?Japanese submarine slammed two topedoes into our side, Chief. Was coming back from the Island of Tinian Leyte. Just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb.
?Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when your in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light Chief, sharks come cruisin' so we formed ourselves into tight groups. Kinda' like old squares in a battle. Like you see on a calender like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man that man, he starts poundin' and hollerin'and screamin', sometime' the shark go away....sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya ..right into your eyes....thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites you. Then those black eyes roll over white. And then...well you hear that terrible high pitch screamin'. The ocean turns red, despite all the poundin and hollerin' ....and all come in and rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hunded men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don't know how many men, they averged six an hour. On Thursday morning Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robertson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water like a kinda' top. Upended. Well he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mister Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and saw us. A young pilot, a lot younger than Mister Hooper here...anyway he saw us and he come in low, and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know, that was the time when I was most frightened, waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water...three hundred sixteen men come out. The sharks took the rest, June 29,1945.? --Quint, from the movie "Jaws". Scene written by Robert Shaw.
Yep, things could always be worse.
Lineups
Dave Borkowski (3-2, 3.29) and the O?s are up against Josh Towers (7-4, 4.62) and the Jays at SkyDome this afternoon. Towers has won 5 of his last 6 starts.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20040814033037999