Good Old Days

I wish I could have seen these films; they sound really funny and interesting. Two things about that article bothered me, though:

“I think the money has changed a lot, and I think that’s reflected in these films,” Filipi said. “Everything just seemed slower back then, and people took the time to appreciate more. It seemed like players really appreciated the ability to be a Major League Baseball player back then, even though they weren’t making that much more than the average person.”

Yeah, you know one thing that has changed about baseball and money? The owners don’t totally screw the players over anymore. Ballplayers make a lot of money because a lot of people pay to attend games, buy merchandise, etc. I’d rather have the players become ridiculously rich along with the owners, if someone’s going to be ridiculously rich either way. And what the hell does “everything just seemed slower back then” mean?

This killed me even more, though:

As usual, the player that drew the most laughs from the audience was none other than Yogi Berra, who was shown having a heart-to-heart conversation with a cat in the early 1960s. The commercial was an advertisement for Puss’n Boots cat food, and found Berra watching in awe as his feline counterpart demonstrated its athletic abilities as part of a gymnastics routine.

“There were great characters back then,” Filipi said of Berra. “It seems like there aren’t characters anymore. Everyone is so conscious of their image [today] that no one would really allow themselves to be put in a position like that.”

Mr. Filipi doesn’t think there are characters in baseball anymore?! Watch about five Braves games and then get back to me, pal. Not to mention villains like Bonds, psychos like Ozzie Guillen, and unclassifiables like Manny Ramirez — dude has his own brand of wine called Manny Being Merlot. The fact that these guys are so obsessed with their images makes them every bit as hilarious as Berra, we’re just laughing at them, not with them. Is he kidding me with “no one would really allow themselves to be put in a position like that”? Sir, may I introduce you to one of the thousands of insultingly stupid commercials Jeter and A-Rod have done during their careers?

The most embarrassingly awkward commercial I’ve ever seen was Ho-Ram’s Texas Pete hot sauce commercial that ran last season. He didn’t have a bunch of cute, needy children with him like Huddy does in this year’s version — it was just Ho-Ram and a dancing bottle of hot sauce. Maybe I’ll see it again someday, in a film preservation society’s collection of videos . . . when I’m 80 years old and bitching about how billionaire robots have completely ruined baseball.