At some point, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow … maybe long after the memory has faded, maybe when the NFL no longer includes any kicking, the NFL will do the unthinkable – it will elect Eli Manning into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This act, which is inevitable, will simply be the latest piece of graphic evidence proving that the NFL HOF (and all other sports halls for that matter) is really just the hall of average.
Nick Saban coaches football at Alabama … you knew that. So you probably also know that he’s a chap ass. In sports, the best coaches, the ones that seem to win the most are almost always prickly jerks (Belichick, Popovich, Bobby Knight … I could go on). Anywho, Saban is irritated because Alabama fans never stay for the whole game. Why should they? In recent skirmishes, they played New Mexico State and Western Carolina and something called Mercer. They typically win games by sixty-five points and the average coed gets thirsty and bored and, well, horny, so they leave at halftime. By halftime of most Alabama games, the third-stringers are in and when the coach pulls the starters isn’t that the universal code to leave the stadium, that the outcome of the game has been decided?
You know your on-the-job status is nosediving, on a downward trajectory that will never right itself, when you’re called into a meeting and this happens:
“Doug, Dan, Darcy thank you for coming … we had an executive meeting and, without mincing words, Doug and Dan, you rate pretty much at the bottom of the announcing crews employed by this network; kind of amazing you still work here actually … anyway, you’ve been assigned to announce the Little League World Series. We know this is publicly humiliating and that this is a “pretend” sporting event, but frankly, you’re “pretend” announcers. It would be in your best interest to keep a straight face and make-believe someone cares about this.
“Darcy? You’ve been assigned to do on-field interviews, that is, pretend it’s possible to have an adult conversation with a twelve-year-old. As you know, this is absolutely the bottom-of-the-barrel assignment in all of sports television, but we just don’t think you’re good enough to interview adults. We know that after this runs on live television that no one will ever take you seriously as a journalist … but your career is in the tank anyway.”
♦
Every little thing that’s wrong with our society – every fuckin’ thing – can be summed up in just four words … Little League World Series. This annual kiddie baseball is an embarrassment to the nation. Overexposed, overindulged, coddled, little brats with fake birth certificates playing a dopey version of baseball on TV. Why do generations of kids feel entitled? Because of crap like this! Treating children like adults, allowing them to pretend they’re stars, that they’re “just like big leaguers”, gives them a distorted perception of reality. It tells them that life is a breeze, it tells them they’re the best when they’re not, that world peace is as easy as just playin’ baseball with a bunch of Taiwanese kids.
These aren’t the little kids playing baseball at the park down the street. They’re kids that were held back in school three years in a row and then placed on rigged teams. So they believe then that life can be rigged, and when it can’t, when the make-believe Little League wet dream is over and they wake one day with a pimple, they go looking for their stepdad’s handgun.
♦
I was in a place the serves alcohol. A lot of people there think that the Little League World Series is somehow a sacred piece of Americana. That’s a joke … alcohol is a dangerous thing. No, the sacred American thing is Bad News Bears … It’s the beaten-up snack shack at the rundown ballpark in Anywhere USA where simple kids that probably suck at baseball throwback a Coke and a Snocone and ten pieces of Bazooka bubble gum and laugh about how Danny let that slow grounder go right through his legs.
Did you know that the Little League World Series has instant replay? This is so the pudgy, hyper managers with a God complex can challenge umpires’ call so that the precious Little Leaguers won’t get their feelings hurt by a missed call. That wouldn’t be fair for little Tommy or, heaven forbid, for little Becky who is used to having her way and believes that everything in life should be reviewed and fixed, especially after her parents sued the local Little League so that she could be the only girl in the league.
At the place that serves alcohol, they mercifully play music instead of the TV feed, but on the Little League channel, after one of the dumb games was over, Darcy, our on-the-field TV personality interviewed what seemed like a dozen little white kids. Of course, she was there to get the “raw reaction” of athletes in their natural habitat … she was putting the viewers “right in the middle of the action!” (Holy fuck.) I imaged it went something like this:
Real Adult Reporter: “Is baseball your favorite sport?”
Adolescent: “Kinda.”
Real Adult Reporter: “What’s the key to your team’s continued success?
Adolescent: “I dunno.”
Real Adult Reporter: “Do you have a favorite professional team or player?”
Adolescent: “I like the guys with dreadlocks.”
Real Adult Reporter: “What were you thinking about when you got that key base hit?”
Adolescent: “That I had to pee really bad.”
Real Adult Reporter: “What do you and your teammates like best about Williamsport?”
Adolescent: “What’s Williamsport?”
Real Adult Reporter: “Are your mom and dad here?”
Adolescent: “Maybe my mom … I never met my dad.”
Real Adult Reporter: “What did you have for breakfast?”
Adolescent: “Trix.”
Real Adult Reporter: “What will you do if your team wins the Little League World Series?”
Adolescent: “Nothing. But coach said he’d give us a hundred bucks.”
Riveting shit right? I guess we could argue about whether the Little League World Series is bad for kids but I know for damn sure that the network broadcasting it is exploiting them and creating a fantasy world that makes it hard for the real world to compete with … to the poor guys and gals that announce the LLWS, that willingly participate in this big charade, that wear the facade of big & important, well, that was your career that just flew by.
Photo credit: greg westfall. on Visualhunt / CC BY