As
a child, I lived and breathed the Los Angeles Dodgers, who, reciprocally, couldn’t
have cared less if I’d died an agonizing death from juvenile leukemia. As a
person of accelerating decrepitude, I’ve come to find cooking shows more exciting
than baseball, but still turn the Dodgers game on when, as is the case far, far
too often, the Food Network turns itself over to Guy Fieri. You will be delighted
to learn that I have had some wonderful ideas for making the game a lot more
fun to watch.
I
would love to see a new rule, whereby batting teams are able to station a
Designated Interferer anywhere on the field. Let’s say your team’s pull-hitting
cleanup guy comes to the plate. The manager would probably instruct the DI to
run out into right field where he could attempt to rackle or at least trip the
right fielder before he could get to a ball whacked into his jurisdiction.
Think of the remarkable agility and athleticism the fielder would have to
summon to elude the DI!
In
both basketball and football, players pound their chests, bellow into
vanquished opponents’ faces, or perform little dance moves when they do
something terrific. Baseball, though, has what my first wife used to call
tender little baby feelings. In recent years, it’s become OK for players who’ve
just done something notable to glance gratefully toward the heavens, but
otherwise anything other than aw-shucks humility will inspire the opposing team
to seethingly conspire to injure the offending player.
Can
you imagine how much more fun the game would be to watch if the players whooped
it up as their football and basketball counterparts do? As it stands, a batter
who’s hit the ball out of sight must go into aw-shucks mode before the ball
reaches the cheap seats, but what if he instead made a huge display, before
rounding the bases, of gratefully fellaing his bat, sticking his tongue out at the catcher, mooning the pitcher, and shouting at the other team's dugout, "How did you like that, bitches?" This would ensure lots of Bench-Clearing Brawls, which, even though no one ever actually throws a punch, are almost invariably the most exciting part of any game in which they occur.
Attentive
readers are well aware that I favor every major league stadium employing a
small team of snipers to put a bullet in the thigh or even groin of any player
who, on doing something notable, glances heavenward, as to acknowledge The
Almighty’s intervention. No one who believes in a God who would help him hit a
home run while countless thousands of innocents around the world are dying of
juvenile leukemia deserves to live.
I know that some teams will balk at the expense involved, but they can save
significant bucks by firing their stadium organists.
No music
in the world, not even that played in churches in predominantly white suburbs, is as excruciatingly corny as that played at ball games. And for
whom is it played? Surely not for the backward-capped Bud Light-drinking brodudes
who are the sport’s most avid fans!
As
it stands, batters who are hit by 95-mph fastballs are required to pretend
hardly to have noticed. To do the normal human thing and rub the injured area
is seen as weak and effeminate. Baseball as badly needs a superstar with the
chutzpah to defy this idiotic tradition, and to bawl without shame when struck
by a pitch as it needs to get the players to stop slobbering all over themselves.
Very few chew tobacco anymore. The constant spitting is purest affectation. Moderrn ball players, who drive Maseratis, own islands in the Caribbean, and have their eyebrows and facial hair styled at salons at which they leave $100 tips, spit because their antecedents were illiterate farm boys whose puppies had taught them that chewing tobacco was virile and pleasurable and wouldn't give them cancer.
Affectation
is the province of the weak and effeminate.
Cut it the fuck out
already, boyos.
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