'Dollgate' a juvenile stunt? No shock in baseball world
In new media age, Sox must watch perpetually adolescent players
This is a bulletin for all those people who never have seen ''Bull Durham'' or ''Major League'' or read Ball Four, The Bronx Zoo, Eight Men Out or even Perfect I'm Not, by renowned author/pitcher/drunk David Wells.
To wit: Major-league ballplayers are adolescent boys.
(AP file)
Not in age.
Not in size.
But in brain quality.
In maturity.
In perception of, and affinity for, really crude, dumbass humor.
Those two blow-up, uh, sex-toy dolls resting in the White Sox' clubhouse in Toronto three days ago were reminders of such.
''I don't know, I wasn't behind it,'' third baseman Joe Crede said before Tuesday night's home game against the Twins. ''And here I am answering questions about it. It's not something, I'm sure, I would do.''
The dolls were there -- again, remember the mental complexity of the athletes we're dealing with here -- as pagan latex shrines, hopefully with the power to overcome the horror of an extended team batting slump.
If you were an afflicted Sox player, you could touch your bat to one or the other of the things on your way to the field, much like a pilgrim touching a crutch to the spring water at Lourdes. I guess.
Again, for the uninformed, major-leaguers throughout history have done ludicrous things to break slumps.
They have made offerings, burned bats, gotten so drunk that nothing matters, found the ugliest girl possible -- a real one -- and...
I'm not making these things up, just giving information.
So maybe it was understandable that manager Ozzie Guillen was amazed at the outrage over the politically incorrect stupidity of his players and those dolls, which, remember again, almost nobody saw. This was at the tail end of a road trip, in another country.
''First of all, I don't think we tried to disrespect anybody or to hurt anybody's feelings,'' Guillen said. ''We just tried to have fun and keep the team loose. Obviously, a lot of people took it the wrong way.''
Yes, Skipper, they did.
Including general manager Ken Williams, who sat in the dugout before the game and brought up the changing times in America, the way ''Southern farmers'' might even be voting for a black man or a woman for president next fall.
Williams, bringing up sins of race and gender that once were tolerated but now cannot and will not be, made the obvious point: ''We're in a different media age. It is a changing of the guard. It is a different animal out there.''
And Guillen has to acknowledge this beast and that it has the power to eat him up and spit him out.
No matter that the slump-busting dolls were not his idea or that he allegedly angrily knocked them out of the way when he saw them, there is a sensitivity issue here that has been magnified by the giant lens of the new techno-media.
Williams had a heart-to-heart, no-nonsense lunch meeting with Guillen, and it was interesting that in the whole time we grilled the manager about the doll incident and his recent bleep-infested rants, he used only one relatively tame profanity.
Could that have been from a warning to cut out the nonsense?
''Let's talk about how bad we played, or Minnesota,'' Ozzie pleaded after talking about women's rights and freedom of speech and such for a long time.
OK, how bad did the Sox play up there in Canada?
''We played horse[bleep].''
So you could say Ozzie is on a kind of moderate PC watch, and that he has to monitor his behavior and get this talented team playing better, or he'll be treated like any failing manager. Maybe harsher.
''Supposedly I bought [the dolls],'' he said. ''I'm 44, and I've never bought anything like that. First of all, I have no time. Second of all, I spend my money in different ways.''
Guillen said something about the things costing $500.
Wow.
A quick Internet check shows you can get ''Jesse Jane's Decadent Love Doll'' for $349.95, marked down from $435.95. Or ''Aria Giovanni the Italian Love Goddess'' for $234.95. Compete with ''Sexy Red Fingernails'' and ''Moveable Arms,'' which is scary weird.
Basement bargain, you can get the ''India Nubian Love Doll,'' for only $26.95.
Is this nuts or what?
For even as Gavin Floyd was pitching a one-hitter and Sox batters were blasting out of their anemia with 11 hits in Tuesday night's 7-1 win over the Twins, chatter continued about adult toys.
Before the game, four female Chicago news gatherers stood talking in the Sox clubhouse: the very pregnant Peggy Kusinski of WMAQ-Channel 5, WBBM-Channel 2's Megan Mawicke, Comcast SportsNet's Kerry Sayers and Fox-32's Jill Carlson.
Outfielder Brian Anderson approached Sayers, whom he knows.
''Did it offend you?'' he asked of the doll thing.
''I thought it was funny,'' the reporter replied.
What a crazy thought.
