Once referred to as
"Home star runner of the Braves"
Led to cartoon's name
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1989 Topps #327 Mark Lemke (RC) |
In the early Wild West days of the internet, when Flash animation was
becoming popular, one of the most famous internet cartoons was the amazingly
entertaining Homestar Runner. I was among it's many fans, but it wasn't
until researching for this haiku that I learned that Mark Lemke was the unintended
inspiration for the name. According to an interview by the creators The
Brothers Chap:
It actually comes from a friend of ours [James]. There was an old local grocery store commercial, and we live in Atlanta, and it advertised the Atlanta Braves. It was like, "the Atlanta Braves hit home runs, and you can hit a home run with savings here!" And so there was this player named Mark Lemke, and they said something like "All star second baseman for the Braves". And our friend [James] knows nothing about sports, and so he would always do his old-timey radio impression of this guy, and not knowing any positions in baseball or whatever, he would just be like, "homestar runner for the Braves". And we were just like, "Homestar Runner? That's the best thing we've ever heard!" - from Wikipedia
Now I have the urge to re-watch the episodes, especially the Strong Bad
Emails. Of course, I had to see if there was anything baseball card
related....
I used to watch that too! Had no idea about the origin story.
ReplyDeleteHa, love stories like this. Had no idea
ReplyDelete