Is that guy Cutch? No ... it's 'Uncle Larry'

A film sensation!

April 18th, 2020

Isolation does funny stuff to people. And though he's not quite gone with the full "Wilson," Andrew McCutchen is using this time to unveil some character work.

Long known as one of the game's premier filmmakers, the time at home has opened a new vein of creativity. His early quarantine works focused on the strange anxiety of living in a world where grocery shopping is done in masks, and what it's like to walk the same steps in your yard day after day.

But from these emerged a new character of McCutchen's: A mustachioed, elderly gentleman -- decked out with sunglasses and a Phillies jersey with a plunging neckline -- who lives with Cutch and goes by the name Larry McCutcheon. (Yes, purposely spelled differently.)

He struggled with McCutchen for screen time when he was introduced (which, for the academics, raises some interesting questions: Does Larry represent some part of McCutchen's repressed id or ego fighting for control?), and then struggled with manning the phone. But as he told us, he was here to stay:

Larry returned on Friday -- this time with his very own logo and intro music.

This time, Uncle Larry yells to an offscreen Cutch, complaining about the flavorless sauce the outfielder made and how McCutchen swings a toothpick at the plate.

"That's why you can't drop 40 [homers]. I dropped 40 at the break -- and I only played in 24 games" before going on the IL for tearing his mustache, Uncle Larry informs us.

Yes, as the caption reads, "Larry got jokes," but is there something more to this? Is McCutchen revealing some deeply hidden fears about himself -- namely, that he doesn't hit enough home runs and his cooking isn't up to par -- through the lens of this fiction? Is there something of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" inherent in McCutchen's performance? These are the questions for the film scholars to debate.

Of course, it's also possible that Cutch is simply bored and aiming for his own film, like Kyrie Irving got for Uncle Drew, or perhaps a sketch comedy showcase on Netflix, becoming the next breakout star like Tim Robinson from "I Think You Should Leave."

We'll be watching closely, because as Larry tells us -- quite ominously -- at the end of the second video: "Larry is going nowhere."