A Real Renaissance Man

Here's a guy who has waaaaay too much free time. Conor Lastowka was asleep in 1986 when the Mets staged an incredible comeback to beat the Red Sox in game 6 of the World Series. That didn't stop him from becoming a fan, as in fanatic, of the contest, which he first viewed on ESPN Classic 15 years later. After watching it several times, he was enthralled with the bizarre circumstances that occurred to help perpetuate the BoSox World Series curse. It became a sort of passion for him. As a child of the 80's, he was a devotee of Nintendo's RBI Baseball (I can understand that). When he wasn't inventing national holidays (more on that later) a favorite pastime for him was playing the classic video game. After his Nintendo was stolen, he moved up to a video game emulation on his computer to play RBI Baseball. All in all, an accurate personification of the Gen-Y slacker.

While on the internet one day, he found a contest that offered $25,000 for the best video that spoofed pop culture. He naturally thought of using the emulator to recreate game 6. After some research, and downloading the actual game from MLB.com, he easily played the first 9.5 innings and saved his progress on the emulator. The bottom of the tenth inning is the important, and bizarre one. This inning he demanded perfection of himself and would not compromise the accuracy of the recreation. He says he took around 200 attempts in order to have a fly ball hit to just the right place in center field. Several more tries were necessary before the fateful ground ball to first base that ruined Bill Buckner's life.

After 4 hours of play and 6 more to match his efforts to the Vin Scully call from the MLB.com footage, he finished. Unfortunately, his video was about 3 times the length of the video contest parameters. He posted it on a video sharing site instead, so that he wouldn't deprive the world of his efforts. You can see it here. It has become quite popular around the net. It even helped him land a job with a video company after a VP saw it while searching the internet trying to score some pot. True story.

One fact I found very interesting about Mr. Lastowka is the fact that while in college, he co-founded National High Five Day. It is a day designed to promote community between strangers who slap hands for no good reason other than to celebrate life. It is celebrated on the third Thursday of April every year, which is the 20th later this week. So to commemorate Mr. Lastowka's achievements in the areas of video gaming and general slacker-tude, join me in smacking the upraised hand of unsuspecting strangers. And to think Mom always said that video games never helped anyone later in life.