first, read this. (then come back.)
if you\’re not a details sort of person, the story is this: at the end of last season, the kansas city royals swept the detroit tigers, thereby allowing the twins to take the central division championship. torii hunter, forever the joker, sent the royals four bottles of dom perignon (not to be confused with dom quixote– more on that later) to toast that team for their work. hunter\’s good-natured joke ran afoul of some baseball rule, and the royals had to return the bubbly to hunter.
on a certain level, this makes sense; you don\’t want to have gifts cause undue influence on the actions of another club. however, if you look at this specific instance, there\’s no way torii\’s champagne wishes could be construed as a bribe or any other sort of influence on the royals. for heaven\’s sake, he gave them a gift because they won! do you really think mike sweeney and zach grienke sit around the locker room thinking… \”wow… if we keep winning, maybe someone on an opposing team will send us some alcohol. maybe we should use that as our motivation!\”
wtf? even the royals aren\’t that bad. quoth the voice of baseball reason, jim leyland:
\”I remember him saying that last year. I chuckled about it. I thought it was really neat, to be honest with you. And then I saw the article today, and I actually kind of felt bad for the guy. That\’s another one of the silly little idiotic things we do in baseball. We ought to pay more attention to what goes on in the games. … I mean, that\’s a joke. What the hell? Come on.\”
what\’s next? baseball prohibiting batters from doing prolonged, choreographed dances with teammates whenever they hit homeruns? oh, wait– those are only jackasses in football.
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