So many thoughts and emotions going through my head right now. Will try to sort them out and compose more coherent thoughts later, when I’m not so tired and on the verge of ugly-crying happy.
But how can you not love baseball, where a team that had no business being in the playoffs ends up winning the whole goddamn thing?
Doesn’t matter. Can’t believe I’m actually typing up this as fact:
World Series Champions, Atlanta Braves.
I mean, if I took the time to research and actually look, I’m sure I could find a countless number of things, but serious question here, is there anything more unnecessarily needed than mugs made out of baseball bats?
This is actually a topic that brewed last year that I never got to, but seeing as how we’re in the thick of the World Series now, advertising for this bullshit has reached fever pitch, and I’m getting targeted ads and seeing auto-playing bullshit videos for this crap all over again, and now I’m bragging about it.
Seriously, when I first saw this shit last year, I’m thinking to myself, “hey, the world is in a fucking pandemic, and I’m thankful my daughter is too young to realize just how fucked up everything is outside our doors. You know what I need? A fucking mug made out of a baseball bat.”
Maybe if it were any other year than 2020, I would’ve rolled my eyes and ignored just how much bullshit Dugout Mugs are, but the timing of them being pushed to the moon in the middle of a pandemic, I had a hard time swallowing why anyone would want a fucking bored out baseball bat, instead of like I dunno, some PPE or maybe a fucking vaccine?
It just epitomized the ridiculousness of American capitalism and the existence of all sorts of shit that doesn’t need to exist, and Dugout Mugs just made me mad every time I saw them getting shilled.
Like, I googled them just to see how much they’d cost, and a single fucking pint is $70. Seventy fucking dollars, for a hollowed-out bat head. Maybe it’s slightly oil-treated, and has a laser-engraving of my favorite team’s logo on it. But it’s still a fucking piece of wood, which also means it’s not dishwasher safe, and by the looks of it, cleaning the inside of it will require a brush, since any adult human’s hand would probably not be able to wedge inside the bowl to clean with a sponge.
No fucking thanks, I’d rather drink out of cans or bottles, or the litany of novelty pint glasses that I’ve collected throughout the years from my favorite locals or microbreweries, that I can then throw in the dishwasher and clean and dry it without worrying about it warping or rotting.
I hate these so much that it might do the Braves a solid if I say that I’ll buy an Astros Dugout Mug if the Braves can win the World Series, just so I can tempt fate and control the universe into delivering me a Braves championship, just so I can suffer the punishment of having to plunk down $70 I’d rather spend on anything else, on something I really abhor.
Part of the challenge of trying to write posts from the past is that sometimes, there are particular topics that end up being more time sensitive than others, on account of the fact that they’re things like sports or live events to which if too much time passes, then the impetus for the original posts could become invalidated, and therefore useless to try to even bother writing about, retroactively.
That being said, I’m skipping the queue a little bit, and ultimately just going to make a singular post about the 2021 MLB Playoffs, because zero people who read my shit will give two shits about baseball playoffs, and the likelihood of me revisiting this topic with the time that I don’t have is pretty much not going to happen, but I wanted to put down some words that were going through my head before time passes and then I won’t be able to.
At the time I’m writing this, the National and American Leagues have both advanced to their respective championship series. The Boston Red Sox vs. the Houston Astros in the American League, and in the National League, a rematch from last year – the Braves vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, the Braves have a 2-0 series lead on the Dodgers, to which where me simply acknowledging such a fact is condemnation for a repeat of last year, where the Braves Atlanta’d away their favor, and watched as the Dodgers went onto win a very winnable World Series.
To say that my excitement for the Braves having a 2-0 on the defending world champions is non-existent would be an understatement. Last year proved that there is absolutely no reason to be excited for the Braves to actually succeed, as they pissed away both a 3-1 series lead, as well as killed all momentum for my theory of baby luck, and even though I could say baby luck is most certainly in play again this year, I learned my lesson last year to hold hopes that any Atlanta team could hold true to any superstition other than their inexplicable ability to choke no matter the circumstances.
Frankly, it’s a Christmas miracle and simply the crapshoot logic of divisions, rules and alignment that the Braves are here in the first place, and part of why everything is just so hilarious with the way things are standing right now.
The Braves won 88 games, which makes them literally the worst team in the entire playoff picture. The Red Sox, Yankees, Cardinals and Dodgers, who were all the wild card teams who had to scrap for the ability to play in a play-in game to see who got to get into the real playoffs, all had more than 88 wins. In fact, the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners who both missed the playoffs had 90 wins, but by virtue of the fact that the Braves played in the most putrid NL East division, and won it with 88 wins, they avoided the play-in game, and most hilariously, are considered the “higher” seed in the match-up against the 106-win Dodgers in the NLCS where they did their job and capitalized on the opening two games at home in Smyrna.
Now one thing I would stated that’s now been invalidated by the passage of time, is that the St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs, and they are whom I would’ve bet the farm on going al the way, because as much as I hate the Cards, they’re just that one charmed team that always goes all the way if they can just get their toe into the door. But they ran into the aforementioned 106-win Dodgers team, but not for lack of effort, considering the Cardinals deadlocked the Dodgers pretty much the entire game and it took a walk-off to send them packing.
I’m actually not that surprised that the Braves beat the Brewers in the NLDS. If there were any team that I would’ve wanted the Braves to match up against, it would’ve been the Brewers, and most definitely not the Giants or Dodgers. Had it been either of those two teams, the Braves would’ve been bounced from the first round like they do every other time they’ve made it into the playoffs.
And back to present time, where the Braves are up 2-0 on the Dodgers, and I still have 0% faith that they’re actually going to seal the deal, mostly on account of the fresh history of last year. Furthermore, with the Red Sox and the Astros duking it out in the AL, MLB is salivating over the potential narrative of the Dodgers versus either one of those teams in the World Series, considering both teams were basically found out to have cheated against the Dodgers in prior World Series in 2017 and 2018.
With the potential revenge storyline on the table, I wouldn’t put it past MLB to low-key sabotage the NLCS in favor of the Dodgers, and maybe we’ll see some more wonky check-swing strikeouts called by the umpires against the Braves, or maybe we’ll just see the Braves be the Braves and just implode on their own. Either way, no matter that nobody will admit it, the Dodgers being in the World Series is what will be decided to be best for business, and what I’d expect to be the case by the end of next week when the pennants should be decided.
Earlier in the day, my wife and I were on a walk with the kids. We talked about how neither of us knew who our respective teams were even playing for their first games of the season, we’ve just been that busy and absorbed by parenting to have any time to concern ourselves over college football, much less a variety of other things.
She mentioned how tomorrow was the start of the season, but then I pulled the whole well actually thing about how the season had already started for some FCS and D-II scrub schools and how there were a handful of games on tonight-but nobody usually gives a shit about Friday night college football games, and they’re usually just scrubs playing.
An hour later I’m get a text message from my step mother-in-law, saying Go Hokies! and I’m confused so I pull my phone out and check the internet and sure enough, scrub Virginia Tech is opening their season on Friday night, hosting the surprisingly highly ranked #10 North Carolina. Fuckin’ figures
Anyway, to cut to the chase, Tech takes down #10 UNC, and on day zero of the college football season, it’s the de facto upset of the week, and I would wager that no higher ranked team will probably go down, short of the loser of the #3 vs #5 game between Clemson and Georgia.
For one night only, Virginia Tech stands atop the world of college football, pulling the biggest upset of the season so far. Which will be something fondly to look back on when Tech will inevitably fuck up their season when they lose to like Pitt, or worse off, FCS school Richmond.
But until the annual crash back to earth happens, it feels great to start the season off with a big W against a top-10 ranked opponent, as much of a fraud ranking it may have been, and division rival.
I like baseball. I like wrestling belts. You’d think a collaboration between the WWE and MLB to release team-themed replica wrestling belts would be a layup for a guy like me, right?
If you think so, you couldn’t be any more fucking wrong.
An obvious cash-grab for starters, but all I see when I think about the fact that there are going to be 20-30* belts that will be put into production starting in the 2022 season, all I see are 20-30 blets that stand in the way of the WWE getting off their lazy asses and actually making replicas of the only fucking WWE blet I want left, the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.
*why anyone would want a replica belt for teams like the Rays, Rockies, Reds, Marlins or Orioles is completely beyond me, but homers are homers for a reason
For the record, I don’t just hate these MLB-WWE collab belts, I hate every other belt out there that’s not an actual active or historic belt. I hate all the shitty tribute belts that WWE makes that takes existing plates and slaps them onto some overly-designed shitty straps themed to a hall of famer, and calling it a tribute. I hate Xavier Woods’ and Tyler Breeze’s shitty YouTube show belts that have come into existence ahead of the only active fucking belt without a replica available. I hate when they take some shitty stinky brown leather and wrap it around an Attitude-era World championship and call it a Mankind tribute.
But both MLB and the WWE really like money, and it really is low-hanging fruit to make these and watch them sell a justifiable number of them to warrant the decision to produce them. I can’t hate on the business of it, I just hate that these things are definitely going to stand in the way of what I actually want.
And frankly, given the news over the last months of NXT kind of being rumored to being shifted back into a true developmental territory, who’s to say that any of the NXT and NXT UK blets will even get to be sold for much longer in the future, especially if they’re deactivated and removed from television.
Only hardcore blet-heads like myself may have noticed that for about four days, the WWEShop released the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship Replicas that’s still listed as available in the Euro store, but was already taken down from the American site, which initially had me curious that they took it down in order to have a brand new blet available at promotional discount, but seeing as how it hasn’t been brought back, it makes me wonder if it’s more the possibility that the blets will be deactivated on television, and therefore not needing replicas to be sold online.
As far as the NXT UK Tag blets, I’m beginning to think that they’ll never even be made in the first place, because perhaps the division as a whole might get folded up, if the talking heads surrounding Vince McMahon in Stamford see them as a risky ROI.
At least I’ll have an Atlanta Barves blet available to me with the cash I’ve been sitting on for literal years, waiting for the one blet I actually wanted.
Originally written for July 23, 2021
In one hand, there’s often times resistance to change, even when the change is surrounding perceived offensive sports team names like the Redskins, the Braves and the Indians. But at the same time, there’s this unwinnable outcome where no matter what the name is changed to, won’t be met with the unforgiving, relentless wrath of internet comedians.
And as much as I too am ready to clown on the Cleveland Indians for being among the first of red-flagged sportsball team names, there’s something to be said about the fact that they stopped dragging their feet, and made official an actual change to the team’s name and identity, because sure, they’re going to and already getting all the ridicule and jokes of the internet, but they’ll also be the first to be forgotten, moved on from, and it will really suck for the Redcorn team that changes their name last, because they’ll inevitably be the one most remembered, and hardest to move forward since they’ll have nobody after them to help take the shrapnel next.
Anyway, so let’s talk about the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the racist-ass Cleveland Indians. Now I’ve said my peace several times about how I couldn’t really care any less about team names, but I’m neither a triggered descendent of Native Americans nor am I an evil whitey who is exploiting them.
No matter what they team name was going to be changed to, it was inevitable that it wouldn’t be good enough, logical enough, or provide nearly enough room for clowning on, to possibly make it ironically good. And make no mistake, “the Guardians” most certainly fulfills that failed destiny of a mediocre name change, but surprising nobody at all, it’s a bland, vanilla, generic name type that of course, has no potential to offend anyone, and in the corporate, soulless world of professional sports, it’s basically perfect.
As far as their general branding goes, it’s perfectly safe, sterile, and basically feels like a little league team’s identity has been promoted to the big leagues. The wordmark is sterile, boring and I don’t even want to know what fake-ass creative agency’s rhetoric is behind it’s boring-ass display. And it should be of no surprise at all that the boring-ass capital C that has been the interim icon of the franchise, appears to have stayed.
But let’s talk about the, what I’m guessing is some sort of alternate logo, featuring the G of Guardians. It’s basically a straight rip of a Korean professional gaming club, SK Telecom’s T1 logo. Why the letter G needs to have wings is one question, but it just so happens that said wings are literally a direct rip off of SKT’s wings used in their T1 logo. Seriously, the style of them is literally the same as T1’s, except they angle it differently as if logo savants on the internet wouldn’t notice. It’s literally the same 4+3 feather pattern that merges into a G instead of a T1.
Either way, as a whole package, the Cleveland Guardians is about as exciting as a local home and garden expo. But it still succeeds in moving the franchise past their supposed racist predecessors, and for corporate investor stooges, this is of the utmost importance to get back onto the MLB money train that will make money regardless of if the team was named the Indians, the Guardians, the LeBrons or the Zukes.
One funny side effect of more or less, retroactively posting something about this topic is this little nugget that showed up not long after the initial press release introducing the Cleveland Guardians: apparently a corporation as buttoned up and polished like MLB didn’t have the wherewithal to double check that “Cleveland Guardians” was entirely available, because not only was the URL, the Facebook and Instagram accounts for “Cleveland Guardians” already taken, they’re owned by a roller derby team and have been for the better part of the last decade. Not just any roller derby team, but a male roller derby team, and this is the first time that I’ve ever heard of such a thing actually existing.
By now, all the jokes in the world have already been made that I’m not even going to bother to try and pile on top of. All I know is that eventually, the MLB Cleveland Guardians will get what they want, but I can definitely hope that the men’s roller derby Cleveland Guardians will put up just enough of a fight to embarrass their baseball bitches, and ultimately get a nice big fat settlement out of it, because it’s basically the golden ticket that no other men’s roller derby team will ever be lucky enough to stumble on again in the future.
Originally intended for July 20, 2021 but stagger-posted to break apart all my whiney dad brogs
I don’t think at any point in my life it’ll not look funny to see that headline, even if it were reality.
As I opined about a little while ago, it was never not fascinating to see that the Milwaukee Bucks were knocking on the door to an NBA championship, because during the vast majority of my childhood into teenage years where I was the most diehard about the NBA, the Bucks were the epitomal doormat of the Eastern Conference, and often times the worst team in the entire league. To think that they’d ever shake the stink of the 80s and 90s to become this powerhouse two decades later is permanently unfathomable, regardless of how much reality that it has become.
But for them to fulfil the destiny and actually go all the way, and hoist the NBA championship trophy, well ain’t that some shit? Considering the last few decades of NBA, the almost all prior championships were won by the Heat, Warriors, Lakers or Spurs, this is definitely one of those cases where a team with a less than reputable history finally breaks through the glass ceiling and makes the awkward breaking of the status quo actually happen.
So here we are, where the Milwaukee Bucks are actually NBA champions. From having guys like Brad Lohaus on the roster to having an eight-foot tall Greek monster scoring 50 points in a closeout game, the Bucks have come tremendous strides throughout the last few decades, and finally shaken the stink of the 80s, the lowered expectations of the 90s, and the general mediocrity of all the other time from then until now.
And like most championship teams, we’ll probably be in this weird renaissance of where the Bucks will remain pretty decent for the foreseeable future until financial matters inevitably dismantle the team, but at least everyone in Milwaukee will always have the memories of a fairly recent NBA championship in their lifetimes, which is most definitely something that us pleebs in Atlanta probably won’t ever get to have any time soon.
