I don’t like baseball.
I don’t watch baseball.
The only thing worse than sitting through nine boring-ass innings of baseball is a game that goes into extra innings.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
That said, I have some valuable advice for owners and management of about half the teams in Major League Baseball right now. And I’m about to give it away for free. That advice is as follows:
Get your asses on the first airplane and go sign the entire baseball team that plays for the Dominican Republic.
More precisely, whip out your checkbooks and fly straight to Santo Domingo, the capital city. Start writing until the ink runs out. Then, smuggle those players into the United States or do whatever it takes to put them out on the field. To make necessary room — fire the rest of your lousy team because they’re utterly worthless.
Seriously.
If the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles and the Minnesota Twins of the bottom of the beastly barrel want to have asses in the seats come September and enjoy the chance to be competitive sometime during the 21st Century against the evil empires of the game, then please do one thing: Sign the entire national team of the Dominican Republic.
Consider what the no-name nobodies from one of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest counties did today to World Series of Baseball contender and National League powerhouse, the Philadelphia Phillies. The Dominican Republic waxed their asses 15-2.
15 to 2!
But the game wasn’t even that lose.
The Dominicans punched out a whopping 28 hits and posted 41 total bases — which has happened like four times in the entire existence of the Phillies organization, which dates back to the days of William Henry Harrison.
And the ass-kicking didn’t come against some schlub pitcher. The Dominicans hammered Philadelphia ace Cole Hammels like a hot blonde on ten-cent hooker night.
It was embarrassing.
Of course, some baseball purists and American jingoists will make up excuses. They’ll insist this was an exhibition game. Maybe the Phillies weren’t really trying. And the Dominican Republic national team does field some major league players (almost all of which were out of the lineup during this massacre, by the way).
No doubt, baseball is in the genes of Dominicans the way ice hockey is for Canadians, and hooliganism is to the Brits. It’s in the blood. These island people don’t have much going for them. So, they play a game that’s cheap, with a ball and a stick. I was in the Dominican Republican once. Everywhere you look there are baseball diamonds filled with kids. They aren’t playing video games or texting on cell phones. They’re playing baseball.
Indeed, these are the current and future $20 million players in what’s still laughingly called “the American Pastime.” Baseball is — a matter of fact — the Dominican pastime. From Roberto Clemente to Alex Rodriguez, to Albert Pujols — the DR produces more stellar baseball talent than any nation in the world. And you need not even use “per capita” in the fine print.
Want to win right now? Make spring training in the DR. That’s where the talent is. Just ask the Philadelphia Phillies.