Every Major League Baseball team wants to make money, so I can’t blame the Washington Nationals for doing whatever they can to get people to pay attention to them.  But anyone else who lives in the DC-Metro area has to agree…the TV Spots for the Nats are ridiculous.

To give you an idea…in one, a fan is jumping up an down getting hyped up that in a 2008 game, Elijah Dukes (a member of the Restraining Order All-Stars) comes up in the clutch with…a bases-loaded walk-off walk!  In another, the fan openly admits that he has no idea who the hell (Nats backup catcher) Will Nieves is, but recalls a game in which Nieves drove in a game deciding run in one of the Nationals 59 wins…and now he knows who Will Nieves is.  The moral is that you should watch/go to Nats games so that you can learn the names of the players on the team.

Anyways, that got me thinking about how the marketing department of the other struggling MLB Franchises might try to attract an audience.  Here’s what I came up with for the teams that already have no chance of making the playoffs:

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He can't do this anymore

Hey- did you hear Ken Griffey, Jr. is back with the Seattle Mariners?  I bet he’ll make a great coach!  Wait, what’s that?  They brought him back to play?  Ok- now that’s depressing.

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Throughout the aftermath of baseball’s Steroids Era, there has been a line drawn.  On the outside has been the obviously juiced-up behemoth villains.  Bonds (Darth Vader), McGwire (Kingpin), Palmeiro (The Evil Mustache).  On the inside, our side, have been the clean ones…the ones who are throwbacks and get colognes named after them.  Cal the Iron Man, Junior Griffey The Kid, Jeter The Captain.  And there was a controversial hero, but a hero nevertheless, who was going to win baseball’s most prestigious record back to our side.  A hero that said, “Yeah so what if a 20 years past her prime Madonna is my soulmate, gotta problem with that?”.  Alex Rodriguez was going to save baseball.

Now it’s not that he is going to save baseball, it’s that he already has.  For years, everyone hated A-Rod.  He had the label of great regular-season player, a guy who could hit 50 meaningless homeruns a season, and come up empty in the playoffs.  He makes more money than an entire payroll of many teams…and he’s a Yankee besides.  Still, he was going to pass Barry Bonds, seemingly on pure talent, and that made him ok.

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• Early in the 2nd Quarter Rosolio and I texted back and forth amazed that the Eagles hadn’t tried double-teaming Fitzgerald.  I commented that at least Jerheme Urban was being shut out.  Rosolio replied that before the game Andy Reid promised that he wouldn’t let Jereheme Urban beat them.  It would be funny if there wasn’t at least a 98% chance that it was true.
• The post game interview with Adrian Wilson almost had me in tears, and I don’t even care about the Cardinals.  I was surprised when Wilson never screamed at the top of his lungs, KG-style, “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

• Do you think Jon Gruden is on a jet to Philadelphia tomorrow morning?  He’ll pass McNabb who will be on his way out.
• Kurt Warner locked up the Hall-of-Fame with this game.  Matt Leinart locked up a guest appearance on Bromance.
• Brian Westbrook only touched the ball 2 more times this game than Brent Celek.  I must have a fantasy football hangover (Westbrook was on my team) because this was really killing me the entire game.
• Larry Fitzgerald is the Anton Chigurh of football.  Only he doesn’t give you a coin flip.  I could just hear Asante Samuel saying to him all game, “You don’t have to do this!”
• Congrats to the Arizona Cardinals!  Either the Ravens or the Steelers will play the part of the bully vs. the sentimental favorite Cardinals in the Super Bowl this year.  It’s lining up to be a great matchup.

The NFL has been getting most of the love here lately…so it’s time to turn our attention to two underrated items: The NBA and the Presidential Inauguration.  Granted, this is a little bit more of a special inauguration than usual, but I feel that as a country we should make a big deal like this out of every inauguration.  Really, it should always be a holiday.

The main point for me here is that as a suffering Jets, Mets, and U of Maryland fan…I am also a happy Orlando Magic fan (I know that’s random, but as a kid I went to Disney a lot and thought Shaq was the coolest ever.)  I got the latest issue of SI yesterday and the top had a picture of a Obama with a caption that said, “Barack Obama has been playing basketball his entire life…and now he’s the President” (Or something like that, the implication being basketball has led him to where he is.)  So as we are halfway through this NBA season I thought, what if Obama took SI’s thought that basketball leads to political success to heart?  If he made up a cabinet of all NBA players, what would it look like?  Probably something like this: Read More

It’s pretty obvious that I’ve assembled the best core of players.  I have no old men and representation from each of the conference finalists.  Let’s start with my first pick…Haloti Ngata.  Did you know that “Haloti Ngata” is Tongan for “Bad, Bad Man Who Will Kill You If You Look Him Directly In The Eyes”?  True.  Ed Reed is the most spectacular Ravens defensive player, and Ray Lewis is the most legendary.  Yet Ngata is the anchor, and the success that Reed and Lewis (who was reborn into Ray Lewis 2000 this season) can be attributed to Ngata literally eating 3 offensive linemen per play. (Yes, literally)  So Rosolio, great choices…but your boys need Ngata up front.

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Once the Eagles get rid of Coach Reid, they'll be champs...and a little more comfortable in the locker room

The Summer of ‘01 was one of my favorite summers ever.  Mainly, it was because I had just finished my first year of college and embarked on a concert series that included, among others, Dave Matthews, Weezer, and a music fest headlined by The Barenaked Ladies (hey- they were cool in 2001, sort of).  Anyways, the thing I was surprised about when I headed back to school in the fall was that one concert stood above the rest as the best night of the summer.  That was seeing Jimmy Eat World at a club in Philadelphia.  It didn’t have the flash of the other big venues or the other bands.  But I had a cheesesteak at Geno’s, felt like I was going to be crushed to death by a mob of sweaty, high community college students from South Jersey, and left smelling like tobacco and Yuengling.  

Now that the ‘08 NFL season is down to the final 4, I’m realizing that the Philadelphia Eagles are more than their obnoxious fans…they are one of the elite franchises in football from a front office standpoint, despite the fact that Andy Reid still collects a paycheck from them.  DeSean Jackson is a perfect example of this.

G,C, and D boys...G, C, and D

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After two seasons leading Boston College, Jeff Jagodzinski has been fired for interviewing with the New York Jets.  This continued a decades-long tradition of nothing good coming for anyone who interviews with the New York Jets.  BC did a reasonable thing here…ask a guy at a Tier 2 school to stick around for more than 2 years.  Apparently, Jagodzinski sees himself as a little more than that, and decided that no one would tell him what to do.

Of course, as I always do, I was able to land the big interview.  Here’s how it went…

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This Oscar season, there’s no need to see Brad Pitt in makeup delving into a look at time and aging.  I’ll save you the 3 hours and tell you the story of Brett Favre…a story as inspiring as Benjamin Button’s without the pedophiliac undertones.  Well, unless you factor in John Madden’s creepy admiration. Read More