Dunn reveals relation to Paul Bunyan

CINCINNATI, OH — Cincinnati Reds slugger Adam Dunn has confirmed recent speculation that he is, in fact, mythological lumberjack Paul Bunyan’s nephew.

“You see, he’s my mom’s bother,” Dunn told SSNN. “As a kid, I really wanted to be a lumberjack; so I would spend summers with him up in the forests of northern Minnesota. We’d chop down two, three, four hundred trees a day. When I was thirteen, I found out I couldn’t be a professional woodsman because of my red hair – and I didn’t own any flannel shirts – so Uncle Paul carved me a bat. That’s when I took up baseball. I owe a lot to him.”

“He [Dunn] was a good kid,” Bunyan said in a phone interview, reached at his log cabin. “Never any trouble, and he loved playing with Blue, my pet ox. You know how he’s always in the top ten in outfield assists? He built his arm up by playing fetch with Blue with tree trunks.”

Dunn also credits Bunyan with helping him hone his perennial 40-homer swing. “Uncle Paul showed me how to cut a Red Pine with one swing of the axe. I transferred that to my baseball swing, and now every time I bat I pretend the ball is a 90-foot conifer. Which I suppose explains why I occasionally swing and miss at the tiny ball.”

Dunn said Bunyan doesn’t like coming to Reds’ games because he feels like too much of a distraction. He did, however recall his uncle being at one or two minor league games.

“Yeah, he couldn’t fit through the turnstiles at Rockville Park. So he uprooted one, fed it to Blue, and then got kicked out because they said his fifty-five pound axe was considered a deadly weapon,” the Reds’ outfielder recounted. “Another time, I think in Dayton, he drank six hundred beers and started yelling at the umpire when I struck out for the fourth time that night. Man, he’s a trip.”

Always the family man, Dunn had to add how proud he was that his own son already bears a striking resemblance to Bunyan. “The little guy just turned one a few months ago. He’s got his great-uncle’s thick brown beard and hit the six foot mark at his last checkup. Maybe he’ll be a lumberjack one day, just like his daddy wanted to be.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!