Yes, I notice my blog has turned from a place for Power Rankings and whatnot to a haven for rants! Well, here's another one!
Major League Baseball is playing bully in a situation with Little League teams. The situation is, roughly, that the MLB wants Little League teams to have to purchase jerseys with their team names on it (i.e.-Red Sox, Yankees, Astros, etc...) through Majestic Athletic, the official sponsor of all Major League apparal. However, Majestic is much more expensive than the current means used for Little League teams to fund their uniforms.
Now, this is absolutely ridiculous to me. Major League Baseball has naming rights, but this is just stupid. When I was a little kid and played sandlot baseball, one team would always yell out first, "Haha, we're the Yankees!", and the other one would go, "Oh yea, well, we're the Mets!", and then you'd play a game that was all of a sudden turned into a friendly rivalry of sorts! Kids want to play baseball playing for the 'Yankees' and Giants', and whatever closest or favorite Major League team they're near that their Little League has. That's just how it is, they want to play for a Major League team while in little league, it makes it more fun for them. Major League Baseball now is playing the bully, like I said earlier, and demanding that this fun cost more money.
As a kid, I loved playing for the Pirates! My best friend (of 19 years, and I'm only 20) played for the Yankees, and we had a nice friendly rivalry! It was always fun playing the Mets, Red Sox, Astros, and whoever as a kid! But, Major League Baseball sees a money making opportunity here (yes, because they need so much money), so they must play bullies.
It's like Lewis Black says, the greediest F-ers in the world can even look at these guys and say, "Wow....that's really F-in greedy...I wish I thought of it."
Honestly, it's pathetic. However, without Major League Baseball withdrawing this outrageous demand, I have a few ideas!
- Change the names slightly: Kids don't want to play for the Hometown Bulldogs or Muckhens, they want to play for a Little League Big League club. So, just change the names slightly! I got this idea from The Daily Show and Colbert Report from the writer's strike when they came back during the strike. The Daily Show changed to A Daily Show, and The Colbert Report (silent Ts) to The Colbert Report (pronouncing the Ts). Make the teams the Red and White Socks, not Sox. The Yanks, the Blue Birds, the Cards, the Bears, etc...not the best idea, but for smaller leagues, it could work. It's not MLB teams, it's original team-names based off of MLB teams.
- Use Throwback Teams: I like this idea the best. Not only are they introducing the kids to some baseball history, which is always fun, but Major League Baseball isn't going to demand Senators, Beaneaters, Highlanders, Browns, Pilgrims, and Robins jerseys be made through their chosen official apparal company. If they would, they're even more pathetic than I originally thought.
- Tell Major League Baseball to Shove it: I take back what I said earlier, I like this idea the best. Tell Major League baseball to go find something better to do, like, oh, I don't know, keep making the game better in various ways and work on getting HGH testing rather than trying to rip Little League teams out of funding money so they can make more.
Thank you for reading my rant!