COUNTERPOINT: Bobbleheads are Tiny Soldiers in the Happiness Army

Earlier today, Nathan Bishop, esteemed managing editor of Lookout Landing, and otherwise good guy, published a controversial piece titled "Point: Bobbleheads are Satan's Horcruxes." Sometimes in the course of human events, it is necessary to oppose those in power, to stand on the side of justice. Sometimes, we must raise our voices and cry out, "Nathan, you are fucking crazy." Today is such a day. My affection for strange bobbleheads is well documented, both on this site and on twitter dot com. And so I come before you to fight the good fight and declare for all the world a truth I had previously believed to be self evident: Bobbleheads are tiny soldiers in the world's happiness army, and will eventually save humanity.

1) Kyle Seager won a Gold Glove last year. It is a moment that will live on my bookshelf for all time in the shape of a tiny, weird faced little figurine. Did the creation of that bobblehead contribute measurably to the destruction of our planet? Well allow me to answer your question with another question: Do you know for certain that bobbling said figurine's weird lizard face three times won't magically save us from global warming? And if so, how so? Please show your work.

2) I suspect that your issue is that you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the bobblehead. A bobblehead isn't a toy; it's a physical instantiation of a memory, commemorating the very best version of a baseball player. Felix is and will always stand proud and joyful, celebrating his perfecto. My Franklin Gutierrez bobblehead is rock solid, improbably strong, immune to injury. It is the same Guti we know and love, freed of his worldly ills and simply allowed to do what he does best: hold a bat and look damn handsome. Sure, Fernando Rodney is an industrial grade dumpster fire this season, but remember last year? When he would shoot his arrows in the sky and not accidentally strike our bullpen and our playoff dreams? Bobbleheads let us say, "Fuck you, reality. This world is what I make it."

And if all else fails, you can always therapeutically smash it to bits, exorcising your baseball demons (Meg casts her eyes menacingly toward Bobblehead Erik Bedard), as your bobblehead gives a sad, knowing nod. Are you happy now, Bobblehead Erik Bedard? Are any of us (Erik bobbles his head, glancing at the plastic arms that were once attached)?

3) On December 17, 1903 when Orville Wright manned the first successful powered flight, people thought he and his brother Wilbur were crazy. Their "plane," if we can even really call it that, couldn't stay aloft for more than a few minutes, dipping dangerously toward the ground. Their initial attempts were stymied by weather and faulty parts. Imagine if in those difficult days they had said, "Let's get out of Kitty Hawk. This plane is just too damn fragile. Kids might break it after playing with it" But they didn't do that, Nathan. They didn't. Sure, the first bobbleheads were wispy bits of plastic, held together by weak glue and baseball dreams. Sure, you could tell how many weeks someone had owned their bobblehead by how many of its hands and/or arms had fallen off. Sure, the loss of those limbs was particularly concerning for baseball players. But now, those bobbleheads are so strong that when they inevitably achieve sentience and revolt against us, we will surely lose our battle. We're here now. We've built jets that break the sound barrier. We've been to the moon, Nathan. We've been there.

4) Hating bobbleheads because you hate the bobblehead man is like hating coffee because of Starbucks. It isn't coffee's fault that there are hucksters out to make a buck. You don't blame coffee for being over-roasted and overpriced. Coffee (and bobbleheads) is innocent of all of that. Bobbleheads know nothing of eBay's strange, barter economy. Of course they don't. They're made of plastic. There are monsters everywhere. Do we say, "Yes monsters, we shall cower before you?" No. We don't. We rally our tiny bobble army and combat the forces of darkness, just like it says in the tales of old.

5a) None of this applies to the Macklemore bobblehead. Mackle-no-more bobblehead, amirite? (yes) In the definitive ranking of all things that seemed like a good idea but were actually a terrible idea, the Macklemore bobblehead ranks just ahead of Napoleon's wintertime stroll into Russia and just behind any of us thinking that "Can't Hold Us" wouldn't become The Most Annoying Song of our time, especially since it was played after every Seahawks touchdown in 2013. Do you know how many touchdowns they scored? It was a lot. They scored a lot of touchdowns. They scored as many touchdowns as there are Macklemore bobbleheads floating around eBay, lonely and sad because not even I, Meg, human who bought a Mike Zunino Rainiers bobblehead with American dollars that might have been exchanged for beer, would buy such a thing. When we make the playoffs, it will be because new Mariners ownership bought all of these bobbleheads, lit them on fire, and then lit the ashes on fire.

5b) Same goes for whatever the hell is happening here: