Little Outrages

 

  • Gary Sanchez, the catcher for the New York Yankees, has tired arms. That is to say that his arms cannot keep up with many pitches to the left of him, to the right of him, and sometimes low and in the dirt. You will note the number of passed-ball he allows as one indication. But a better indication is the fact that balls get by him in counts that are not critical, balls that do not get by other catchers. He might also have other tired parts of his body that do not allow him to move as quickly as most other catchers.
  • What percentage of people attending a ball game eat something? Drink something?
  • Every stadium should have a movable roof. Minneapolis has a brand-new stadium with no roof. It snows there in October and April. I went to a game in Denver and it was snowed out!
  • Does anyone else want the creators of the jingle for “Kars for Kids” given the death penalty? I wrote a full article about this company. Not exactly what it pretends to be.
  • Speaking of commercials: Empire City Casino in Yonkers, New York has two commercials that are insulting to the intelligence of even rather dumb people. The first and most egregious has an “everyman” doing weird stuff to his face to increase his luck, as if facial weirdness can do such a thing – and, naturally, he wins and his wins come at almost all the games! The casino is telling us that even a moronic jerk can beat the house but his secret way of winning is magical – just like yours till be.
  • The second Empire City commercial has a group of good-looking people at a row of slot machines who one-after-another in a split moment all win the huge jackpots on their machines. They are all lined up at the machines, one, two, three, four, five jumping up as the jackpot wins pour in. In over 30 years of casino gambling I have never seen such a thing – in fact, I have never seen any two people sitting next to each other win the huge jackpot at the same time. However, I have seen an extraordinary number of players sitting next to each other lose.
  • Soda? I hate soda. It isn’t good for you. You know that. But if you watched the Olympics and saw all those world-class athletes doing their thing in soda commercials you might get the idea that drinking this crap would help your athletic performance. Did anyone watching those commercials believe that? Now Aaron Judge is doing a Pepsi commercial but at least he doesn’t even pretend it’s good. He just drinks the stuff and nods with pleasure.
  • How come all those guys with erectile dysfunction on those Cialis commercials are rugged, good-looking studs throwing bales of hay on trucks, working he-man jobs? There are no little waddling fat former-accountant guys in their flabby late 70’s.
  • And why on those commercials does the couple take baths in separate tubs (outdoors no less) after they have sex? Shouldn’t they be clean before they have sex? Otherwise the unwashed body-smells would be overwhelming.
  • I will say this again: Why do the commercials for gold and silver want us to buy the stuff with the money they claim will soon be worthless? Why don’t the companies just keep the gold and silver since it will be so valuable in the coming future?

Frank’s latest books are Confessions of a Wayward Catholic!; I Am a Dice Controller and I Am a Card Counter. All of Frank’s books are available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores.