Is there a psychiatrist in the house?
The commissioner of Major League Baseball?
Steve Cohen?
The Mets general manager?
Are you a quality control professional?
How about an old-fashioned teacher/nun with a ruler?
It was camp day at Citi Field on a Thursday afternoon, and the ballpark was filled with thousands of kids, many of them already irreparably numb and antisocialized by commercials that bombard their fragile central nervous systems before they can distinguish good from bad.
So the Mets did what any smart, cautious babysitter would do.
The team gave the 22-year-old woman, who shot to fame and followers on TikTok after she imitated the process of preparing for oral sex, the honor of throwing out the first pitch wearing a Mets jersey.
Camp counselors, take this seriously. Explain to the kids you are assigned to safely escort. Tell them who she is and why she was invited and honored at a major league game, whether they know it or not. After all, she is on everyone’s phone.
Some 11-year-olds already knew that social media has become what it is, and that Rob Manfred and co. are neglectful destroyers of the game, despite Manfred’s declarations that doing the right thing to keep kids as fans is his number one priority.
Look at where we have landed and ask yourself why we are here.
The just concluded Obese Drag Queen Olympics were hosted by career-low, oft-arrested rapper-tweeter Snoop Dogg, whose relationship to the Olympics is as deep as that young woman’s sexuality is to the Mets, though the Mets should have demanded long ago that Pete Alonso’s suave “LFGM” be thrown in the trash.
Just last season, Manfred and the Dodgers bestowed the on-field honor of Pride Nights on a group of unshaven, overweight, Catholic-bashing men who dressed as nuns as legitimate representatives of Los Angeles’ gay population.
Media outrage was virtually nonexistent.
But when Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker spoke about his family-first belief at his Catholic university’s graduation, the NFL, along with the media, condemned his words, as if he were a radical anti-American subversive, or worse, as if family shouldn’t be as important as it should be.
As ESPN’s grande dame Serena Williams declared to Butker as she sat in the audience hosting the ESPYs, his mind needs to be cleansed and changed immediately. Only a destructive extremist of any religion, including no religion, would be so bold as to declare that his family deserves to be number one.
The Mets have taken this shady route before, once having the face-tattooed gutter rapper 50 Cent throw out the ceremonial first pitch in their honor.
Why Fiddy? Because he was from Queens, which was a bigger achievement than being arrested for crack, heroin, and gun possession.
But around the same time, the Mets fired two longtime employees, including a popular public address announcer, after a newly hired woman (an eavesdropper) complained that she had overheard one of them telling a vulgar joke to the other.
But imagine the position of the camp counselors and parents of children entrusted to the camp to keep them safe and entertained, as those same children arrive at an afternoon Mets game that begins with a ceremony honoring a young woman known among marginalized groups for oral sex.
WHY?! Tell me why! What on earth were the Mets thinking? Did they not find a better fit? Or did they know that these promotions were being passively sanctioned by Manfred and his convenient idiots?
Or was it inspired by Roger Goodell’s suave, “family first” Super Bowl halftime show?
If it is still possible to shame the shameless, the Mets, Steve Cohen and Rob Manfred owe thousands of families an apology or, even worse, money back.
Doing a bench press once won’t cure laziness
Aaron Boone: Baseball doesn’t just go away. Even after Gleyber Torres was briefly benched for hitting a double and then a single.
A big moment from a big game came when Juan Soto posed at home plate before running to first base, causing him to miss the base by a wide margin (see: Boston’s Giancarlo Stanton during the Yankees’ 2021 season-final wild-card loss).
In Monday’s loss to the White Sox, Soto was out at first base in a close game after choosing to look at a bounced liner first before getting a diving strike and getting it caught in his glove.
Hard-to-root-for WNBA star Angel Reese is far from an angel, but she complains that she’s the victim of sexism, not her own brazen behavior.
And last week, as is her custom, she was photographed in a barely there pink bikini, but a cowed and pandering media has learned to ignore such glaring truths.
Both the Yankees’ YES telecast and the Mets’ SNY telecast continue to overlay fake strike zones onto live play and offer them as replay evidence of whether the home plate umpire made a mistake.
Think again: the regulation strike zone runs from the letter of the alphabet to the knee, not starting at the belt line like you see on TV.
The only time a hitter’s height is noticed is when Aaron Judge is at bat, and YES stretches its box vertically to reflect his 6-foot-7 height.
A lot of great celebrations, but few victories
The Mets’ celebrations follow a disciplined, rehearsed order, from the “OMG” signs in the dugout to the home run skits to the signal for approval in the dugout after hitting a single.
Does it matter that they’re a very mediocre team that got swept in Seattle and then lost two of three at home to a Triple-A team? No, it doesn’t matter.
Where are the empowered women activists who refuse to be silent when biological men easily defeat and often injure smaller, naturally weaker opponents in women’s athletic competitions? Why are they silent?
Or do they see advocating fair play as political?
With ESPN Radio-NY moving to 880, reader Jeff Cohen wrote that it would be funny if “The Michael Kay Show” became the undercard show for Mets games.
And as WCBS Newsradio 880 sadly comes to an end this month, we remember some great lines spoken on the station.
This was announced by sportscaster Gordon Damer in 2014.
After reporting that the Phillies had traded pitcher Roberto Hernandez to the Dodgers, Damer added that Hernandez was once known as Fausto Carmona.
Finally, the report announced that the Phillies would be acquiring “two players to be announced at a later date.”
