You may have been able to see me flip the hell out after the release of the new Star Wars teaser trailer. Well, today, I bring some Star Wars to “Wisdom and Links”, thus allowing us to reap those sweet, sweet page-views as people search for “Star Wars” on a search engine.
Now, I’m not going to do the cliches like picking the baseball players with Star Wars names (Zelous Wheeler wins, by the way), I’m going to instead get a bit more tangential and talk about hype.
Hype has become increasingly important as the years have gone on. For our forefathers, simply having the words “Star Wars” in the title would be enough, or simply it being a important game in a sport we like would be enough. No, not anymore. Now, we need to have endless build-up to get us even more excited than we already would be.
This isn’t just a Star Wars film, this is a Star Wars film with X-Wings, the Millennium Falcon and a freaky lightsaber with some sort of crossguard on it. Sports – including baseball – are no different. This game won’t simply determine who is better on this given day, it’ll determine ONCE AND FOR ALL* WHO THE GREATER TEAM IS WITH ENTIRE REGIONS HOLDING THEIR BREATH WATCHING!
*Until next time they play
And that brings both pros (like Madison Bumgarner in the World Series) and cons.
Allow me to share a story. No, it’s not called The Phantom Menace, it’s called the 2004 All-Star Game. It was a different time, before Roger Clemens had the whole steroid thing going on and was just a mildly menacing future Hall-of-Famer who once threw a bat at Mike Piazza during a moment of complete and utter insanity.
Now, in the 2004 All-Star Game, he was going to be starting for the National League in his hometown of Houston. What would he do? Would he strike out six batters to start the game? Would he and Piazza (his catcher for the night) have some sort of awkward bro-hug pre-game? Was there a chance he could bat? Man, it was going to be so cool. He was all over the advertising for the game, and, if memory serves, the last thing you saw before game-time was a graphic that said something like “Up next, the Rocket launches”.
Six runs and an American League team cycle later, the Rocket had launched, albeit in a Duck Dodgers-style horrible, no-good, very bad way. The ratings for the game tanked, and I don’t think anybody remembers anything that happened after that first inning.
At least The Phantom Menace had Darth Maul and that epic John Williams score going for it.
So, yes, get excited for The Force Awakens, but also be careful, because it’s entirely possible that the first ten minutes will be Chewbacca giving up a three-run homer to Alfonso Soriano.
LINKS!
Brian Meija has had two players get into car accidents in the last month in the Dominican Republic. One of them was fatal. Jorge Arangure Jr. writes about him.
Ken Rosenthal on the Josh Donaldson deal.
Jay Jaffe on the burning questions of the HOF ballot.
Whatever happened to Wendell Kim?
SELF-PROMOTION OF THE WEEK: Dave Winfield SINGS!
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To finish today, I’m going to warn you: believe nothing over the next few weeks as the hot stove heats up. People will try to make new accounts and pretend to be Ken Rosenthal or Buster Olney. And you know that agents and teams will be leaking out fake rumors to try and get advantages, as well. So beware of that. Don’t truly believe anything until multiple reputable reporters (or the team or player themselves) confirm what is happening.
This has been an off-season service announcement.
Until next time…
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As always, you can see more of my work over at Baseball Continuum.
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