Your First Day of Summer MLB Season Update

It’s June 21st, and if you’re just poking your head into MLB, rest assured, the Major League Baseball Machine is running smoothly!

**Sounds of industrial machinery rattling and exploding, followed by panicked screams**

HA HA HA!  Why don’t we do a quick run-through of how our season transpired through the spring, just to remember how great things are.

Marlins’ Season Turns Out Way Better Than Any Marlins-Haters Could Have Dreamed

Well, this is a fairly crushing place to start.  I don’t know who organized the order of these stories but this is like starting Old Yeller with the gunshot.

Yes, the Marlins were two games out of first place once, and then quite suddenly, began a record-shattering downfall that is technically going on as I type this.  They’re W-L record this month is 1-June.  Their manager has disappeared and been replaced by the last guy to have success as a Marlins manager, and began his tenure by benching their underperforming best player.  The Heat lost the Finals, elderly abuse cases are on the rise, and the president of Venezuela is being walled into a temporary mausoleum for safe keeping.

South Florida: Where Dreams, People, and Foreign Leaders Go to Die/Be Dead.

Dodgers Still Owned By Human Train Wreck

Sure, bring this up, like its any kind of thing.

This story is over, but for some reason there are still pages in the book.  On them, Frank McCourt has crudely drawn a series of stick figures that tell the story of a mediocre baseball team that turns everything around because its owner is FINALLY HAPPY FOR ONCE IN HIS DAMN LIFE. If you flip them fast enough he doesn’t run the team into the ground and even hits the World Series-winning grand slam.

Frank is saying that even if somebody like Mark Cuban buys the Dodgers away from him, the parking lot, stadium, and a third of ticket revenue.  Major League Baseball is saying that that’s not at all how “sales” work.

Meanwhile, the L.A. Times have been dripping with piteous prose, memories, regrets, and even an open letter to McCourt begging him to sell the team.  Even T.J. Simers chimes in, despite being a sad old man that nobody likes or respects.  A sample of Dodgers baseball taken from the current era would be one crushingly depressing bit of research.

Magicness of Derek Jeter’s 3000th Hit to be Scrutinized Until Unrecognizable

Twins’ Carcass Resurrected; Begins Immediately Ripping AL Central New Asshole

See, everyone, the Twins are fine.  Long ago, they were in last place.  Tonight, they opened a game against the defending world champions with eight straight hits.  They won by seven runs.  Now its all smiles for Minnesota because of the trail of enemies’ guts that follows them from city to city.

As one of those teams people were saying “Its only April/May/June!” about, it must be deeply satisfying for the Twins to get all of their losses out of the way in the early part of the season.  In fact, if you put this resurgence next to the Red Sox, you’re probably wondering why the league even bothers playing games in April-June.  They might as well just start the season in August, with everybody tied for first place.  But I guess Twins fans appreciate the game more when there’s a buildup to getting swept out of the playoffs by the Yankees.

Adam Kreuger’s tips on Puckett’s Pond seem to revolve around “Win games, be uninjured,” which a lesser writer might harp on as being too broad to be effective, but its honestly what the Twins need to do right now.  Any micromanaging on the part of their leadership could easily become superfluous tinkering on a team that seems to have finally gotten it right and is in mid-rampage.  So, like that kid in the preschool class with the temper, its best to just let them tucker themselves out, then start fixing things when the chaos has subsided.

Albert Pujols Isn’t There to Hit Game Winning 9-Run Home Run for Cardinals

Like some baseball-themed version of It’s a Wonderful Life, the Pujols is getting the chance to see what life for the Cardinals would be like without him; only instead of contemplating suicide on a bridge, Albert was standing at first base being hit by a baseball.

Last night, he saw them lose to the Phillies 10-2, thanks to a nine-run eighth inning in which the St. Louis bullpen did everything wrong outside of catching on fire and running into an orphanage while screaming.

Would Pujols and the broken bone in his wrist have been able to stop Jason Motte from hitting two batters?  Would he have walked into the middle of the diamond between walked-in runs with his arms in the air, shouting “NO, NO, NO–THIS ISN’T RIGHT!”  We shall never know.  We just know that the Cardinals lost, and Albert Pujols could do nothing but watch.

“We can’t have innings like that,” Cardinals reliever Trever Miller explained.  They may be crazy, but they’re sane enough to know it.

With Derek Jeter, Buster Posey, and Pujols both out with injuries, you’d think baseball would do the rational thing and put the season on hold until the players who are on all the billboards can actually play again.  If Posey’s collision at home plate taught us anything, its that the better players deserve to have the rules changed if they get hurt.

So That’s Basically It

What?  That can’t be it.  There’s other shit going on right now, right?  Some better things?  What about the Phillie Phanatic?  I’ll be he’s doing something ridiculous.  Or those Presidents in Washington.  Aren’t the Diamondbacks having a solid year or something?

Really?  We’re just going to stop there?  Terrible.