"The Rant" by Trav Flatt
By Trav Flatt
Hair Rage
I fail to comprehend the vast media coverage of Damon’s beard. Last year’s Hair Rage was Josh Beckett’s scraggly little thing which happened to resemble some sort of Giant Mutant Death Caterpillar clinging tenaciously to his chin, and I failed to comprehend the extensive media coverage of THAT. I’ll grant an exemption for Rollie Fingers’ handlebar, though.
Apparently, I just don’t get it.
Since when did people start giving a rodent’s rump about the ‘style’ of baseball players? Now, I’ll grant that there are some bizarre behaviors out there that merit a bit of bemused attention (Moises Alou’s Official Weewee Batting Gloves come to mind, and let us not forget Damon’s own Naked Pull-Ups), but a fixation on a player’s ability to grow facial hair is starting to drift over into the ridiculous. This is coming from a guy who bases entire columns around Weird Sports Things.
Now show me a guy stuffing some sort of gargantuan afro into their cap until the seams split, then we’ll talk. Looking like a complete dork is one thing, but with Beckett and Damon there wasn’t really anything that struck me unusual enough to devote a phalanx of reporters to.
Maybe there are just so many problems in the World of Baseball that the fans are desperate to find ANY excuse to distract themselves from them. What league disparity? Ha ha! Let’s instead point out that Don Zimmer strongly resembles Shrek! Perhaps it’s some bizarre sort of psychological transference that baseball fans engage in to keep themselves from thinking about the possibility that Robber Baron team owners and an avaricious Player Association have looted the "purity of the game" and there isn’t a Damn Thing anyone is going to do about it.
A New Meaning to "Baseball Cap"
"Salary Issues" just happens to be the convoluted mess which caused me to defect from baseball for quite a few years. I played the sport through and beyond high school, and was basically a fan by default until I started to open my eyes and recognize the competitive imbalances. Then, upon taking note of the various reasons behind said imbalances, I grew disgusted with the whole quagmire and stopped patronizing the Majors.
So, since then, I’ve been pretty much an exclusive NFL Football fan. I adore the salary cap. Sure, there are still moron athletes out there with blood-sucking agents representing them, but the key difference between the NFL and MLB is that reckless and irresponsible spending by a team owner actually ends up screwing the team over when accelerated signing bonuses and stupidly backloaded contracts start putting teams into Salary Cap Hell.
Look at the San Francisco 49ers. Barely any wiggle room under the salary cap and pretty much NOTHING to show for it thanks to some twenty million dollars in dead cap space floating around in their books. Stupid spending has actual consequence. Just wait until the Washington Redskins hit 2006.
Meanwhile, the Yanks manage to spend, for example, $6,000,000 a year for Steve Karsay. Here we have a middle-of-the-road setup reliever making a salary (While again on the disabled list, by the way) that rivals the Marlin’s highest-paid players. The kicker is that he’s not even in the top ten of ‘Highest Paid Yankee Scum’.
I think this would fall under ‘Irresponsible Spending’ to the extreme. Key difference again: Where an NFL Team would crash into Salary Cap Hell without being able to do much about it until the wasted money came off the books, an MLB team has NO negative consequence. In stark contrast, teams actually BENEFIT from Stupid Spending. More salary tends to equate directly into more playoff wins, and at this point the freakin’ New York batboy probably makes more than I do.
So Hair We Are Again
In any event, this column is not specifically about Baseball Salary Issues so much as Stupid and/or Bizarre Athlete and/or Owner Behavior in general. However, I felt somewhat obligated to include a sincere baseball bitch in an introductory piece. We should get back to the Highly Engaging topic of Johnny Damon’s head.
Before the much-touted Shaving of the Beard, Damon drew many comparisons to:
a.) Jesus
b.) A Caveman
c.) A Disheveled Homeless Guy
d.) Rupert
From this, with the aid of a few journalistic beers, we can logically conclude that Jesus was a disheveled homeless caveman. Or that Rupert is the Second Coming? We are not entirely sure what we can conclude at this point; a few more journalistic beers might shed some light on this problem.
Whining MLB Player of the Week
Jose Guillen, mercurial slugger for the Angels (Note: "Mercurial", as I have induced from reading sports news, is an Advanced Journalist Word that we like to make use of when we really want to say, "Immature Butthole"), threw a highly professional hissy fit on Monday, calling out his team’s pitchers.
Guillen is SICK and TIRED of being beaned at the plate. Having been doinked six times so far, he leads the league in "Favorite Target" among MLB pitchers.
In response, Angels pitchers intend to helpfully start beaning him in batting practice. You know, so he can grow more accustomed to it.
