More Major League Barfitude
(Plus Some Rival Good Stuff...)

Just returned from a much needed vacation and ready to resume my calling to expose serious major league barfitude once again here in Dodgerland. It just keeps comin'. It never takes a vacation. Like this neat little item.

Went to the local supermarket to restock the pantry and came across one of those temporary cardboard displays situated by the checkout aisle. In the little cubbies, about eight in all, were cheap Dodgers caps. They were adjustable, but the backs were like the fishing caps that have the slide belt instead of those sprockets.

The display had "Budweiser" printed all over it and claimed that Budweiser was the official beer of Major League Baseball. The catch was that these special Dodgers caps, marked down from $10.99 to $9.99 (ooo-wee!), featured the name "Budweiser" embroidered across the back. [Since the submission of this article, Dave informs me that the hats have been marked down even further -- to $7.99. -- GP]

Not only can you wear the cap of the official team of Major League Baseball, but you can have the name of the official beer across the back as well.

What gets me is how stupid major league baseball thinks Joe Fan is. That he would actually pay money to go around as an advertisement for Budweiser. But could Joe Fan be that stupid? Would he actually buy those things? The scary thing is that he probably does.

I can't figure it. I just can't. Somebody explain it to me.

It's like this other item: I went into a shop at the mall called "Lids." Does your local mall have one of these? It's literally a boutique that sells only baseball-style caps, featuring all kinds of different teams in different sports with a variety of designs.

The supremely barfitudinal part is that, at the time I went there early this month, they had one little cubbie devoted to Giants caps, gratuitously placed among all the other major league teams. In another section covering an entire wall, however, were cubbies in a 13-by-6 configuration for a total of 78 that displayed only Dodgers and Yankees caps, with one of the rows given to Phillies caps. All these caps were displayed for sale in addition to the large numbers of standard Dodgers and Yankees caps available to buy.

That means that in a place specifically set aside, 72 cubbies full, were virtually every kind of Dodgers or Yankees cap you could ever dream of having. There were black caps, blue caps, red caps with black lettering, red caps with red lettering, black caps with black lettering, even taupe caps with black lettering and khaki bills.

All with either the Dodger "LA" or Yankee "NY" as the insignia.

How many Montreal Expos taupe and khaki caps were there? How many do you think? Come on, take a guess, bet ya can't guess....

That's right! You got it! There were hundreds! (I do this to laugh so I simply can't barf....)

Good old Joe Fan may say, "Wull yeah, but, the Dodgers are there because the Lids shop you went to is in Los Angeles, and the Yankees caps are all there because they're a good team!"

Hey! I don't disagree at all! That's a fine assessment! Very fine indeed!

But why, for crying out loud, isn't there a row of Montreal Expos taupe and khaki caps at the Lids shop when they ARE good like the major league sycophants are always claiming they are when they want to justify the existence of free agency?

It's because they don't give a gnat's pustulant piddle about competitive balance or all teams working on an "even playing field." They just want to see the Dodgers and Yankees do well.

Now, the Yankees and their highly priced team are doing well, but let's look at what the deal is with the Dodgers. Why have they sucked? (Even though they are playing .500 baseball, there's always the presumption that as the vaunted Dodgers, they should never suck.) Indeed in my last installment I wrote extensively about how the Rupert Murdoch era would bring in loads and loads of unending prosperity.

Believe me, my predictions will still come to pass, surely enough, but what has happened this year is that Murdoch has been beginning the fitting of the team into his mold. I admit I should have seen the Mike Piazza trade coming because it makes perfect sense.

"You were from the old regime," Murdoch essentially said to him. "I'm now going to use my billions to get the team for the new regime." In messing with the player personnel like he has, it should be expected that the Dodgers would falter this year, until the Fox group can get their own National League All-Star team together. (In fact, I heard this the other day: the Fox group has suggested the idea of tearing down Dodger Stadium to make another Dodger Stadium in its place. Unbelievable. Well, actually, it can be very believable, the way they are going.)

Keep your eyes peeled. It'll start to come together in earnest within the next two or three years. The Dodgers will be able to easily do what the Yankees have done this year, build an awesome team with the big bankroll they have.

Joe Fan may say, "Hey! Wait a minute! The Yankees have a lot of home grown talent, like Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte! What about that?"

I say "Great!" The catch is that the Yankees will always be able to retain their superstar players, something the Expos and the Pirates and the Royals could never do. I don't think I would get much argument about my assertion that Bernie Williams is the best major leaguer in the game today. I also firmly believe that David Cone is the best pitcher in the game (with apologies to Maddux and Johnson and Martinez and Mussina), and the Royals a few years ago had him but gave him up to the Yankees when they acknowledged that they simply could not pay him.

As for the National League, don't look at the Dodgers this year -- instead look at the Dodgers-South, the Padres, a team that is also spending the big bucks this year. Unless something crazy happens, look to see a Yankees & Dodgers-South World Series matchup this year. Watch all the major league sycophants go just as googly-eyed over that. Listen to all their talk now, "Ooo whaddya think o' that Braves-Padres match-up for the pennant?" Yet more barfitude.

By the way, in case you didn't notice, I don't mean to brag or anything, but I just thought I'd point out how my little predictions have been going so far. Really, no, don't flatter me, I know, I won't brag or try to sound like a big shot, but I still find it important to let you know.

In the last installment of "The Call" written in March I elaborated specifically on a few teams that were sure to suck and a few that were sure to shine. Namely they were:

Suck       Shine
Brewers    Yankees
Expos      Braves
Pirates    Indians
Tigers     Orioles

They suck.

The "Shine" teams? Composite 304-185. All have winning records. Three are running away with their respective divisions, and the fourth, the Orioles are still in the Wild-Card hunt (the "Wild-Card hunt" -- please, gag reflexes, hold steady...) only because they were surprisingly disappointing at the beginning of the year. If Suck and Shine were put in a division in baseball, Suck would be 93-1/2 games behind Shine.

However, again, please, I humbly wish you would not draw attention to my brilliant psychic abilities, for yes, I do understand that baseball's talent is so evenly distributed throughout the majors, and such an achievement of prediction like this surely demonstrates the exceptional supernatural abilities I possess to foresee, indeed to prophesy, indeed to telepathically -- EEEEEE! You don't even need to be as sharp as the dumbest of morons to see that what I pointed out back in March was INEVITABLY going to happen NOW! You don't need to be a prophet of God to identify the teams with the money and the teams without, and what the inescapable result would be!

So then what do the people in Pittsburgh do? What do the people in Detroit do?

Why, of course!

Pirates fans wait until the Cardinals come to town! And the Tigers fans look for games against the Mariners!

So they can see everybody's favorite home run studs!

Mac and Junior!

After all, with all the division races settled here in the middle of August, McGwire and Griffey are baseball. Oh how we love to see them swing those mighty bats in pursuit of the legendary yet ever-elusive Maris mark! Oh how we love to check the Maris watch in our sports page every morning and see that neither of them hit any home runs the night before! Oh how we love to find answers to the most pressing questions asked of them, such as:

• "So what do you do to be so good?"
• "So how good can you possibly get?"
• "How close to a god will you get to be?"
• "So what do you think of the Bill and Monica controversy?"

Indeed Mac and Junior have been reverently and fully ordained as baseball's saviors, as deemed by Time magazine in a lengthy cover spread at the end of July. Never mind that the Cardinals and Mariners have been out of the pennant race since May, the game has been revitalized, the piece asserts, because of the chase after Maris.

More barfitude.

It is not the chase itself that is at fault. In the purist of worlds, it is a vital part of baseball lore and passion. The fact that the chase is seen as the saving grace of the game itself desecrates all that baseball is. Elevating the Maris chase to some stratospheric level -- in spite of the accurate assessment that home runs are the most appealing part of the game to Joe Fan (or to Dave Fan, San Francisco Giants home runs) -- is to continue to make baseball the plaything of the Powers That Be. They are explicitly using "The Chase" to gain more converts to an ignoble form of the game in which the only real interest is to pack them in and then watch how many billboards they can look at, or listen to how often the cash registers clink when tallying up the merchandise sales.

Recently, Sammy Sosa has replaced Griffey as one of the two home run darlings, but let's just look at the most darling of them all, Mark McGwire. He has gone on a home run binge this past week, and is very much within Maris distance. He's now got 52.

A piece in the Los Angeles Times by Ross Newhan got to me thinking about this obsessive fawning over the McGwire chase. Newhan pointed out that with Mantle hitting behind him, Maris received not one intentional walk through the entire 1961 season, and yet McGwire has gotten lots.

Many are crying about how great a feat that is for McGwire, for him to be getting those home runs in spite of all the walks. The piece then speaks about how teams are pitching him, and this is what really struck me. Newhan speaks of how McGwire backers appreciate the Mets and Cubs, who have been "challenging" McGwire by pitching to him, while they almost chastise the Giants who have walked him a lot. Before I even made note of Newhan's tone, I thought, "Hmm, yeah! In order to win -- the thing I thought most teams were supposed to be doing -- why not walk McGwire? Walk him almost every time he's up if you can!"

Do you see where this is going? What you got are these notable items:

• Baseball is more about money than about holding to some "ideal" of play, because players have got to get paid. (See previous writings for why.)
  
  
• The more money that needs to be raised, the more urgent it is to get fans to buy into the product.
  
  
• The game now has a very distinct and identifiable entertainment quality that must be sustained.
  
  
• Fans need a "Maris chase"-like event in order to draw their interest.
  
  
• It is imperative that they buy into it, especially when the balance of power is so stilted because of the huge financial discrepancies -- hence huge competitive discrepancies between teams (i.e., no real pennant races to speak of).

With these items in mind, I put forth the following questions, just for you to consider...

Would it be completely beyond the realm of possibility for:

• Pitchers to be told, by whoever in the Powers-That-Be realm -- it could be anybody, including the pitchers themselves -- that it is in the "best interest of baseball" to give Mark McGwire something to hit? Even if it is not deliberate, could pitchers be saying to themselves, "Even if I give up the long ball to him, it is no big deal because I benefit from his home runs?"

  Has anybody else thought of this? Has anybody further considered that, in a world of ballplayers getting paid gidzillions of dollars, competition is simply not the most important thing, but that entertaining the fans IS? That any ballplayer at any time is saying to himself, "Wow, this game sure is a drag; It's 2 to 1 here in the fifth and there have been four errors, no home runs, and it's cold and drizzly, and even though we're ahead, these fans just aren't being entertained...."

  That Joe Fan would be saying -- with his team ahead -- "Hey! I'm not being entertained! Where is Mark McGwire? Why won't my team pay the big bucks for a Mark McGwire?"

  What is so appalling is that they do say that, all the time!

  So then, why then is it beyond the realm of possibility for:

• Mark McGwire to be given a special bat, a "good luck" bat, shall we say, one that has been -- quiet now -- particularly altered in order to, well, help him on his journey, shall we say?

I am well aware that I am sounding like a conspiracy nut here, and go ahead, call me a conspiracy nut if you will -- go ahead! I can take it!

But let me ask you this. Not even to claim that it has happened in any way, but let's just pretend that it did? That McGwire was using a corked bat? What would Joe Fan do? Would he feel betrayed? Or would he simply not care? Or just as bad, would he rant and holler about how evil the people are who did this, but then admit, "Oh boy was it fun while it happened?" If he were to do that, then he is no different than the Powers That Be who are screwing with the game. He is only interested in the entertainment value of baseball. And really, when it gets down to it, the Powers That Be are only interested in what Joe Fan does think about its entertainment value, because he pays for it.

And that brings us back to your basic Dodger-Budweiser cap. Joe Fan may indeed be stupid enough to buy it, to pay money to be a walking billboard dupe for the major league Powers That Be.

I am just appalled -- and even a bit frightened -- at how blatantly shameless the ruse has become in everything the majors leagues does, from "official beers" to the Maris watch.

But wait! Everything is not as horrible as it sounds!

I did say at the beginning of this installment that there would be "Some Rival Good Stuff," so to avoid giving anyone the idea that I am a completely reprobate complainer, I have put together an extra added feature called "The Ten Best Things That Are Right With Sports."

The "rival" part is that if major league baseball is going to suck, then these things are still there to restore one's faith in those good things.

So, to get to this stuff, simply click this trusty little linking thing right here.

• The Mark McGwire Steroid Controversy: Whether it's a big deal or not, whether he's done something wrong or not, it's still being viewed as a big deal.
  
  
• The pitches that Astros pitcher Jose Lima supposedly "grooved" to his friend Sammy Sosa: True or not, this too is being viewed as a big deal.
  
  
• Yesterday's first-inning ejection of Mark McGwire by rookie umpire Sam Holbrook: The ump had to virtually apologize, saying that he tried his level best to keep McGwire in the game, and that the last thing he wanted to do was eject him, but that McGwire simply went to far in protesting a called third strike. Also ejected were Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan -- who should've been ejected, because arguing balls and strikes is immediate grounds for ejection anyway; managers and coaches are usually dusted right away, and the players get some leeway. Clearly LaRussa's and Duncan's protests were not so much over the pitch location, or even that McGwire was ejected, but that McGwire, being ejected, was thus unavailable to continue his assault on Roger Maris' record. The kicker here is that the game was held up for 10 minutes while the grounds crew tried to rid the field of the debris tossed onto it by enraged fans: "We paid to see McGwire hit home runs!" McGwire himself, in a press conference, yet (I mean, whoever heard of a press conference thrown by a player who was merely ejected?), expressed regret for overreacting, but also disgust for the fans: "That's just wrong."

How many more instances of this type will we see because of the overhyping of the Maris chase?

EEEEEE! Contributing Editor David Beck is a history teacher at a Southern California high school. He has also taught social studies, math, government, and economics, and has co-developed a course on the square root of -1."

Copyright ©1998 by David Beck

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