Baseball is usually a boring game. They play 162 games in a Major League Baseball season, and many of those games lack drama and excitement and make me sleepy. The MLB marketing people should make that their slogan: “Major League Baseball – Sometimes it makes you sleepy!”
Then Wednesday night happens and everyone who loves baseball comes out of their summer coma and says, “See! See! It really is an amazingly entertaining game!”
And I’ll admit that baseball has some of the most amazing finishes in sports. I prefer the buzzer-beater in basketball, but nothing beats the tension and anticipation of a final at-bat in baseball – when one swing can determine the outcome of a game and you think that swing is about to happen and it’s a foul ball. Sigh. Then you think it might happen again and the batter gets just enough of the ball to get another pitch. Sigh. And then he connects and hits a home run in the 13th inning in the final at-bat of a 162-game season that puts his team in the playoffs when a month ago those odds were somewhere around 0.4 percent.
That’s what happened Wednesday night when Evan Longaria sent the Devil Rays to the Playoffs, and that was only one snippet from an amazing night of baseball. And no one writes baseball better than Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski, who I grew up reading in the Kansas City Star. The marketing people at MLB headquarters might as well distribute this essay on baseball to everyone in America.
Four years ago I had the pleasure of witnessing a similarly amazing when the Rockies had similar odds to making the playoffs as the Devil Rays and they not only made the playoffs but they made it to the World Series. What happened last night has taken me down memory lane and I found this story from when I was covering it all as an Associate Reporter (fancy title for intern) at MLB.com.
Not all of it was edge-of-your-seat, hold-your-pee-in exciting, but as Posnanski writes, “I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it great.
“In other words: Then, suddenly, Evan Longoria steps to the plate.”
Better make that your slogan, Major League Baseball. It beats “sometimes it makes you sleepy.”
The rest of the Sweet Linkage…
- A marketing lesson from a pissed off dad… Apparently Ragu hates dads. It’s OK, because I’m pretty sure everyone hates Ragu.
- Samsung is not copying Apple. Seriously, check out this site, they’re not identical at all (dripping with sarcasm).
- This is a good read if you want to climb the rankings in Google News.
- Chrome is the slowest browser, according to this test. I might have to reconsider my browser selection. I thought I was being hip all this time.
- Sporting KC plans to renovate a historic building in the Crossroads District to house its technology company. What’s a soccer team have to do with starting a technology company? I was a little confused too, but read the story and it will start to make sense.
- Smartphones will be saving lives soon.
- Some Google Analytics users can now track traffic in real-time. Don't think this beats the awesomeness of Lucky Orange.
- The last few weeks I’ve written about the debate of whether college athletes should be paid. The NCAA is considering making scholarships worth more money, which most in the athletes-should-be-paid camp will probably consider a weak attempt at compensating the athletes. It is, however, a sign that change could be coming.
- I have not had a chance to read this yet, but I've been told that the Esquire's piece on the Joplin tornado is pretty amazing.
- I saw this video below and immediately said, "Who would use this?" My coworker Nadine answered, "I would. I'm sorry you hate fun." In an effort to have more fun, I'll share this video, and I'm going to go ahead and run on the opposite side of the street as its users (and my coworkers).
- I’ve been working on a preview of the Conference USA the past few weeks for the Basketball Prospectus book this year, and in lieu of the best thing I’ve read lately (because I’m spending my nights reading about Conference USA basketball), I’d like to share my new favorite name: Papa Dia. I’m not sure how Dia is pronounced, but it’s Dee-Yeah! in my head. Sometimes the content department gets tasked with attempting to name one of our products. I’m submitting Papa Dia’s every time now.
