Jockeys wearing sponsor logos and Spiderman ads on bases … gather up the kids and livestock and go hide in the cellar. Surely the Apocalypse of Sports is upon us. Send out Diogenes to see if he can find even one pure-breed sports fan so naïve as to think this latest incremental slicing of sports’ integrity is worth a SwaggerSays commentary. OK, using Toby McGuire was a stretch but, hey, it drew you in.
Toby McGuire was the jockey in Seabiscuit AND he plays Spiderman … NOW you get it … DUH!
Mizzus Swagger hates everything about sports except for … nope, she hates that too … she hates the whole kit and kaboodle. But this “ads on bases” thingie really got her torqued. She’s a hoot when she’s “torqued” … gets all belligerant and often even scares the cat. The cat, if truth be known, cares even less for sports than Mizzus Swagger does.
She thinks the “ads on bases” thingie (yes, it was kyboshed; but it will be back) signals the death knell for integrity in sports. Sports “Integrity” choked to death on its own hypocritical bile years ago. Remember Jean Claude Killey on an Olympic ski slope decked out like a NASCAR entry with ski logos on each quarter panel and some French Champagne logo on his grill?
Yes, sure, “ads on bases” is simply the foot in the door to wholesale commercialization of every square inch of every sports venue. NASCAR is fast becoming America’s most popular spectator sport and NASCAR is the quintessential ad agency “field of dreams”. Do you think the 200,000 fans at Daytona care about the logos plastered all over the cars AND the drivers?
Corporate names adorn virtually every major arena and stadium. Corporate names sponsor every PGA and every tennis event. Blame the late Mark McCormick and his IMG henchmen for showing sponsors how to get maximum exposure for their dollar.
With a very few exceptions, Americans (plus all the “illegals” too I suppose) have a hate & tolerate relationship with their sports these days. Ticket prices and concession prices have skyrocketed to pay illiterate and immoral hedonists astronomical salaries. Beyond Class A baseball, the idyllic scenario of Dad and Son “going to a game” has been replaced by Buyer & Seller making small talk over an hors d’oeuvres tray in a “skybox”. And Mizzus Swagger mourns the death of “the good old days” of sports.
Management moans that it needs to maximize every revenue opportunity to pay the high salaries and the players moan they need the $$$ to buy steroids, bling bling, and shotguns with defective trigger mechanisms … leaving Dad explaining to Son that it’s either a ball park hot dog OR a new bike … but they can’t afford both.
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Swagger’s Stumper
What did “they call the wind”?
… name the Broadway play the song came from.
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An eight inch logo on an 18” square base … FOLKS, the shortstop can’t even see it much less the Buyers & Sellers in the skyboxes. Who cares? Print a map to Osama’s hideout and stick it on 3rd … get real!
Idealism in sports … other than every Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader being a virgin … what idealism is left? The San Diego Chicken was NOT a real chicken ???
You want idealism … I’ll give you idealism …
Take 20 or so kids 10-12 years old … stick’em on a vacant lot … use a shingle for 1st, a crushed paper cup for 2nd, a piece of burlap for 3rd, and one kid’s windbreaker for home plate. Choose up sides using “one potato, two potato …” to see who chooses first. No one wears “real spikes” except one kid who wears his big brother’s that are 5 sizes too big with socks stuffed in the toes.
No umpires … call your own safe/out. Into Old Lady Greer’s vegetable garden is a home run in left … into the weeping willow in center … it’s “all you can get” in right. The one bat has been broken, nailed, taped, and retaped with shiny black electrical tape. The “ball” has been taped up so much it is really a ball of tape. Start the game at 9:00 in the morning and keep playing until every one’s mother has called them home for supper at least twice. … THAT’S IDEALISM! …
Come to think of it, there was a Coca Cola logo on that crushed cup we used for 2nd even back then.
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Hooray for Joey !!!
PGA veteran Joey Sindelar wins Wachovia & $1,000,000 …
BobLee has known Joey for going on 10 years …
ALWAYS congenial, ALWAYS cordial …
could NOT happen to a nicer guy! YIPPEE!
Lots of new readers to SwaggerSays recently … Welcome! … being a BobLee Buddy gets each new column to you by e-mail. Easy to sign up … it’s free … it’s not an e-mail scam. See the sign-up area on the Home Page – Become A BobLee Buddy.
Backwash … Our column on “NUTS” was quite a big hit. BobLee was invited on a local talk show Monday to discuss his revolutionary concept. There are Sports-NUTS and Polit-NUTS. Each fan base knows who “their NUTS” are … and each political group knows who “their NUTS” are. NUTS simply provide comic relief and are NOT to be taken seriously EVER!
Wed – May 12
BobLee & Mick Mixson at Lake Norman (Mooresville)
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