Oh Miami (Marlins)

For as hip of a city Miami thinks they are, when the day is over, the pursuit of money tends to run roughshod over everything else, like the naming rights to a fancy, high-tech baseball stadium.  And I’m not entirely sure why, perhaps I just sometimes feel that no other team is capable of making boring, square-like business decisions other than the Braves, but I guess it should be of no surprise that the long-awaited naming rights to Marlins Park have finally been sold, and moving forward, will be loanDepot park, the home of the Miami Marlins.

And because identity is everything, it will be in that precise format, with lowercase L and lowercase P, with an uppercase D in the middle, which is appropriate, because the stiffs that chase the dollars that ultimately go to them are typically dicks to begin with.

Maybe it’s because Derek Jeter is among the ownership group of the Marlins, that I thought that perhaps even they would break from the timeless tradition of chasing dollars, and actually name the park that isn’t something as soulless and boring as loanDepot park, but as stated above, when the day is over, money rules the world, apparently even for a guy like Derek Jeter, who often played every game like it was his last.

Because there’s little reason to believe that whatever hundreds of millions of dollars loanDepot pay the Marlins to be a giant billboard, will actually invested into the team itself, and the baseball organization will continue doing what the Marlins have historically always done, which is rely heavily on their scouting department and development to continuously find diamonds in the rough at an impressive clip to keep the team remotely passable while ownership swims in pools of money like Scrooge McDuck.

Honestly, this is no surprise, but it’s always a little bit sad to me whenever any ballpark or venue sells out to some regional no-name corporate entity that makes them sound lame as shit.  The Braves have a bank and two different regional HVAC companies that own the naming rights to various facilities of theirs, and all across the country, whether they’re sporting venues or event spaces, they’re all just named after boring companies as if the impact of their advertising is anything but residual name recognition.

Long gone will we see another Fenway Park or Veteran Stadium, or venues with names that roll off the tongue, or at least are capable of having interesting nicknames, that help mitigate the lameness of corporate greed.

And after four years, in spite of Yeah Jeets’ acquisition of the Marlins, the culture of the team hasn’t really changed as much as I thought it would, and as a closeted supporter of the team, it is sad to see them just kind of falling into the status quo of obscure lower-middle class teams.

It’s hard to even describe the cringe of Randy Orton apparel

Perusing through my news feeds, I came across this story that detailed how WWE wrestler Randy Orton has apparently released a clothing line, known as SLTHR; presumably as in “slither” because his in-ring persona is that of a snake-like aggressor who cannot be trusted and strikes quickly. 

After looking at his announcement image for five seconds, and the painfully low-effort design of Old English typeface, and the horrible utilization of the no-vowel spelling of words as if we’re trying to go back to Aramaic, and my face literally did the Steve Carell from The Office face meme.

Holy shit man, it’s hard to really put into words just how terrible the idea of Randy Orton clothing is.  It’s awful because in all the years Orton has been on screen in non-gear attire, it’s always douchey bro clothing, and it basically validates the blurred line between character and person that Orton’s personal clothing line is basically the same kind of crap.  It’s awkward because as much as Orton loves to pick fun at wrestlers with indy pasts or those who he feels has not made a respectful amount of money in their careers, a guy schilling out his own apparel seems a little desperate to be making more money himself.

And it’s just plain bad, the way it looks, how it’s branded, and how it’s “announced,” over social media.  If the one shirt is any indication of what any other products are going to look like (I can’t under good consciousness make any conceited effort to check out the rest), I wouldn’t be too optimistic.  I’ve never actually see anyone wear a WWE-licensed Orton shirt in public before, not even ironically, so I have a hard time believing anyone would be willing to actually spend real money and purchase much less wear Orton’s SLTHR crap either.

Another funny thing to me is that this is barely a week removed from where Vince McMahon himself put the company on blast, to tell all wrestlers to stop using their WWE gimmicks and likenesses to try and profit on shit like Cameo, Twitch or any other third-party creative outlets.  Orton is notoriously infamous for being coddled and protected by the WWE, and numerous wrestlers past and present have all insinuated all the rules he’s been allowed to bend and outright break, on account of his privilege, and this is turning into a glaringly prime example of just such.  Sure, “Randy Orton” is actually Randy Orton’s name, and there’s nothing against the rules of him using it to sell his own shit, but the optics of this combined with the eggshells all his other peers are walking on certainly doesn’t help the overall picture.

Overall, just everything about this is cringeworthy and turrible.  For a guy that is currently being billed as the greatest wrestler of all time, it reeks of desperation, and much like Orton himself, seems so very flat, boring and completely lacking in creativity.  But hey, if there are any wrestling fans out there that get put into the friend zone of anyone they’re unrequited crushing on, at least now they have an official shirt that can wear to really drive home the reality of the situation.

Make Em Say Ughhhh . . . on the crapper

I grimace face’d: has been rapper Master P releases line of instant food with the intention of replacing Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, aptly called “Uncle P’s

Lately, I’ve been in one of my writer’s ruts.  My janky ring finger that makes it occasionally difficult to type, combined with the fact that now that my brog is back up, I haven’t really found a good rhythm to write, and I’ve kind of lost touch with all the sites I used to hit up to seek out inspiration.  And then there’s that thing called “the baby” which commands the vast majority of all my days, and I sometimes struggle to find things to want to write about, or find the time to carve out in which to do some writing.

It’s times like these, when stories like Uncle P’s Louisiana Seasoned instant food line, kind of help trigger my brain into spurting out words again, and see if I can break some of the rust that’s forming on my writing chops before they go too dormant.

Honestly, my first thought when I read the headline and then saw the hero image was, is this for fucking real??

I haven’t heard Master P’s name since like, 2000 when he showed up on WCW to do a rap vs. country music storyline that ironically ended up with the heel country faction helmed by the late great Curt Hennig inadvertently getting super over, when it was obviously clear that the rap faction was the intended stars.

He also released this shitty song that somehow was always in the top-5 music videos on MTV that I used to watch the countdown after school because I literally didn’t know what else to watch and MTV seemed like it might be cool.  Coincidentally, the lyrics are what I would imagine the average Uncle P’s customer would be doing, while on the crapper after eating too much of Uncle P’s hackneyed instant food products.

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A microcosm of American idealogy

Honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long: Cleveland Indians demote pitchers Mike Clevinger and Zach Plesac for disciplinary reasons AKA they went out at night while on the road instead of adhering to a team-wide curfew and safely containing themselves at the team’s hotel and lied about their actions, putting the entire team at exposure risk to coronavirus

At the time I’m writing, this, the Cleveland Indians are 4th place in the American League, and regardless of the expansion of the playoff field, they’d have been at least, playing for the Wild Card, even if it weren’t.  They’re a playoff team, right now.  It’s extraordinarily difficult to get into the playoffs in MLB, as prior to this year’s expansion, typically only five teams make the playoffs, with the bottom two requiring a play-in game to become eligible for a best-of series.

A lot of the Indians’ success has been on the arms of Clevinger and Plesac, whom have been both pitching decently in a year where everyone is a little off-kilter due to the uncertainty of the year.  But it says a lot about the makeup of a team, when a team is without hesitation willing to jettison two starting pitchers because of breaking the rules.

Because it’s not even so much about the rules as much as it was the fact that two guys needlessly and selfishly put themselves over the rest of the team, and furthermore raised the potential for coronavirus exposure, especially when pretty much every single franchise in MLB has had at least some player or personnel exposed at some point already.  Fortunately, both tested negative, but that’s really besides the point.

It should be mentioned that the Indians also have a player who is a leukemia survivor, which is of course outstanding, but also means that he’s immunocompromised, and is at higher risk of contracting coronavirus if exposed.

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Nope.  Never saw it coming

Four games.  That’s all it took for the 2020 Major League Baseball season to have its first cancellations on account of a coronavirus breakout, as the Miami Marlins are the first team to have an outbreak of COVID-19 cases, after 20+ team personnel test positive.  Effective immediately, numerous home games were cancelled for both themselves, as well as the Phillies, the last team they played prior to the announcement, and MLB will have a great time trying to figure out how to re-work all these cancelled games into their already abbreviated 60-game season.

Honestly, it’s about as surprising as finding out that dogs like to sniff butts that this happened so quickly.  Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t take two games before the first cases started to happen, but then again considering MLB said that testing would only take place every other day, who’s to say it didn’t, but then there was a grace period of a day in between?

Anyway, this is just a microcosm of how fun the rest of this season is going to become, because as far as I can tell, from what I’ve heard is that there will be many more double-headers played this year to accommodate the crunch of games, and much like the Toronto Blue Jays will have to endure, since the entire country of Canada basically won’t let them back in, many of them will have re-jiggered to where the opposite team will be designated as the home teams, on the road.  I guess when there are no fans in the stands, it definitely makes the venues feel a little bit more neutral, but baseball players are neurotic weirdoes sometimes, so who knows how they’ll react to batting last in someone else’s ballparks.

Oh, and the double-header games will all be 7-inning games – just like in the minor leagues, which is an appropriate comp at this point, considering how bush league the season is becoming.

SO, this just opens up the door more for the possibility of some wonky seasons; I hope by the time we’re nearing the end of the 60-game season, the Seattle Mariners will clinch the AL West in Houston, where they’re the home team against the Astros at Minute Maid Park, and some guy from their taxi squad hits a walk-off homerun.  It would be the perfect beginning of their playoff run to their inevitable World Series date with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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This is really the state of America in 2020

No matter how much I never liked to admit to feeling it, now that the faucet’s been turned, it seems like not a day goes by where the words don’t pass through my lips, and it doesn’t make me feel any better verbalizing it now as it did when I first came to the realization that right now, America sucks.

Talking with a friend about the state of the world, I found myself saying things that I’d never said before in regards to how I felt, mostly because I’ve been isolated, and mythical wife and I try not to talk about things too much because they really are that depressing, but what came out of my fingers in text is that I don’t think it’s ever felt so physically possible to feel just how much our country is letting us down, the way America is completely and utterly failing the American people on a daily basis right now.

It really is becoming impossible to keep up with all the ways things are fucked up, at least for me, who likes to jot down notes on a daily basis so I can remember the things happening in history for another day, especially in case I feel inspired to write about them at some point.  But it’s downright sad and pathetic the things that emerge on a daily basis about the state of America in the state of the world currently, and I realize that it becomes a little more difficult every day to not grow more jaded and nihilistic about how things are, which are definitely things I don’t want to be happening when I’m in a period of my life where I’m trying to enjoy and savor the time of new fatherhood and spending time with my baby.

It’s kind of not fair that America is in such chaos and forced to hunker, when all I want to do is show my kid the great big world and can’t, because neither of us want to get the coronavirus that’s fucking everywhere and risk our lives.

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Bobby Bonilla, Christian Yelich and baseball is fucking idiotic sometimes

Most baseball fans know by now, that July 1st is known as Bobby Bonilla Day.  As in the day in which the New York Mets pay a guy that hasn’t played professional baseball since 2001 $1.19 million dollars, and will continue to do so every single July 1st until 2035.  It’s one of the numerous reasons people love to clown on the Mets, and one that literally has no expiration for 15 more years, and it’s ironically celebrated by all in baseball geek circles, because for some reason we’re fascinated by money that people who have no direct impact on our lives make.

And because all this shit is in concrete writing, in spite of the shortened 2020 season where all active players are going to be taking giant hits in their salaries due to prorated numbers, Bonilla will still receive his full $1.19M, and as I mentioned in a post not long ago, shitheads who didn’t officially retire like David Wright and Prince Fielder will still be making multi-millions from their teams, with the former, also being the Mets, because the Mets really love pissing away money.

Also I learned something new about Bobby Bonilla this year, which is how he somehow inexplicably has another deferred money deal with another team, being the Baltimore Orioles, where in addition to the $1.19M he gets from the Mets, he also receives a cool $500K from the O’s every single year between 2004 and 2029.

I sure hope Bonilla still sends Dennis Gilbert, his former agent, a nice gift basket every single year.

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