I don’t watch a lot of baseball, so my knowledge is pretty limited. But in the past I have lived with baseball fanatic roommates, so I have developed some sort of appreciation for the game. So last night, I was searching for something to watch on TV (I have no cable) and Game 5 of the World Series was clearly the only interesting thing on. So I watch for a bit.
Just in time to see Kenny Lofton (I think) get a two-run hit. The first runner approaches home, sees that a toddler in a Giants uniform and helmet is standing on home plate. The runner picks up the kid and gets him out of the way before he gets clobbered by the second runner, who is running home much faster.
I asked one of my old baseball fan roommates about this. The kid is Dusty Baker’s son and he’s supposed to be a “good luck charm” for the team and is the “batboy” even though I figure he probably isn’t even big enough to pick up a bat or know what to do with it.
Three things bother me here.
a) Obviously, this is a dangerous place for a toddler to be. Forget being run over by someone screaming towards home, there’s the potential for broken bats and errant pitches. As my former roomie pointed out, letting a toddler be anywhere NEAR the dugout is extraordinarily stupid.
b) I don’t know the rules of baseball all that well, but surely there has to be something in there about people not participating in the game being barred from the field during game play? Particularly if they’re in the direct path of runners during an important championship series game? Was nobody, including the home plate ump, paying attention?
c) The commentators seemed to care about neither a) nor b), though I suppose that’s not terribly surprising, this being the Fox network and everything.
Or am I overreacting?
Doghouse, JohnT - I was flipping through a WWN in a checkout line a few weeks ago, and brace yourself - bat boy is missing! They had a picture of him on a milk carton and everything! I have no doubt that he’ll come through this unscathed though - after all, he did sign up with the US army, endorse Al Gore for president and fall madly in love in the past few years alone. He’s a trooper.
What’s with the WWN anyways? in the last few years, it’s become increasingly bizarre, even by checkout tabloid standards. I can’t quite put my finger on what it’s all about, the best I can come up with is that people putting it together are laughing their asses of while doing it, and people are reading it going “This is so insane that the people who make it are just laughing their asses off about it. Ha ha!” Very weird.
By the way, has anybody here seen “Batboy - The Musical!”?
And so sorry drewbert, to so completely hijack your OP, but yes, I too thought that the little kid shouldn’t be out on the field. The little wee kid in the little wee uniform is cute and all, but yeah, it seems REALLY dangerous to me.
I’m yet another person who associates “batboy” with something other than baseball. I haven’t seen the musical, but I couldn’t believ it when I first saw an ad for it. I hadn’t realized that Batboy was so well known.
No disrespect to the BatBoy or his legions of fans, and I am kinda enjoying the hijack… but could a mod please add the word ‘(baseball)’ to my unintentiaonally misleading thread title?
Guys, brace yourselves… WWN is a satire. Yes it is. YES, it is.
Bruce Rhee the Gossip Ninja? That column alone proves it. It’s a perfect, relatively straight-faced satire of all the other supermarket tabloids, and I usually find it hilarious. Ed Anger is another brilliant satirical column. I might have to pick up a copy today, haven’t seen it in a while.
I read an article in Smithsonian or something a few years back about the WWN. Apparently, the whole place is staffed by real journalists who went to prestigious schools and all, who are having a great time. They are paid quite well (since they will probably never get a legit journalism job again). There were pictures and everything.
And anyone should know that a dugout is no place for a toddler. I can’t even let my kid go near the swings at the park without holding on to her so she doesn’t get her head kicked in; she has no sense at all. What a dumb thing to let a kid do.
