Repack Haiku #357 (Mark Lemke)

Once referred to as

"Home star runner of the Braves" 

Led to cartoon's name

 

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....

Homestar Runner...it's dot com!