Bil Madden didn't like the World Series press pins

Damn, you beat me to it...

 

I found the history of the press pin stuff interesting, but he blew it by framing the story as a grumpy old guy "things ain't like they used to be" rant. Loved the closing lines: "That alone should be sufficient reason for clubs to take a little pride in them, and the unenlightened Rays’ and Phillies’ marketing people should be ashamed.
Then again, the pins have become a symbol of the growing apathy and indifference in baseball toward the World Series." (I think Madden is confusing baseball with newspapers).

 

What is interesting is that by many standards baseball regular season has been wildly successful but it seems to always fall apart in post season.

 

He would have had a decent point--one that didn't belong in this column, but a decent point nonetheless--if he said the declining quality of the pins were symbolic of MLB's growing indifference for the writers. Back when the relationship was tighter, the pins were gorgeous collectibles. Now MLB can barely be bothered to make 'em and they're only around for the sake of tradition. I wouldn't be shocked if they disappear entirely once Selig leaves office.

 

I get why people think this column is ridiculous, but there probably was a way to use the story of the pins to ease into a column about the cheapness of modern life. It's as though, for the time in human history, we're regressing in how we do things. And baseball and newspapers, they aren't so far apart.

Of course, it might just be hitting me square. This past week, I've been working on my perpetual project of an old house, doing demolition in the basement. Each layer of work was crappier than the last, until I finally got down to the bones of the house, built in 1922 -- without power tools, without modern materials -- and it's gorgeous, thick cedar planks and everything worked together beautifully, not a nailhead out of place after all these years. And standing there in a pile of worthless modern shit, it got me mad. I was like, Why can't we build like we did anymore?

Then I followed that up with a trip to Wal-Mart, which was a big mistake for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I wasn't in the mood for cheap plastic shit and dullard people and gaumless staff in their chincy blue vests. I came home and told my wife that I won't step into another Wal-Mart for as long as I live, and I won't. Fuck that noise. I'm going back to the retail Stone Age.

So, yeah... Where was I? Jesus, now I know how it feels to be a ranting old man about the way things were. But we really did do things better before, and that goes for World Series pins on down.

Craft, man. Fucking craft.

 

It may be a small thing, but damned if I'm not going to expound on it in six paragraphs of epic butthurt.

And Jones, did he really need six grafs to intro bad press pins as a metaphor for a synthetic, tacked on Series? He could have made that point a hell of a lot more succinctly and saved his good stuff for the meat of the column.

 

I've always found baseball tends to be better when it's played in baseball weather.

 

Whole story reminds me of the time back when I graduated from college and my family held a party for me. At that time I really did not have a plan for what I wanted to do and many were provided unsolicited advise. The bit of advise I remember the most was from the gentlemen who told me to go into "plastics".

I was not sure to laugh or cry but it did make make me that plastics was a perfect metaphor for the era.

 

Jones, as he often does, demonstrates the difference between someone who knows how to write and someone who doesn't.

 

That's why I was determined to buy a pre-World War II house. The walls in my basement could probably keep nuclear fallout out they're so thick and well built.

That said, there shouldn't be a soul on Earth who gives two shakes of a rat's ass about what press pins we get.

 

Jonesy --
I just spent two days in my basement, digging through 15 years of our stuff.
I feel like Heinrich Fucking Schliemann.

 

21 is Katherine Ross? You're a lucky man, Boom.

Enjoy the school bus and buy some more music, I'm tired of that Simon & Garfunkel shit.