If we can’t beat the olds now, we don’t really deserve it, do we? Not only do we outnumber them, the stakes for everyone but the old assholes who have essentially destroyed the world are so much higher.
Greta Thunberg put it badassedly: “…nature doesn’t bargain and you cannot make ‘deals’ with physics.”
Make no mistake, if Bernie doesn’t win – and not only that, but if Bernie doesn’t win AND/OR we, the youngs, don’t put every single ounce of sustained pressure upon them, the olds – then we will be utterly destroyed in a very serious, non-hyperbolic way. Climate Change is here, it is getting worse, and it is accelerating.
That will definitely affect baseball.
I know last time I said that the NBA was objectively the best sport, but that is only because the MLB was not on when I was writing that. Baseball is obviously the objectively best sport in the world. This is because baseball is centered around the hardest thing a human can do short of constructing a plane ethically.
Swing a bat and hitting a ball in less than 400 milliseconds. I say it is the hardest thing a human can do mainly because I can do it and there’s a good chance you can’t and I am embarrassed because I genuinely cannot skate.
When I was in junior high every year the school would rent a huge thing of roller skates and P.E. would become a dedicated romantic roller rink revue; there were so many couples holding hands, skating in unison. Whereas I stumbled pathetically in a small circle. My circle was inside the larger circle. There were fifty teenagers all skating around one me. It was, in essence, the scene in Mad Max where motorcycles and cars are drifting around Max in a very menacing donut. This scene is also in every other post-apocalyptic movie, not to mention most movies with a presumably pre-apocalyptic biker gang. How does this keep happening; is gas free? Jesus!
Hitting a baseball thrown straight is hard. Hitting a baseball that drops abruptly is harder. Hitting a baseball that moves from side-to-side is impossible. Facing the uncertain possibility of any of them at any time then hitting is unthinkable.
That is why, when the game was invented, everyone threw at around 50 mph.
First, it turns out everyone from the past was tiny and weak. They were too busy fighting all the wars to perfect a protein-based diet and I’m pretty sure everyone had lead-poisoning. The past is fucked. They didn’t even have curve balls.
When FiveThirtyEight isn’t actively subverting democracy, they talk sports, too, and they use their trademark math powers to explain things that other websites have actually studied. They point to these maths done by the good folks over at Baseball Prospectus to explain that breaking balls have wandered outside of the Standard Model. The wave function doesn’t collapse until observed and there’s no way of predicting where it will be at any time. CERN could’ve found the Higgs by colliding Aaron Nolas.
Baseball is objectively the best sport because, about a fourth of the time, a buncha guys can do it, and a few of them do it really well.
Like Javy Baez, who is fucking awesome.
I am a Cubs fan, so even though I want to marry Shohei Ohtani, fuck Vlad Guerroro Jr., and kill the Ricketts family, I believe Javy Baez will someday just take the fucking walk for God’s sakes and become the best player in baseball history. Obviously.
I have made peace with Kyle Schwarber being low-rent Adam Dunn, in fact, I fucking love it now. Adam Dunn was awesome. Baseball is awesome because sometimes there are guys who just fundamentally cannot hit a ball that moves. It is their full-time job to learn how to hit a ball that breaks, but it appears that, even though they can hit a ball that does not move roughly a million miles – a skill that ostensibly has some relationship to the other – something in their brain makes it impossible to hit a breaking ball. Not to be the guy that says, that’s wild when you think about it, but that’s wild when you think about it.
The Cubs will win this year because of Kris Bryant. I believe Kris Bryant will have a Fuck-You year because the MLB is corrupt bullshit. I get it, if you do not have direct evidence of management fucking a well-deserving KB out of an extra year of depressed salary, you can’t really say they did it. But I present to you some circumstantial evidence that I think should count and it’s called the history of literally every business in America run by billionaires. They fucked him, everyone knows it, and it’s an issue that overwhelming historical evidence of a corrupt oligarchy is not admissible in court.
The Cubs will lose this year because their pitching is shit. Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks are good, Kyle’s not going to have a good year, but he’s a good pitcher. Quintana is medium. Lester is old, throws soft, and has trouble locating a curve now. Tyler Chatwood is still allowed to play baseball for some reason. The Cubs didn’t have a bullpen worth shit last year so they spent the offseason making it worse.
Anthony Rizzo is going to have a good year. Or not. Don’t care, he’s awesome no matter what.
It’s very lame to say that you like Contreras’ bat, but you don’t like his glove. So I won’t.
David Ross is the manager and I swear to you I could not explain why, other than the Ricketts are fucking cheap. And I’m saying this as someone who loves David Ross. He’s going to do Maddon shit that Maddon is better at, so he’s just a cheaper, not as cool Maddon. I’m all right with him being the manager, I like it even, but it’s still a downgrade. Maddon’s a cool dude. Lotta Bernie vibes comin’ off him, you know? Ross is probably a Bloomberg guy at best.
Daniel Descalso hits a shit ton of doubles. What the fuck is that? Like, seriously? What the fuck is that?
Nico Hoerner cannot play third base because people will rhyme Hoerner with “hot corner”. If he plays a single inning at third base, every sports commentator in the world will say it simultaneously, blasting so much wind they will create a tsunami that wipes out the Pacific Northwest. This is truth.
Ian Happ looks like the guy you know who did meth for awhile but only does it a little bit now. Victor Caratini has weird teeth.
David Bote looks like The Average White Guy In 2020. He is aggressively average and boring. I looked it up and he went to Neosho County Community College in Kansas. Going to community college in Kansas is overwhelming historical evidence for the creation of a boring person. Neosho Community College somehow got the Twitter handle @NCCC and has 764 followers. I find this hilarious. There are just so many colleges and businesses and acronym aficionados that want that handle and would have millions of followers. Did someone from NeoSho help startTwitter?
Jason Kipnis is from Northbrook, IL and his nickname is Dirtbag. This is truth.
Jason Heyward is the handsomest man short of Idris Elba. He plays amazing defense and used to be able to hit but, oh boy, even in year with the juiciest ball he only had a .750 OPS. He’s so beautiful, I get lost in his eyes. He’s admittedly underperforming his contract, but I think he’s going to hit well this year. Heyward is a bell-weather for how juiced the ball is. If Heyward hits 10 home runs, no juice! 21 home runs like last year, yes juice! I would like to drink juice off of Heyward’s chest!
Albert Almora Jr. is also handsome, but not as handsome as Jayson Heyward, who is very handsome. He’s good at center field! He’s not as good at the plate. Sometimes he looks like Scott Bakula just Quantum Leaped into his body so he is very surprised to be in this situation.
In an episode of Quantum Leap, Scott Bakula Quantum Leaped into Trump. I just… I just don’t know. Do you know what I mean? Like, I read that fact and I just… I just, like, fundamentally don’t understand what is happening.
One refreshing thing, I would’ve put money on Scott Bakula being one of those forgotten 80’s actors who blame their failed careers on being Trump supporters, but it turns out he’s pretty cool.
In short, the Cubs will be average this year, but Baez, Bryant, Rizzo, and Schwarber – but especially that tall drink of Idris-Elby-y water Jason Heyward – will be fun to watch.
Today, The Ringer is trying to determine what the MLB will look like in 10 years. If we do not aggressively tackle climate change, the MLB will look like everything else: a bunch of motorcycle gangs circling around helpless people looking for water the post-apocalypse. Vote Bernie.
Jordan Holmes is a comedian and co-host of Knowledge Fight, a podcast which takes an in-depth look into Alex Jones. You can follow Jordan on Twitter or just drive into Chicago and listen to him screaming from the rooftops.
Fancy Boys Club 