mlbstarpower0613.png

Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a bi-weekly undertaking that determines with awful authority which players/baseball entities are dominating the current zeitgeist of the sport, at least according to the narrow perceptions of this miserable scribe. While one's presence on this list is often celebratory in nature, it can also be for purposes of lamentation or ridicule. The players/living baseball phenomena listed are in no particular order, just like the phone book. To this edition's honorees/dishonorees ...

The return of day baseball

At times we praise not an actual event but rather a waking dream never to be realized. So it is when we praise day baseball games, which are sorely lacking on the Tuesdays and the Fridays of the MLB calendar and sometimes the Mondays, the Wednesdays, and the Thursdays. 

Look, the sun is both a jealous fire-god pinned to the daytime heavens and an actual baseball, as we know thanks to the field research of Brown, Charles. As such, the best way to worship and ultimately placate the fire-god above is to present This, Our Baseball as an offering to it. The only way to do this is to play day baseball games regularly and without ceasing. 

The knaves among us might ask: What about youth baseball, that so frequently takes place during daytime hours? Hoss, no one likes watching those weak, mewling, skill-deficient no-hopers, least of all the fire-god looming over all. No, Fire God demands baseball at the highest level. 

As such, this is decreed from on high and preceded by 16 gavel strikes: The team with the worst record in each MLB season is not allowed to use the lights of its home ballpark during the entirely of the following season. To ensure compliance, stadium light banks shall be destroyed by drone strike on the very instant the final home game of the season ends, provided worst-in-MLB status has already been clinched. If said team plays under a retractable roof, then that team is forbidden to close that roof all season long. If that team plays under a non-retractable domed roof, then that team is contracted. 

This policy both incents teams to try to win and provides a guaranteed path to a drastic increase in day games. Will Fire God be angered by the prospect of so many A's games in 2024? Possibly, but at least it's not youth baseball. 

In any event, no one is obligated to attend these games. The sun is hot, and hot weather is profoundly unpleasant. The heart of the heart of the summer is a time for baseball consumed from deep within climate-controlled environments and lost in the loving arms of color television. The whole point is to spare us from Baseball Fire God's wrath, not to make ourselves uncomfortable.

The Oriole Bird

What follows is not particularly new, but, honestly, what really is? 

The Oriole Bird is a bird in a hat who goes to a lot of baseball games. Not sure what else you'd need in order to have a high opinion of Oriole Bird, but just in case you need more there just above is photographic evidence that he's willing to undertake what's necessary. And what's necessary is smashing the heads of Supposedly Great Men into the nearest available turnbuckle.

In this country we agree on nothing except this: All Towering Figures of History need ritual beatings. This is to remind them that anyone playing the hero's role in a history textbook ipso facto deserves the occasional merciless drubbing, even if it's delivered posthumously and upon a macrocephalic effigy. 

So thank you, Oriole Bird, for violence not in the name of a better tomorrow but rather a better yesterday. 

The National League Central Anagram Standings

In the interest of advancing the word count of this piece and in the general interest of advancing barely trying as a first virtue, the author is continuing a six-part SPI sub-series in which he ranks teams in each division based on the anagram that he's bothered to figure for each team's name. For the uninitiated, an anagram is formed when you take the letters of a word or words and form other words with them. So: These are divisional standings – or Rankings of Power – based on team-name anagrams. Why is this being done? What a question. 

We began with the AL East version of this, and then came the much stronger AL Central installment. Then the AL West was subjected to this indignity, and last time out we invaded the senior circuit by backing the car over the sleeping body of the NL East. Now it appears it's time for the National League Central Anagram Standings. Forthwith, like it or not: 

  1. Bagpiper Sh*t Strut
  2. Silicon Turd Salsa
  3. Me Wee Walrus Biker
  4. Coach Sic Bug
  5. Nine Cacti Rinds

Hereby: the NL Central joins the AL Central and NL East as the toughest loops so far. If your team's anagram is Bagpiper Sh*t Strut, then you are legally entitled to perform the celebratory and provocative Bagpiper Sh*t Strut in any public square. Is "Me Wee Walrus Biker" a grammatically flawed declaration that you are in point of fact a wee walrus biker, or is it someone somewhere upon the British Isles claiming that this wee walrus biker belongs to him or her? The mind reels as the possibilities. Silicon Turd Salsa indeed.  

Whatever this has been, it is now over.