Whatever Happened to Bombo?

An outfielder for the Montreal Expos, the Minnesota Twins, and a team in Japan, Bombo was also enshrined into the immortality of Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor, who wrote "The Ballad of Bombo Rivera".




This guy would have been my favorite player growing up, if only I'd known he existed. I didn't start following baseball until the early 1990s. When Bombo was playing for the Twins, I was five years old and watching Herculoids cartoons. Bombo was long gone by the time I became aware of sports at all. The fact is, he should have had a comic book and a Saturday Morning cartoon about him. He should have met President Carter. He should have married Natasha Kinski and sired a squadron of beautiful shadow-skinned cat-eyed children; simultaneously, Bombo finding himself beloved by Natasha's father, the insane (read fucking god) Klaus Kinski of AQUIRRE WRATH OF GOD and many many other crazy flicks. Heck, the real Bombo Rivera's life might have been even cooler than all that, far as I know.



I'm giving serious consideration to naming any future (first) sons of mine Bombo. Also Cornelius (PLANET OF THE APES) and Zera (same) if a girl pops up.



But Bombo...you can't be named Bombo and deal hardcore drugs or rape nuns in Third World countries or be a clown-faced serial killer. You can't be Bombo and not sing out like Ricky Richardo while squatting over your love-dappled woman. Bombo must be a man who battles jaguars in the trees and lashes himself and family to the biggest palm on the island during the hurricane. You'd never fight a man named Bombo, just because there is no malice one can have toward Bombo. But he'd always be there to back you up, effortlessly deflecting attackers. A hurled beer mug could never strike the countenance of Bombo. Projectiles would whirl away, negated to harmlessness by Bombo's dazzling smile.



You want to save the world, name more children Bombo.