Trade Deadline and Crappy Baseball Magazines

Creative carte blanche.

Here is a cover I “designed” for a little-known and now-defunct baseball magazine (this was around the time magazines were on the cusp of dying, but were still relevant to the average Luddite, tactile enthusiast, or collector of things) that never ran. The editors, or powers that be, said it was too abstract or artsy, but I didn’t care as they had already bestowed the 200 clams for the idea–no questions asked. In the end, I presumably decided that this working relationship probably wouldn’t progress my ideas or disciplines as a creator and in the process did some serious dampening on my ideas of the publishing world.

I met the founder/owner/head honcho for dinner one night in a Chinese restaurant, and all the other writers/designers/shit workers wore a suit jacket or tie of which I was obviously exempt. One of the wives asked the server if the rice was “the type with plastic in it.” I was dumbfounded until she explained to me that she had read somewhere that the Chinese put plastic in their rice. I was then assured that my meal would be less than hygienic once the cooks were informed of this deranged idea.  

There is something about an ostentatious dinner party that is equivalent to watching the entire life cycle of a drowning house fly. This excursion was an example of wealth without inhibition, leading to projects done on a whim because someone had money to burn, and because of their ineptitude and lack of knowledge of the (dying) industry, their layman cracks were starting to show major gaps between ideal and actuality.

Insider jargon was being thrown around fast and furious, more or less centered around the male, mass media, basic-bitch sphere of cologne, beer, and cars–and the lines between fantasy and reality were laughably blurred. I decided in an instant to make the shittiest cover I could possibly throw together just to see if it would, by some miracle, get green-lighted. The “project” was a simple cut and paste that was done hastily in about a minute on my laptop while folding laundry…not bad work for a couple of Benjamin Franklins on a sleepy Saturday.

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Dude’s got his hard nipples game on lock.

The A’s finally acquired some bullpen help in the form of Andrew Chafin, and the green and gold zealots were predictably overjoyed. Here are some of the complaints that A’s fans have relished this season: bullpen, bullpen, bullpen, Chapman can’t hit, bullpen, bullpen, Andrus can’t hit, bullpen, bullpen, John Fisher is the human equivalent of a festering boil, bullpen, bullpen, bullpen. 

Chafin has the look that A’s fans embrace–that of the badass dad with a handlebar mustache and a beer belly that sometimes parties with his Hells Angels friends on the weekends. He conjures up visual memories of a favorite of this blog–Rod Beck, (RIP Shooter) and will hopefully bring a left-handed dominance that the Oakland ball club has desperately needed. This guy is like bringing water to someone who has been crawling around, lips cracked and sun-baked in the desert. Remember that scene with Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? Blondie can finally drink. Not to be greedy, but I would be ecstatic if we could also acquire a stick before the deadline, because this offense smells worse than diarrhea on a hot tin roof and doesn’t even remotely resemble a team of contention.

Trades, psychobabble, etc.

Through a shroud of cloudy-fogged smoke I had a constellation of ideas, but the major thought proposed in this imaginary world was a Franklin Barretto for Taijuan Walker trade, because….pitching. I am a proponent of pitching and more pitching. And when you think you have enough, you need more. It worked out that way….somewhat. Never in my wildest dreams of weed-induced narcosis did I think GM David Forst and I had some sort of non-verbal state of consciousness, and that we could just vibe together through time and space, but baseball appeals to the fanatical personality, so why not?

As of this writing, Barretto has exactly ONE at-bat for the Halos, so there is no reason to think “Mad Genius” Joe Maddon has any faith in baseball’s most hyped pinch-runner since Herb Washington aka Josh Donaldson’s little brother aka Mr. Nashville. Alas, baseball seasons (and careers) represent an indefinite cloud of future potentialities, so perhaps this kid from Venezuela can learn to lay off the two-strike slider in the dirt and become the superstar Brad Pitt had imagined when he made perhaps the worst move of his exemplar model of decision making. (Let’s leave Milton Bradley for Andre Ethier out of this)

I read somewhere that coffee has the same neurological effects as cocaine, and I have my doubts as I sit here this beautiful morning, typing this, with absolutely no desire to dance all night to 80’s New Wave or have crude sex with a stranger in a public restroom. Although the psychobabble, apparently, still applies, because here I am: howling into the abyss of the Internet. The narrative here is that the A’s made “A’s trades” when they acquired Tommy LaStella and Mike Minor. LaStella is synonymous with OBP, and there is nothing that gets the Oakland brass hotter than a truck stop hooker than being a regular on the base paths. Mike Minor was acquired for a couple bush leaguers because (good) starting pitching is at a premium. Give us 5 frames a game and call it a day.

Billy Beane famously said that the baseball playoffs were a crapshoot, so lock and load, boys. The dog and pony show is over. The A’s have entered the casino, fresh-cut, wearing suits, and they are ready to roll.

Raiders of the Lost Ro-ark

The Oakland A’s, in their never-ending quest to acquire all white guys named Tanner, acquired Tanner Roark from the Red-Legs at the 11th hour of the trading deadline for a high A prospect. If Homer Bailey is akin to ramen noodles, I would say Roark is the 99 cent kimchi ramen bowl. (I love to add my own kimchi to these, but that is a story for another time.) This is simply a small-market team with a Wild Card shot trying to hold together their pitching staff with duct tape and popsicle sticks in order to appease their fans and try to pull off another ragtag Oakland miracle. And I agree with it. I’ve bought into the future and the farm system, I drank the proverbial kool-aid and didn’t want to give up high-end prospects. Let’s all raise a glass for 2021!

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More trade deadline crap: I’m not one to criticize the fans of my own team, but if you are going to be the proprietor of any sort of media platform concerning a baseball team, you should at least know a simple thing like…who is the general manager? I read numerous cases of people slandering Billy Beane about the recent acquisitions/lack thereof with David Forst being the actual GM making the big, important board-room decisions. Are baseball fans really smarter than the fans of other sports? Is it really so difficult to take 10 seconds out of your obviously busy life to google something? And if the answer is “no,” should I even care about what you have to say? That being said, it was satisfying and hilarious to see Yankees and Red Sox fans (probably the best example of toxic masculinity) having tantrums over the fact that neither team made a significant move at the deadline. This probably also means neither team has a shot in the playoffs because, well, you know…pitching.

Read all about it! Oakland A’s interested in acquiring an Avenger from the Mutts!

“Baseball opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one and most of ’em stink.” –Harry Caray

With the trade deadline approaching there were rumors that the pitching-hungry A’s were interested in Noah Syndergaard aka “Thor”. The Mets asking price for the demi-god was a bit too steep and personally I think I’d pass–although Thor is a solid, arguably top-tier starter, I just wouldn’t give up the farm for another shot at a Wild Card game and a chance that Odin’s son wouldn’t even take the hill in such game. The ‘Fro has been (rarely) wrong before but I’m hoping that the ball-club acquires a less sexy, and ultimately more humanly, Mike Leake. (Yes, I like to start my own rumors.) Leake would come at a much lower trade price because of his pedigree, and with the Athletics bullpen imploding from overwork, an innings-eater such as Leake might be undervalued. The Mariners, as always, aren’t opposed to being fleeced on the “minimal interest” trade market and sometimes even welcome it.

I, in a blushing moment of boredom, was checking my WordPress statistics the other day when I noticed that someone had stumbled upon this very blog by googling the search term, “Bob Geren smelling his own ass.” Curiosity got the best of me and when I googled the same sentence the blog before you was the first thing to pop up. Geren, of course, was the Oakland manager that everyone (including his players) loved to hate and he and his forever constipated looking face is now in Los Angeles as bench coach of the Dodgers. Good luck this year, Bob. Once a Yankee always a Yankee.

Mars Attacks Homer Bailey

“Don’t run….we are your friends.”

There is nothing more therapeutic to a man’s soul than  cuddling on a velvet couch with a beautiful woman on a lazy Sunday and watching a hilarious, star-studded sci-fi movie based on a series of Topps trading cards. In this case she brilliantly chose Tim Burton’s 1996 flick Mars Attacks. I had seen the movie many times, so I didn’t have to watch intently and was able to periodically check my phone for the score of the A’s/White Sox game when the news hit the fan: the A’s had made a lesser deal with Kansas City involving 33 year old Homer Bailey for an insignificant minor-leaguer.

This trade was like eating ramen noodles; you eat it because you’re hungry, but it’s not really that appetizing or interesting. The A’s needed a starter….any starter not named Tanner Anderson, and Bailey fits the bill. The hurler was acquired for virtually pennies, makes the league minimum, (the Dodgers eat the rest as they ran Bailey out of town with torch and pitchfork without tossing a single inning) and the A’s are hoping against all hope that he can catch “lightning in a bottle.”

I don’t have the highest hoped for this trade considering Bailey has had a sub-par career, including a 1-14 6.09 ERA debacle in 2018. This could get ugly in a hurry. He has been serviceable this year, however, and the A’s are hoping he can simply keep them in games long enough for the offense to lead them to a few victories that perhaps will be valuable down the road when the smoke settles and 2 Wild Card teams emerge. This is the life of an A’s fan…the Red Sox get Andrew Cashner and the Oakland ball-club gets Homer Bailey. The rich get richer and the poor eat, well, ramen noodles.