Monday, Sep. 28 2009 @ 7:30AM
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| Justin Miller as a relatively ink-free Minor Leaguer... |
Justin Miller has never picked up a copy of Ray Bradbury's
The Illustrated Man or watched the
1969 Rod Steiger flick based on the book. But, as Pee-wee Herman told Dottie before they biked out of his own "life story" -- "I don't have to see it. I
lived it."
Miller, 32, is a big, friendly looking man with a shaved head and a casual sartorial style; when he met us at AT&T Park he was wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, and Chuck Taylors. Before elbow inflammation landed him on the 60-day disabled list, he'd
amassed a 3-3 record for the San Francisco Giants pitching in long relief. Like most baseball players, you wouldn't look at Miller and think "That guy must be a professional athlete" -- but you
would look at him.
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| Justin Page |
| ...and now as a San Francisco Giant (click pix for larger versions) |
When asked if he even knows how many tattoos he has, Miller shakes his head, smiles and admits he does not. "One," he says with a laugh. "Just say I have one big one." In short, Justin Miller
is a tattoo. If we attempted to describe, in detail, every last one of Miller's marks we'd crash the bandwidth on our server. In Major League Baseball circles, the 2003 stipulation that pitchers with arm tattoos must wear long sleeves -- the tats ostensibly distract batters -- is known as "The Justin Miller Rule."
Miller -- who hails from Torrance, Calif. and has a two-foot-high "L A" emblazoned across his back amid scores of other tats -- got his first tattoo on his 15th birthday. He was escorted to the parlor by his father, who'd struck a deal with the future Major Leaguer -- the elder Miller had noticed that Justin's buddies were showing up with tattoos older friends had given them out of garage-based studios. Miller's dad figured that if he couldn't stave off his son's budding desire to be inked up, he might as well "be done professionally, done right."