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Darryl P. Skeeby Presents The Harperning Et Alia

MTV if you're listening I've got a few ideas

By David Skiba
SINATRA ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE
SINATRA ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE
Rob Carr/Getty Images

SHAAAABOOOOZY and I'm back and in real time again to round up all the miscreant behavior currently being allowed in the Major Leagues of Baseball. Yes, you heard it here first folks, Darryl P. Skabadabadee has returned from the warm slumber of winter, the hopeful dews of spring, to plop himself face-first into a pile of videocassettes to catch up on everything he's missed. And why have I been so behind in my baseballings? Well, that's a simple question with a quick and dirty answer, folks. My cousin Jeb finally hooked up the cable whirly machine and whoops poops bang I have moving pictures and telanovelas on my talkbox! Sure, the Mariners are in first place for the first time since Jose Mesa was allowed to blow saves, but there's better things on the teevee.

The first program I stumbled upon was some sort of contest between able-bodied youths that mostly involved the consumption of tequila and moving odd-shaped things with ropes and typically near or around water. No, I'm not talking about the Crossfit gym in Pensacola or playing horseshoes pregame in Tropicana. I'm talking about MTV's (Music TeleVision) THE Real World. An apt name, I'd say, for a house large enough to sleep thirty attractive folks who mostly just want to yell or paint in their free time. Some folks call this Sophomore Year. To make a longstory short, cut scene to me spending hours on my wicker chair hootin' a hollerin' and not watching a single pitch but learning a lot about Life and its dazzling mysteries. When I came to, from a stupor of ten seasons of good television and better intrapersonal skills, I caught scent of Bryceland Willy Ullyses Harper making quite a stink.

Now, I'm not one to read lips, just hips, but hell folks if I had any clue the stove was this hot I woulda started making soup three weeks ago. Wasn't it just a year ago we were wishing on a star that Bryce would teach the youngin's the cool and neat way to play ball? Sure, he has a a cool collection of hats and clearly time to go to the barber once a day, but with all this hooplah, I think Bryce has a different audience than we ever imagined. In fact, I almost wonder if he took a trip to a tropical paradise this past offseason:

Bryce is more than the Face of the MLB. He's more than a five-tool athlete at the top of his game. He has a sixth tool. Hell, maybe even a seventh with the hair. Bryce's sixth tool is his appeal to the MTV crowd. Let's say we have some sort of crossover reality show in the offseason. Bryce obviously stars as the entire movie Casablanca and Buster Posey can do his best Rodney Dangerfield. We all get them in one house, maybe the Steroid Era wing of Cooper's Town so they can kiss David Segui's bust every night after drunken debaucheries at the local 7-11, and just let 'er rip. High fastballs ain't nothing when Rich Hill and Rick Porcello have to share a bunk bed together while holding a job at the local coffee shop. Watch Mike Scioscia rope swing across Niagara Falls while eating three Chiptole chicken burrito bowls for immunity in the next night's tribal send-off. Terry Francona and Yoenis Cespedes can ride a horse on a beach. There's a lot of play here. It's thanks to Bryce "The Nice" Harper.

Moving forward, and more recently in the moon's path around the earth movin' the tides 'n' such, there was a bit of a scruffle down in a Texas town. Sure, Johnny Cash killed a man in Reno just to watch him die, and Tin Pan Alley may just be the roughest place Stevie Ray Vaughan has ever been, but neither one of them was ever brave enough to slide too near to Rougned Odor's knees. As background, avid readers and anyone here from the Great White North will remember the Bat Flip That Likely Effected Multiple Grains of Dirt On The Ground:

And sure, it looks like those blueberry fellas from Toe-Ron-Toe had themselves one heck of a hootnholler when Bats hit the ball with his bat, but it seems the Texas RAGErs remembered the affair in much different light. And who's to blame them, really? Texas toast is supposed to be buttered, clean. No maple syrup and crepes and Drake. (I hope you are grasping the drama of this moment, now imagine it played out in 26 minute episodes over an entire season). So when the Blue Jays came to Texas, a place where I'm sure even cattle get restless and bored, Odor decided to make a stink (hehehe).

WIZBOWBLAM! Roughned roughed up Joseph for making quite an Odor on the basepaths, it seems. You cannot write these sorts of things folks! Haymakers cannot make hay as effectively as Odor makes hay with his haymaker. I propose we call up the film crew at YOUTUBE and request that they replace all videos of The Flip with The Real Flip which is the sunglasses flying off a shocked face of a man who no longer realizes he is on second base but is being slapped in the face with approximately 11 1/2 inches of a leather mitten. I thought we retired the glove slap in the war of 1812 in 1813, but it makes sense that a Texas Ranger, the Prince Charmings of the The Old West, would keep it fashionable. I'm sure this is the part of the show where we'd see Odor smoking a pipe in an embroidered cow leather coat and oiling his mitten in pleasure while regaling us with his tale of the tape. It's made for TV. It's fun, poppy, snappy, slappy, good timin'. Baseball is back and we need Fantasy Suites.

All I'm sayin' is, sure, Seattle is in first place and the city finally has its collective five gallon hat on tight and square and full of Love Potion Number Nine (also known as Kahlua and Kahlua), but let's focus on the real entertainment at hand. It's May, not time to get excited, the corn hasn't even poked through the ground. Call me back when it's knee high on the Fourth Of Joo-ly and I'll get myself a corncob pipe and a pair of dungarees. Until then, let's keep it to the basics. Foibles and nice haircuts.

Or, for the more refined and less ill-hearted. Here is a stickman tumbling over a hill:

Let's make baseball fun again. Let's make baseball just like Room Raiders.

ROLL THE BIZ

Ed's note: Ed would like me to once again thank the beautimus film crew at Youtube for the wonderful fast pictures and the folks out there on Twittah making the fast pictures talk. Without the hard work of The Tweets I would simply be a man alone in a wooden temple, disconnected from modern truth and reality. Also, thank you Arby's for the delicious roast beef and tomato sammiches.

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