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Count Drac-Yu-la? Darvish Apparently Has Ability to Sense Blood Types
In what has got to be the weirdest talent this side of a guy I knew in high school who could swallow his burps and turn them into farts, Yu Darvish can apparently guess a person’s blood type just by looking at them. Jesse Rogers has the whole story over at ESPN, and it’s just as bizarre as it sounds. Knowledge and discussion of blood types are more common in Japan, but telepathy and intuition for antigens are not.
Maybe Darvish is actually a vampire, which would help to explain this supernatural power. It would also allow him to continue eating fried chicken well after death, though popular mythology holds that the need for traditional sustenance is overridden by bloodlust.
What we might see as a supremely strange topic is just business as usual for a guy who can pitch left-handed and throw a knuckle curve in a game the same day he learned the grip.
“It’s what I might use in casual conversation,” Darvish explained to Rogers. “Like Victor Caratini might walk by and we’ll carry on the conversation.”
As with many superpowers, this one comes with some unintended consequences, one of which is that it has a lot of people calling their moms. After all, how many dudes actually know their own blood type? I’m sure the number is higher than I think, but I texted my own mother after reading about Darvish to see if she still remembers mine.
I’m not the only one, as both Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant tried in vain to get their own moms to confirm Darvish’s guesses. Joel Wolfe, the pitcher’s agent, had better luck.
“We were at one of his favorite spots in Dallas for dinner, after meeting with all these general managers and assistant general managers,” Wolfe told Rogers about how he discovered his client’s unique talent. “All these new people for him. And he mentions something about one of them being Type A blood type. That struck me as odd.
“He says unusual things, sometimes, so I pressed him. And he said he could guess most people’s blood type if he knows them. So he guessed mine. I had to call my mom, but he got it right.”
If Hallmark’s Mother’s Day team hasn’t reached out to Wolfe about getting Darvish on board, they’re really missing the boat. This thing could really be big. Heck, it’d play during Valentine’s Day and Halloween as well.
Easily the best part of this whole story for me is Wolfe acknowledging that his initial response was to pass it off as just another one of Darvish’s little quirks or pranks. That it’s actually legit is almost secondary to the fact that you automatically assume it could be just because of who’s doing it. Man, Darvish is the best.
Ed. note: I have what I think is a fairly good excuse for not knowing my type, see comments below for more on that.