I understand the importance of advertising. As much as I hate breaks in my favorite TV shows, I can live with the fact that these TV shows are played on channels owned by companies. I am well aware that these companies need to make some cents to pay their peons as well as millions for their CEOs. As much as I don't like it, I can live with that. However, it's gone too far.
No, I'm not another kid bitching about pop-ups for cameras or spam for a larger hoohah. I'm talking about baseball. When they put Coke bottles around a light pole over the Green Monster in Fenway Park, I first was upset, then remembered how a part of Fenway the Citgo sign was. So I felt I couldn't complain that much. I didn't mind when they extended the scoreboard so they could put ads on either side. That was fine. I also didn't care about the giant, neon JOHN HANCOCK over the digital scoreboard. That too, was fine.
However, appearing in several major league ballparks in June, just in time for Summer Movie Season, will be new bases. Yeap, fuck the white bases, we don't need the old school. We know nothing is sacred, that's why in June, the bases, as well as the pitching rubber will be replaced with new bases, each promoting Spiderman 2: Attack of the return of the Dawn of the Day of the Evening of the Clones!
Call me a purist, but I like my bases white, and unadvertised. This is baseball, people. This isn't Nascar. I have no problem with the cars in nascar being plastered with advertisements. I have just begun to respect it as a sport, and actually enjoy all the ads. Usually, the cars are painted around such themes. For a while, I know there was a car painted as if giant M&M's were all over it. That's cool. Webbed bases, no.
But what's next? In the two "opening season" games this season in Japan, players from both the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had Ricoh patches on their sleeves as well as their batting helmets. There has been talk of this happening in a full season near you soon! In the Kentucky Derby, the most sacred of all horse races, Jockeys will be allowed to be advertised upon. I fear that there will be no end in the near future.
Conspiracy theorists, anarchists and other loony people will tell you of the horrors of the modern corporation. How politicians eat out of their pockets and the Uber-Mega-ConglomeroCorp runs everything around you, like the Illuminati. Do people really need to riot outside their main offices to get their attention? Or are we, as Americans, just complacent enough to let this go on by? I mean, we regular people happily have Abercrombie emblazoned on our asses, as well as Tommy Hilfigger on our breasts, if not a band, or sports team on our head.
Would a giant email campaign make anything happen? I don't think that's the real question. I think the real question is can one make enough of the American populace care? We didn't riot when our Presidential elections got fucked up. But Political tendencies aside, the state run by the candidate's brother was totally screwed up and allowed the canidate to take office after 8 different court rulings. Shit, all it took for Blacks to riot was a (I'm gonna get flack for this) relatively unimportant court ruling in the grand scheme of things. What those cops did was rediculous, yes, but all I'm saying is the verdict did not directly effect 280,000,000 people, let alone a large number of nuclear warheads, Iraqis, Afghanis, French, let alone everyone else in the world. Need I say more?
Where am I goin with this? I don't even know. I was just upset about bases. I didn't even think to talk about politics. I guess all I'm tryin to say is, Bud Selig is a bad, bad man who is ruining the sport I grew up with, the sport I love, and always will. I'd rather see him impeached than Bush.