Dillon Panthers

So I was trying to think of GMOT material for this week, and I thought maybe a post on the history of kickball would be informative material to give the League.  So, like any good law student, I hopped on Wikipedia as the beginning and end of my research.  What I discovered was somewhat disturbing.  Kickball, invented in 1917 by gym coach Nicholas C. Seus (great uncle of the famous children’s book author*) was designed in order to help young people learn the basics of...... baseball.

You read that right.  Kickball, a fun, fast-paced, social, game of champions was invented to facilitate the rise to dominance of America’s most boring and competitively imbalanced sport.  I sort of always assumed it was the other way around.  For those not totally appalled by this revelation, here are a few quick reasons kickball is better than baseball:

1.   Boston Red Sox pitchers (who weren’t even pitching that day!) got criticized for drinking in the clubhouse.  “Field beers” are encouraged in kickball.

2.  Baseball spreads 54 outs over a three hour game.  That’s one play every 3 1/3 minutes. Can you imagine if something only happened in football or basketball every 3 1/3 innings?  People would freak out.  How does baseball get away with this!  The Dillon Panthers would be embarrassed to spend 3 1/3 minutes in the field for an entire inning.

3.  Baseball has jerks like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, John Rocker, and Alex Rodriguez.  The worst it gets in kickball is when somebody gets a little excited and argues a meaningless call or crowds people at the plate while they’re trying to hit.

4.  Baseball made Brad Pitt sad in that movie because it tricked him into not going to Stanford, and then they wouldn’t let his team win in the playoffs.  Kickball would never do that to Brad Pitt.

5.  Every baseball game is 20.2 times less important to your overall season winning percentage ((1/8)/(1/162)).  In fact, you could lose every game for like a month in baseball and still make the playoffs (the Astros exclusively do it this way).

6.  The best evidence that baseball is boring is that baseball movies usually only get made these days when implausible stuff happens to jazz up the plot.  Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield, Little Big League, Major League, Air Bud Seventh Inning Fetch... all entertaining baseball movies because implausible stuff happens.  Sure there are some exceptions, and they all star Kevin Costner or Dennis Quaid, but the good ones were made decades ago, when people had lower standards for entertainment.

7.  Baseball teams are named after things like non-predatory birds, colored socks, lame regions of the country, or people who came from the same sperm/egg combo.  Kickball team names are constantly updating to the times with clever commentaries on pop culture or puns on baseball terms.

I could go on, but I’m sure I’ve already exceeded the GMOT word count.  Speaking for the Dillon Panthers, which I am of questionable authority to do, I say it’s time to move kickball out of the shadows.  With the NBA lockout never-ending and baseball season (finally) over, it’s time kickball took it’s spot as one of America’s true big three sports.

*Not really.

C.E.F.H.C.L.