The World Series started Wednesday, and since the Red Sox are out, I wasn't planning on watching. Except, as with the Academy Awards, the Series has a hold over me that is hard to shake, no matter how much it blows (or how much I hate the Rays one or both of the teams). So this year, I thought I would watch it much like I do the Oscars (or Project Runway) -- to see what people are wearing. I know, it sounds a little batshit. But if you've watched as much baseball as I have, you know that when you're heart's not in the game itself, you have to find something to keep your interest. Of course, when I started thinking about it, it occurred to me that there were some eerie parallels between the World Series and the presidential election, which I'm also aware sounds a little batshit. So bear with me here...and let's play ball!
In the World Series hair department, the primary trend matchup is Mohawks versus Mullets. Toward the end of the regular season, many Tampa Bay Rays players -- and their 54 year-old manager, Joe Maddon -- gave themselves "The Rayhawk" to demonstrate team unity. While the Phillies' don't have uniform 'dos, Game 1 starting pitcher and NLCS MVP, Cole Hamels, and outfielder Jayson Werth (pictured) share a hairstyle that borrows its name from another sport: "Hockey Hair." The two prevailing styles are, by all appearances, totally different -- punks versus pucks, Joe Strummer versus Joe the Plumber -- yet they both would have you believe that the person wearing them is a rebel, a freethinker, a maverick, an agent of change, and an outsider to the Clean-Cut Establishment.
With so much attention brought to specific voter groups this election, whether they be young, old, black, Latino, Asian-American, or your Jewish grandparents, there was perhaps no group more sought after than
. Wasn't that why an unknown female governor from an obscure, underpopulated state that your "average American" has never been to was brought into the race? Baseball players in this year's Series are also getting in touch with their feminine side, whether it's hugging it out on the field after a win, or proudly wearing what most closely resembles a slightly overgrown bikini wax on their chins.
The flat hat brim is for the fake American who lives in the big city, an urban dweller too busy with their fake life to be hard-working, patriotic or pro-America, who feeds their family with peppery, bitter lettuces foraged from Whole Foods. The curled hat brim is for the real American who lives in a small town, in a wonderful little pocket of real America, who feeds their family through their real core values, like hunting, fishing, and getting real animal carcass-blood on their hands and clothes. The flat hat brim's origin is the streets, hip-hop, pop culture, and cool; the curled hat brim's is the country, country music, a culture of "actual responsibilities," and true grit. The curled hat brim is bending under the weight of its profound realness, a burden that the flat hat brim, in all of its smart eloquence, will never understand. The curled hat brim says, "God Bless America," and the flat hat brim, well, it occasionally "palls around" with terrorists... plural.
Swing State Batter Batter Batter, Swing State Batter
Phillies fans (L), Rays players rallying for Obama (R) Perhaps the most enduring World Series trend that we may get a glimpse of this year is the fact that winning often hinges on just One Big Swing. One side can seem like they're totally out of the game and then
thwack!
-- victory is once again up for grabs. Both World Series teams also happen to be from two important swing states,
and
. Kinda puts a new spin on the idea of a state being "in play," doesn't it?
Not that America's pastime has any bearing on, like, who our next American president will be. Or does it? The first World Series pitch has already been thrown out, and I'd rather watch the game, as much as my heart's not in it this year, than talk any more about politics. So I'll let you readers decide... Mullets in 5? Chin-Pubes in 7? Obama in 286?
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