Fool’s Gold
In a never-ending quest to make baseball watchable, there's no end to what the knuckleheads at MLB's headquarters in New York will do. If you thought the DH was bad, check out the newest "golden" plan
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
Major League Baseball is setting out to prove that all that glitters is not golden. Despite a long history of simply adding the word “Golden” to almost anything to make it sound better, MLB is kicking the tires on an idea that could ruin baseball as we know it with a video game premise for a Golden At Bat.
Before I get into the weeds of the Golden At Bat and lose half the column’s readership because there is no laughing in baseball, I did want to support my thesis that adding “Golden” to an object or concept does make it more alluring.
— Golden Fleece — Any of us could go to EddieBauer.com right now and purchase a men’s or women’s radiator fleece. It’s a perfectly fine garment, but it is not a “golden” fleece. Jason and the Argonauts were not going to sail their ship to Seattle in search of a radiator fleece. There would have been a mutiny. No, they needed the Golden Fleece to sacrifice life and family in the symbolic pursuit of spiritual purity.
— Golden Earring — Sure, “Radar Love” will always be remembered as the best song by a Dutch band with a palindrome in the song title (which was not lost on ABBA by the way), but if that song had been released by a band named The Earring it would not have had the same impact on the U.S. charts where it reached 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. Adding Golden probably pushed that tune up about 20 spots.
— Golden Snitch — J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of books is one of the most popular in the history of mankind. It put Quidditch on the map and gave elementary school PE teachers something to do with all the extra brooms lying around a school and a safe alternative to dodgeball and the numerous closed head injuries sustained by children of the ‘60s and ‘70s. When first reading about Quidditch, it was a bit difficult to understand the points structure of the game, but everyone could understand that a Snitch, especially a Golden one, was much more valuable to a team than a Quaffle or a Bludger and would never crack under waterboarding unlike a plain old Snitch that now has to be whacked.
— Golden Pond — Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn were certainly talented actors, but you don’t win Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress in your 70s in a film titled “On Pond”. The producers were wise to use “Golden” instead of the actual name of the lake in New Hampshire because “On Big Squam Lake” was not even making it into the VCR of most Academy voters and was not going to be nominated for Best Picture.
— Golden Corral — “Kids, Grandma and Grandpa want us to meet them at 4:15 for dinner tonight at The Corral Buffet and Grill.”
“Aww, Dad, do we have to go? We just ate lunch at school two hours ago and you’ve always told us not to eat any seafood served in a landlocked restaurant.”
“Good point. How about I suggest to Grandma and Grandpa we meet them at the Golden Corral Buffet and Grill at 4:15?”
“Yay, Dad! Can we get the all-you-can-eat shrimp AND the grilled sea bass?”
— Golden Ticket — No way Grandpa Joe is getting out of bed and singing about the catastrophe of his life (always wondered how his equally bed-ridden wife felt about his disdain for his life’s choices) if that Willy Wonka ticket is a more mundane “yellow.” And to underscore just how much better “golden” makes everything, he has a “golden” twinkle in his eye which is typically an early indication of a detached retina. And there is a “golden” sun in the sky, along with a “golden” chance and a “golden” day. You don’t need to get beat over the head by Grandpa Joe’s cane to know that “golden” is simply better.
— Golden Shower — So maybe MLB does not have a monopoly on bad ideas with “Golden” in the phrasing, but face it, when you first hear about a Golden Shower it sounds intriguing and possibly even pleasant before you learn what it actually means. The marketers behind a Golden Shower certainly understood that calling it “Peeing on Each Other in the Shower” was not going to gain much traction in the public imagination and was also a bit unwieldy.
— Golden At Bat — Major League Baseball is considering this concept which would allow a team that is trailing in a game to bat their best hitter at any point in the game … out of order. There are more than a few wrinkles to iron out, but essentially it would allow the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani to bat twice in an inning.
Picture this, the Dodgers are down to their final out and trail by one run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Shohei Ohtani triples and now represents the tying run at third base. Dodger Manager Dave Roberts certainly would be thinking to himself: “Gee, I really wish the best hitter on the planet was up now to knock himself in.”
(Understanding that no self-respecting manager would say “Gee” when there is an opportunity to replace it with an f-bomb.) Then, one ghost runner later, Ohtani is batting, and if he hits a homerun he scores twice and the Dodgers win. He just has to figure out how to carry himself off the field.
This concept borrows heavily from Bugs Bunny cartoons and the Wiffleball games we used to play in Mike Capilo’s backyard where the HVAC unit was first base, a worn-out patch of grass was second base, and the fourth Douglas Pine up from the creek was third base. The Golden At Bat is a bastardization of America’s Pastime. Will the infielders soon be able to throw the ball at baserunners to get them out just like we did in Mike’s backyard? What happens when Robbie Miller has to go home for dinner and now we have uneven teams? And why did Robbie always eat dinner so early? Were they going to the Golden Corral?
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