Miami Marlins, The Post Office and Baseball on the Bird | The Bandwagon
This week Hannah Keyser tells you why you should root for the COVID-laden, alternate-site-player-filled Miami Marlins before they regress to their usual Marlins-ness. Plus: Her takes on the post office, Nick Swisher, and Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s ‘WAP.’ She also takes you deep into weeds of Baseball Twitter in a new segment called, ‘Baseball on the Bird.’
Video Transcript
HANNAH KEYSER: You guys, sometimes I forget all the teams that are in baseball until I see the hats we have. Poo, like, I just saw that hat, and I was like, who's T?
[LAUGHTER]
The Rangers was one of our best episodes last year. We gotta hurry 'cause it's gonna get so hot in here. I'm Hannah Keyser, and this is "The Bandwagon."
[UNSEEN MEN CHEERING]
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Last week, we did our first actual semi-normal team episode of 2020 in an attempt to will the world into settling down a little bit and the Blue Jays into our arriving at success sooner than expected. And now, a week later, people are starting to wonder what it would look like if one team just bowed out entirely of the season because they can't get the coronavirus outbreak under control. And the Blue Jays are not very good.
But rather than cross our fingers and hope for the best, this week we're going to just lean into the obvious and celebrate a team that is sitting atop the standings in one of the toughest divisions in baseball. In other words, we're Bandwagoning the Marlins.
[UNSEEN MEN CHEERING]
Before the season started, the Marlins were the fifth team in an NL East race that looked like it could go any one of four ways. Less than a week into meaningful baseball, they were the source of a 20-person outbreak that inspired an existential crisis in the sport. But now they're off to their best start in over a decade and have more wins than either of last year's World Series teams, despite having played fewer overall games.
After more than half the team tested positive for coronavirus and got sent home on sleeper buses hopefully driven by somebody wearing a hazmat suit lined with hazard pay, even playing games again at all sort of seemed like an afterthought. The team that finally returned to the field last week featured 17 players who hadn't been on the roster for their previous game, which was eight days earlier. At the time, I would have been hard pressed to tell you anything about any one of them and, turns out, so would the Marlins' own broadcast.
- These are not your father's Marlins. Maybe they're your son's Marlins, because on Tuesday, there was a Dickerson, a Harrison, and a Brinson, and they were the first team to do it since-- well, you have to go way back, to last year.
HANNAH KEYSER: There are so many different ways to mock this fun fact. It is neither interesting nor especially uncommon. Last year-- oh, the same team, with one of the same guys. And honestly, if you think about it, all teams are always starting an all-son outfield and infield.
And then, that motley crew went on to win six straight games, dating back to before the outbreak. Humberto Mejía made his first start above Single-A and struck out six in less than three innings. Eddy Alvarez became the first winter Olympian to make the majors and, after getting off to a cold start, got his first big league hit against Jacob deGrom and demonstrated that he should also consider turning triple-threat as a summer Olympian in some sort of track and field event, 'cause the 30-year-old rookie has some serious ups.
Also, they added quirky journeyman Pat Venditte. And if there's anything you need to know about Pat Venditte-- you know what? Actually, I'll just let him tell you.
PAT VENDITTE: Fun fact about myself-- I was an all-state violinist in high school.
HANNAH KEYSER: And Francisco Cervelli solidified his place as my favorite person who looks like Gerard Butler. I like him better than actual Gerard Butler now.
[LAUGHTER]
At 34 years old, the veteran Cervelli was one of the original 13 Marlins who call themselves the trece that relied on makeshift Zumba classes to stay active during their quarantine. And-- I mean this sort of genuinely-- he was probably actually fine, comparatively, without access to any gym equipment, since Cervelli's usual offseason routine consists of just kind of moving around close to the ground like different quadrupeds or some sort of crab. Sincerely hope that he did that down the hallways of their hotel.
Now that the team is back to baseball, he is dancing around the dugout, throwing guys out from his knee, slapping dingers, doing the Dikembe Mutombo finger-wag at unfair umps, and taking the universal 2020 life hack of conducting video calls while pantsless a step too far. See, you have to wear a shirt if you don't want the person on the other line to get suspicious about what's happening out of frame.
Are the misfits Marlins the real deal? Absolutely not! But watching them eke out a win against teams during the full-game equivalent of this is literally-- literally-- the most invested in actual on-field baseball that I have felt this entire year. Root for the Marlins quickly. They've probably already peaked.
- [INAUDIBLE]!
HANNAH KEYSER: All right. Fan, not a fan.
- Woo-hoo. Let's go! Woo-hoo.
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- The post office.
HANNAH KEYSER: I cannot believe I've given the current state of emergency in this country. We've also decided to be like, what if we get rid of mail? Like, no.
[LAUGHTER]
Also, people all the time are like, the post office costs money. And it's like, yes, as things do. Like, why would the post office be a money-making venture?
- Taxes!
HANNAH KEYSER: Capitalism is fine to drive the free market. But government services fill in the gaps about things that otherwise would not naturally arise. Mail is one of those things! United States Postal Service. It's a service. Fan. Also they have cute merch.
[LAUGHTER]
- Marlins Man cutout.
HANNAH KEYSER: So he was sitting at the Kansas City Royals game, and the mascot put, like, a Royals shirt over his Marlins shirt. And that's cute, I guess. But you just-- don't put-- like, you could just not have him there. The best thing about not having fans in the stands is not having Marlins Man sitting behind home plate. Why would you put him there?
- He's still there.
HANNAH KEYSER: Not a fan of Marlins Man.
- Nick Swisher.
HANNAH KEYSER: Personally, I have no strong feelings one way or the other about Nick Swisher. Let's hear from somebody who does. [LAUGHS]
OZZIE GUILLEN: I hate Nick Swisher with my heart.
HANNAH KEYSER: Ozzie Guillén looked straight into the camera and was like, I hate Nick Swisher with my whole heart, and then did not stop there.
OZZIE GUILLEN: I don't like the ways his attitude was all fake.
- Yeah.
OZZIE GUILLEN: And I don't like fake people.
- All right. So he was only in with the White Sox for one year, and then he moved on.
OZZIE GUILLEN: It was going one year too long.
HANNAH KEYSER: I am gonna say that I'm a huge fan of this beef. And if someone is not already working on a what the hell happened between Ozzie Guillén and Nick Swisher exposé, I would like to do that. This is me officially pitching it to my editor.
[LAUGHTER]
- The three-batter minimum.
HANNAH KEYSER: This is the rule that is supposed to cut down on all of the pitching changes that really slow down the late innings-- bringing a guy in to face one batter and then immediately taking him out. You have to face at least three batters, or else they have to end an inning. This is a very good rule. It's a way of codifying something that has been getting out of control.
We like the idea of there being match-ups like starter verse starter. And then even sort of, like, you know, closer verse closer. And this is a way of codifying getting back to that. So fan. I see no downside.
- WAP.
[LAUGHTER]
HANNAH KEYSER: OK. Here's the thing about the new Cardi B., Megan Thee Stallion song. We did like the oldest, marriedest 30-something white couple thing, where we were like, oh, what's this new thing everyone's talking about on Twitter? And then we sat down on our couch and, like, pulled it up on YouTube, and we were like, mm, interesting.
And here is my take. The idea that, like, women's sexuality is somehow inappropriate is premised on the idea that, like, it is impolite for women to enjoy sex and that, in fact, it is something that should be, like, done unto them. So 1,000% of the camp, fan, huge fan of them reclaiming that in the discourse and all of that and, like, the sort of like publicity around it. But it's not a good song. Right?
[LAUGHTER]
I enjoyed both Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion's other work. This is not catchy. OK.
[HORN]
Now, this is the part in the show where, usually, it goes boop, boop, boop-- Humble Proposal. How does it go?
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Instead, you're gonna hear a new noise because we're doing a new segment.
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[BIRDS CHIRPING]
It's called Baseball on the Bird. We will bring you the backstory of a single baseball player tweet. This is the first one.
Recently, MLB issued a memo to teams essentially doubling down on COVID best practices and threatening punishment for flagrant violations. Last Friday, in a seemingly unrelated move, Cleveland starter Mike Clevinger, who has meticulously fashioned himself as a carefree counterculture hippie as evidenced by his use of inscrutable fonts, tweeted, "I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me. Eddie Vedder." This high-minded iteration of "don't you know who I am?" is truly banal nonsense at any point, but this particular tweet also aged really poorly really quickly.
On Sunday, the Indians sent Clevinger's rotation mate Zach Plesac home after he broke protocol to socialize in Chicago Saturday night. Back in July, Clevinger said that the protocols were, quote, "player discipline thing. Keep the coaches, front office kind out of it"-- you know, like a guy who doesn't think these matters should be looked into any further. And also, "if you feel your teammate doesn't trust you off the field, how are you going to feel like he trusts you when you get between the lines?" Good point.
Do you see where this is going? Yeah. On Monday, we learned that Clevinger, who has previously posted about how he's always with Plesac, was with Plesac that night in Chicago, except, unlike Plesac, he flew back to Cleveland on the same plane as all his teammates, including recent leukemia survivor Carlos Carrasco, before anyone found out that he'd broken protocol. And look, maybe the rules just didn't know about Clevinger, but he'd be hard pressed to make the argument now that he didn't know about them.
- Not cool.
HANNAH KEYSER: This week we're Bandwagoning the Marlins. I bought the wrong hat on purpose because, unlike pretty much everybody else, I do not love their new uniforms this year. The black shirt in Miami? Really? They should do tie-dye uniforms.
I'd be a huge fan of that if any team did that. I'd be a huge fan of that. We will talk about it here on "The Bandwagon." Boop boop boop ba doop doop.
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