NEW YORK, NY – I could spend today talking about how Trump disinviting the Philadelphia Eagles to the White House is a win-win-win, in that the Eagles don’t have to go, Trump doesn’t have to get butt-hurt because of the light turnout and bore us all with illiterate tweets, and the NFL looks like an even bigger pile of sh!t for bowing to this divisive pu$$y with their National Anthem edict. I could also mention how Russian collusion is still in full swing with Ovechkin on the verge of winning a Stanley Cup and Serena Williams withdrawing from her French Open match with Sharapova (that must be some heinous pee tape). But, instead, let’s talk about how much baseball is sucking this year.
Divisional deficiencies. The American League East contains 2 teams, the Yankees and Red Sox and the three sad baseball homeless encampments that they get to beat the holy hell out of on a fairly regular basis. Baltimore has Manny Machado, Adam Jones and the worst pitching staff in the universe. Toronto has Josh Donaldson, who’s injured so often he should be on the Mets, and no one else. And Tampa Bay has a roster so obscure that the Federal Witness Relocation Program regularly uses their names and identities for mob informants looking for a new start… The AL Central has one team playing with their heads barely above water, and the rest are in their briny graves with the Titanic. Next! The AL West is good but far from great with the Robinson Cano-less Mariners playing okay (predicted by me) and in first place (not predicted by anyone)… The National League, meanwhile, is so blandly mediocre that even lovers of The Olive Garden are offended by it. How watered down is it, you ask? Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Arizona are your divisional leaders and Matt Harvey is still collecting paychecks as a starting pitcher.
Can there be an All-Star Game without All Stars? Seriously, how many great players can you name right now? Sure there are some dominating pitchers, Verlander comes to mind, and names like Judge and Altuve and Trout still make you turn to watch the occasional highlight, but there are tons of guys hitting well below their career numbers. And because managers insist on going to their pens so often, starting pitchers aren’t the rock stars they once were. It was more fun watching starters like Seaver, Fernando, and Randy Johnson try to get the game’s best hitters out than a half dozen relievers. And even guys that are having great seasons, guys like Mookie Betts, keep getting injured. Stop lifting weights already and try getting a little more flexible, especially you pitchers.
Knock it off with the terminology already. Exit velocity? Spin rate? Go to f**king hell with that sh!t. No, seriously, f**k right off.
Can “The Summer Game” survive this subpar start? Short answer is “yes.” But there’s got to be more consistency from more teams, and that doesn’t mean consistently sucking. Stars languishing on awful teams, like Machado, will hopefully get traded to contenders. All-or-nothing Ball, meaning home runs or strikeouts, needs to find a balance. Streaky baseball can be fun, just not all the time. How about some base hits? And some Davids will need to genuinely emerge to take on the usual Goliaths.
Barring that, this baseball season will continue to suck and some unlucky NL team will get murdered by either the Red Sox, Yankees or Astros in the Series. Why watch the lead up and plot points when you know the end of a movie that the NBA has already made and remade three times.
Come back tomorrow for Buddy Diaz, who went to the White House yesterday hoping to see Eagles and instead saw the world’s biggest, dumbest, orange parrot forget the words to “God Bless America.”
