Unfortunately a lot of baseball waxing and waning poetically
is done by creepy baseball fetishists who think every kid dreams of being a
baseball player still. These dudes also are from the 1980s school of Sports
Illustrated sports writing who dream of being collected by the Oxford American
at some point, and become angry at Grantland analytics charts (although to be
fair, Grantland analytics charts and mathematical baseball theorists are just
as fucking fruity as poet baseball fans… basically anything you can get a Ph.D.
in should not be involved in baseball talk being most baseball players barely
go to college if at all and most are either drafted out of high school or they
are from a black Hispanic country and pretend to be 16 when they are 14 so that
they can pretend to be 18 when they are 20 and play baseball in America).
Sidetracked into my brain bitching about shit, sorry. What I
came here to do was give you a preview of the upcoming baseball season with
full predictions by the Most Regular Guy on Earth in America, who is me. Let’s
start in the American League, because it comes first alphabetically.
AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST
(As you can see I’m starting out west to reverse standard
patterns of your brain that start on the east. Fuck your brain. These are in
predicted order of finish.)
#1: Anaheim Angels of California near Los Angeles – I don’t
know man, they seem to sign everybody on earth so they have to be allowed to
win something one year. They added Josh Hamilton to Albert Pujols as last year’s
big free agent signing, potentially creating the largest most expensive
underperformance in baseball history outside of most 21st century seasons of
the Yankees. But they’ll win the division. Why? I don’t know man, bunch of
famous fuckers on their team.
#2: Oakland Athletics – Essentially the anti-Angels, the A’s
are infamous for doing wacky mathematical nonsense to find great players in
piles of discarded hard drives ever since Seth Rogen’s little brother did that
for them in the ‘90s or some shit. A commonly uncited reason for Athletic
awesomeness though is the green and yellow color scheme. No professional sports
teams really rock that, other than the As, and the now-defunct Seattle
Supersonics. That, combined with Rollie Fingers mustache, and me seeing a
picture of the weird Elephants shirt Ty Cobb wore when he played for the
Philadelphia Athletics, gives them more psychic power than you can really fuck
with. And they will wild card it up, because all of this shit is wild.
#3: Texas Rangers – Josh Hamilton’s straight edginess was
the only thing that kept Ron Washington from being full-blown Ron Washington,
which in his true wild habitat is sort of like one of Fred Sanford’s friends
who would go to clubs with him and try to get him to play that fucking crazy
washtub bass contraption. That type of full-blown wackiness is a little too
much for an actual baseball team because about 45% of all baseball players are
uptight assholes who want perfectly repeated routines during games, not some
crazy duck-walking dude wired on life and powdered cocoa extract talking
nonsense gibberish at them.
#4: Seattle Mariners – Sadly, perhaps the east coast bias is
true because this is the most anonymous of teams out there, meaning they will
find it hard to compete and win games when they are busy seeing how many
AT&T passwords are just password123 and calling it “hacking”. Hackers make
for horrible hitters too. On the plus side, baseball Beast Mode Michael Morse
is now in Seattle along with football and original flavor Beast Mode of
Marshawn Lynch, which hopefully will create some sort of chaotic power vacuum
that allows for fun animated gifs galore. Ultimately that’s all I ask from
baseball.
#5: Houston Astros – The Astros were so shitty they were
going to get relegated but then somebody was like, “Baseball doesn’t have
relegation. This is America you fuck,” so whoever was in charge was like, “lolol
that’s right, well let’s move them to the AL, just for the fuck of it.” So
essentially, in his devious ways, Bud Selig traded his Milwaukee Brewers to the
National League for the Houston Astros, and all the AL got was this shitty
striped throwback J.R. Richard jersey.
AMERICAN LEAGUE CENTRAL
(The Midwest is literally rusting back into the earth, and
if it wasn’t for Mexican cartel leaders wagering large sums of money on games
based around their main American hub of Chicago, two of these teams would just
have one-third of their games simulated by EA Sports to save us all time and
money.)
#1: Detroit Tigers – You may not know this but Justin
Verlander is basically Monsanto corn in human form, which is a pretty good
argument for genetically modified baseball players in my opinion. I know
Verlander is a good dude because I bumped into him one time in Goochland County
and we shared some stories outside of George’s Tavern store, and scratched off
a shit load of lottery tickets. Eventually I hit a $20 scratcher and was like, “Oh
shit! I’m gonna get me four chicken thighs and a forty! Well, not the forty
because I quit drinking, so a big spicy V8 instead.” Verlander laughed and
said, “Man, Miggy said that EXACT SAME FUCKING THING to me just last month.”
#2: Cleveland Indians – The MSM aka Lame-stream Media is not reporting these
things, to keep panic down but there are already marauding gangs of
post-Apocalyptic half-feral humans roaming the streets of Cleveland. They could
care less about baseball, and most of what they consider true rock-n-roll will
never even consider a thing like a “Hall of Fame” something you’d do, as halls
of fame are a sign of over-civilization, and marauding gangs usually are
against too much civilizational behavior, generally speaking. That being said,
the Indians are still real, meaning they exist.
#3: Kansas City Royals – The Royals so desperately want
everybody to believe they are the new Rays, building a strong team from within,
being smart and practical, all that shit. Royals PR people are constantly
trying to convince news sites and baseball experts to tout this talking point,
but then they just end up being the Royals again.
#4: Minnesota Twins – The Twins are literally a machine that
will never work correctly without a short, stocky black dude as their spark
plug. It’s very literal, and until they replace Kirby Puckett, they’ll never be
shit, no matter how many non-descript white guys do shampoo commercials. Also
who the fuck buys enough shampoo to justify there being commercial endorsements
for it? Do you buy special shampoo? Haha, fuck that. What’s wrong with you?
#5: Chicago White Sox – The White Sox are essentially back
to being the shitty White Sox nobody cared about, though somebody made a good
LaMarr Hoyt joke on twitter earlier, so they always have that to fall back on.
Really, in my mind, the White Sox will eternally be nothing more than LaMarr
Hoyt’s facial hair and Greg Luzinski’s gut muscles.
AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST
(Basically the UEFA of MLB. At least one of these assholes
always gets a wild card. Also I just made a veiled soccer reference inside an internet posting about baseball, which means I just plus-oned at internetting, which equals a half-minus at real life.)
#1: Toronto Blue Jays – They have oddly accumulated one of
the strangest teams ever. Like if someone was to tell you, “Hey, a baseball
team is going to amass a ridiculous amount of potentially still in-prime
talent, out of nowhere, for the fuck of it,” you’d never have guessed the Blue
Jays. I would’ve said Marlins, then Red Sox, then maybe the Phillies. But there
it is. How long will it last? I don’t know. I don’t give a fuck. I just want to
have sex up against the window of the outfield hotel room again, but they won’t
let me rent the room any more after last time. For as liberalized as their
health care is, Canadians are actually fairly conservative, especially with
regards to exhibitionist goat sex.
#2: Tampa Bay Rays – Always a disruptive force in the AL
East, which is funny considering most everybody in the Tampa/St. Petersburg
area is a Yankees fan. It’s kind of like the shitty neglected son is always
trying to outdo his asshole dad that everybody thinks is the greatest, so he
just ends up being awesome out of spite. That’s the Rays, who literally only
will ever sell out Yankees games at home, for eternity. Also wild card, trust
me bro.
#3: New York Yankees – Watching the Yankees fail is always
great. If you are a Yankees fan, I hope you live a long and suffering life,
because you are probably a horrible person, as an individual as well as
collectively when amongst others who think like you do. That being said, I’m
always thankful for the Yankees signing and acquiring players because it helps
me know who to hate. And the next few years, watching A-Rod go from perhaps the
greatest player ever to baseball’s Lance Armstrong, oh man that’s going to be
so fun to watch. Some people just look like they are born assholes, and A-Rod
is one of those some peoples.
#4: Baltimore Orioles – The Orioles are fun and all I guess,
but it’s kinda sad to watch Adam Jones career, as he’s the last American-born
black kid to have played baseball. Truly the slow-ending of a great era.
Imagine life without Jackie Robinson’s civil rights or Willie Mays’s greatness
or Dave Parker’s menace. It’s sad. It’s a shame we have to import all our black
people who play baseball nowadays, but it’s also a sign that baseball is not as
relevant to Americans as the poet-philosopher-theoretical physicist-bloggers
would have you believe. RIP Black American Baseball Player – God needed dudes
who love sports cars, cocaine, and Loni Anderson, all three circa 1975.
#5: Boston Red Sox – It’s weird because the people who are
Red Sox fans are more wretched than the people who are Yankees fans, but
somehow it is way easier to hate the Yankees. Not sure why this is culturally.
At least we can all be thankful the Red Sox are back to sucking. They should
totally wear more green jerseys with shamrocks and shit like that appeal to
their completely open-minded and non-racist fanbase. Also if you could somehow
cross-breed Red Sox baseball fans with Israeli soccer fans, you would have most
open-minded and non-racist fanbase that ever existed. Actually maybe that’s
what Bill Simmons actually is?
NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST
(I am switching the geographical order this time to keep you
confused. The NL East is an amazing place, full of amazing stories of baseball
franchises with varied histories and futures that cross like Megabuses in the
interstate night.)
#1: Atlanta Braves – Yes, I am saying the Braves will win
the division, even though everyone on Earth is like, “WOW MAN THE NATIONALS!”
Why? Because the Braves always win, even when they don’t. And then they go to
the playoffs, and don’t win, even when they do. That is the dichotic nature of
the Atlanta Braves, and it has to be enforced constantly by ill-humored
baseball Gods, who actually live in Venezuela and are going to be even more
ill-humored this year since Chavez is dead and Castro is dying.
#2: Washington Nationals – I am a Nats fan as much as the
Most Regular Guy on Earth in America can actually be the fan of a baseball
team. And it sure looks like wonderful things will potentially happen, doesn’t
it? Two problems though. First, there is the psychically crushing end to last
season’s miraculous playoff appearance. That shit kills souls, who never play
good post-season baseball ever again. Secondly, Washington sports teams are
cursed, perhaps in a karmic sense due to their close proximity to the American
government, which is as ill as it comes, because it’s not dictator ill where
you know shit is fucked; it’s marketing campaign ill, where you trick young
girls into signing up for prostitution by making it seem cool and freedomly. So
because of having watched this play out for many many years, I know that
Strasburg is going to have his elbow splinter into three pieces or Bryce Harper
is going to get arrested with transgender prostitutes in Baltimore or horrible
horrible things are going to happen. Still though, they’ll get a wild card,
because that’ll make it even more horrible when it ends again in traumatic
fashion.
#3: Philadelphia Phillies – Man, fuck the Phillies.
#4: New York Mets – The Mets are never something I can hate because
A) not the Yankees, and B) listening to AM radio from New York at night when
the only station you pick up is 660 and hearing weird old dudes who are Mets
fans talk about Mets shit. Plus lately I’ve been having recurring dreams where
I’m a crazy old Dominican dude who builds secret drug compartments in SUVs for
drug dealers at my shop along Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, and when I’m in that
guy’s head in my dreams, he fucking loves listening to the Spanish broadcast of
Mets games while working in his shop. It’s almost tricked me into ordering a
Johan Santana jersey to be honest.
#5: Miami Marlins – As America falls, and the
post-Apocalyptic marauders seen in Cleveland start to be nationwide, things
like the Marlins new ball park will slowly dilapidate into these garish photos
on some South American/African/Asian sub-continent Reddit sub-folder, kind of
like the Chernobyl ferris wheel. The thing is, we shouldn’t feel bad; it’s just
as hilarious this impending failure of America as the fall of communist Soviet
Russia was. Immense failures of human civilization are always hilarious; that’s
part of the natural beauty of baseball. (Note: That last sentence is designed
to be the one you quote and tweet out when you are building your Personal Brand
online by sharing stupid fucking links to stupid fucking shit like this
article.)
NATIONAL LEAGUE WEST
(I’m not even panning across the country in order because
seriously, fuck your brain and how it thinks things are supposed to go. I even
contemplated not even doing this in order of finish, but I promised I would at
the beginning, and I never break a promise, ever.)
#1: Los Angeles Dodgers – You know how annoying George
Steinbrenner was, and football owners like Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder are? You
may not realize this but you will come to regard Magic Johnson like that as
well. He is cut from that same cloth, and his goofy, want-to-win-ness will
eventually turn to overbearing, power-mad, assholeness. In a way, it’s
refreshing that we have gotten to a point in American racial history where a
black man can end up being an overbearing over-wealthy asshole like Magic will
become, especially in baseball, where there will never be any more black
American-born baseball players ever again. Also of note is how racial divides
are not scientific at all but purely a political creation, which ultimately
means when you hate a particular race, you are kind of hating a certain form of
politics, although it actually is not hating politics because it plays into the
hands of political goals. Shit is tricky nowadays. I go through a lot of yarrow
tincture because of this.
#2: San Francisco Giants – The Giants are consistently
consistent, and though I’m sad that the kid from Dazed and Confused finally cut
his hair off, I’m hoping he balances this with some weird mustache. Wait, no I
don’t, because the Giants are the ones with the stupid giant black beard thing
going in their bullpen. Brian Wilson is the worst, a sports example of that
hipster asshole type who doesn’t actually like anything, just accumulates weird
tidbits of weirdness to be like, “I am so weird, aren’t I? But no, I’m normal.
Just weird.” It’s all so forced and not organic at all, although organic is a
government label not an actual thing so I would imagine Brian Wilson’s goofy
bullshit may be certified organic, which just goes to show you shouldn’t trust
labels, ever, because you have to ask yourself, who is deciding how the labels
are applied? Also, wild card for the Giants, because why not.
#3: San Diego Padres – The Padres I don’t really care about.
They do weird camo uniforms sometimes and it’s hard to believe a team could
make camouflage uniforms look stupid but they somehow did it. If your
organization can do something like that, how can I believe them to ever build a
baseball team worth writing a half-witty blurb about?
#4: Arizona Diamondbacks – Always rank them at the bottom
because it doesn’t feel like they really exist. “Arizona Diamondbacks” always
sounds to me like a made-up team from a movie or TV show, like who Kenny Powers
gets signed by when he goes back to the Major Leagues, pitching against the
Orlando Breakers or Colorado Rockies or some other made-up shit like that.
#5: Colorado Rockies – See above, but also add in the fact
Colorado is the whitest state on the American Earth, and full of people you
should not ever like. They are the Yankees fans of the American socio-economic
ladder, and instead of calling in to sports talk radio, they hire lobbyists.
NATIONAL LEAGUE CENTRAL
(The most poetic of all divisions, and I mean that in the
bad way, but also the good way, partially. Does that make sense? Let me put it
to you this way: this is the division that gives us things like memories of
Dock Ellis or Dave Parker or Pete Rose as Charlie Hustle or goats going to
baseball games but not getting to go so witchcraft taking place, more than any
other division in baseball, which is a wonderful thing no doubt. But it also
gives us Bob Costas’ soliloquies, and all the myriad of ridiculous
self-important internetting that has been derived from such a thing, and that
is a horrible thing.)
#1: St. Louis Cardinals – Did you know that Cardinals fans
have written more books than any other professional sports fanbase, ever? They
average 2 books written per every 5.3 fans. The Cardinals baseball team lives
by that standard as well, essentially “tl;dr”ing their way to success year
after year. They will do it again this year, and probably next year, and
forever, and it will always seem painful to watch happen and nobody will ever
remember a single piece of it, even as Bob Costas machines start to spread once
artificial intelligence learns how to procreate, and there will be all these
little flying drones performing indignant soliloquies constantly, everywhere,
about how much better everything used to be when it was better and how
everything is horrible now because of this horrible thing that is happening.
Those days are coming.
#2: Cincinnati Reds – The Reds have become successful again
by signing more guys that sound like fictional characters from a Young Adult
novel about baseball than any other team. Dudes like Joey Votto and Homer
Bailey and Bronson Arroyo are creating this weird magical element where what
seems like it fictionally should happen actually happened last year in that
they won a pennant. It’s a risky way to build a successful team because once
the larger public realizes these guys actually exist and aren’t just a
fictional creation from some book, the magic loses its power and the team
starts to lose that psychic traction, which is more necessary in baseball than
any other sport. Thus the Reds won’t repeat in the playoffs this year, because
reality will catch up to them.
#3: Milwaukee Brewers – It says a lot for how shitty the
Brewers actually are when their owner is the commissioner of baseball and he
still can’t successfully fix them winning a World Series. This is part of why
baseball is less relevant to your average American – they are not as good at
engineering things as the NFL or even the NBA is. All major sports are fixed,
to a certain extent, and to not realize that is naïve and consumer of you. I
bet you buy shit because of advertisements too. Hahaha, you fucking fool; they
are using your own brain chemistry against you, making our human species weaker
and more vulnerable to extinction. And you don’t even fucking care, sitting
there acting like a baseball game is a real competition between people who
actually care one way or another whether they have more runs than the other
team. Fucking pitiful.
#4: Pittsburgh Pirates – I always hope this year is the year
for the Pirates but it never is. We should just be happy with half-year’s where
Pittsburgh throws a victory parade when the Pirates would’ve gotten a wild card
berth if the season ended during the All-Star break, and be stoked about that,
then let the rest of the season go as it usually does.
#5: Chicago Cubs – What can be said about the Cubs that hasn’t
already been said, to death, already? I actually feel sad for Cubs fans because
a lot of them can’t help what they were born into. I mean I don’t laugh at
Pakistani children who can’t sleep because of drone warfare, do I? Essentially,
it’s the same thing, except instead of not being able to sleep at night because
of the constant fear that your home may be accidentally destroyed by a missile
that kills your family and yourself, you are kinda bummed your baseball team
never ends up winning enough games to play a few more games.
PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS
Wild card round: Giants humble the Nats again Iron Sheik
style; A’s over Rays in road greys during late September days (well one).
Divisional series round: Giants over Braves (again, because
it’s the playoffs and Atlanta); Cardinals over Dodgers (stupid fucking
Cardinals); Tigers over A’s; Angels over Blue Jays (because realizing it’s the
playoffs is gonna freak out Toronto, trust me).
Championship series: Cardinals over Giants (stupid fucking
Cardinals); Tigers over Angels.
World Series: Tigers over Cardinals, because I have faith
that humanity can be wild and intelligently reckless and rebuild itself from
this post-Apocalyptic nightmare we are already halfway inside the middle of,
rather than sit around and write a bunch of goddamned books about how it should
be and not do a fucking thing and humanity dies while it is busy over-analyzing
itself in a self-important manner. Because ultimately that’s what this World
Series will be about. Ultimately, that’s what everything is about.
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