarily perma-linkless Hugh Hewitt.)