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MLB Heavyweight Champion

If MLB champs were decided like boxing: beat the champ, and you're the champ.

The 2008 season started with the Red Sox as champs. They were beaten by the A's, who were beaten back by Boston, who were then swept by Toronto, who lost to Oakland, who lost to Cleveland, and so on, until we reached our current champion.

The Heavyweight of the Year is the team that wins the most title bouts at the end of the season.

Current Champion (as of 8/12):
Milwaukee Brewers

2008 Title Bout Records:

Mets2317
Athletics1313
Red Sox117
Cubs91
Padres86
Rockies714
Angels64
Indians611
Brewers50
Cardinals55
Reds55
Dodgers57
Marlins43
Rangers46
Blue Jays33
Nationals35
Mariners21
Yankees23
Phillies25
Tigers12
Giants03
Orioles03

2007 Heavyweight of the Year:
Seattle Mariners

2006 Heavyweight of the Year:
Oakland Athletics

2005 Heavyweight of the Year:
Oakland Athletics

more info...

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Athletics fandom, as seen through Macaroni and Cheese Falling from the Sky
2006-01-16 10:39
by Ken Arneson

The USS Mariner series on fandom via philosophy is highly amusing. A sample:

The act of ticket buying is contextualized into a supercapitalist theory that further denotes common ground between sexual identity, commerce, and the use of language to establish a narrative ("the owners are losing money" for instance) that further subjugates the fans who are, in the view of the poststructuralist, happily whistling while they pound out additional links in the chains that bind them at the feet of their masters.

I have no idea what that sentence actually means, but taking a metaphor and stretching it out to absurd lengths is a fun game for all ages. Why, just this morning I overheard my two daughters (ages 8 and 5) discussing the consequences of having clouds rain macaroni and cheese instead of water.

Their discussion focused mainly on the effects this would have on school lunches. You wouldn't have to buy lunch, because you could just hold a bowl out and collect your lunch from the sky. But if it rained mac & cheese 27 days in a row, you would really get tired of mac & cheese for lunch.

But certainly, mac & cheese rain would have plenty of effects on baseball, too.

First of all, since mac & cheese would be abundant and cheap, a lot more things would be orange. Every ballpark would probably have orange seats. The A's team colors would certainly be green and orange, instead of green and gold. And maybe the baseball itself would be orange, just as Charlie Finley once suggested.

The fields would have to be designed differently. Current drainage systems depend on the relatively sub-microscopic size of water molecules. Macaroni is much larger than water. After a macaroni storm, you'd probably need machines similar to snowplows to quickly remove the macaroni from the field. You'd also need somewhere to dispose of all the excess macaroni.

Mac & Cheese rain would affect the economic system of baseball, as well. Would fans spend $10 for a hot dog and a beer, if mac & cheese were freely available everywhere? No way. Can you drink anything besides milk with mac & cheese? Blecch, I don't think so.

Beer sales would plummet, beer ad sales would plummet, and so television and radio revenues would plummet. Baseball's whole economic system would collapse! To build a competitive team in this new economic landscape would require some very innovative thinking, the kind of creative ideas the Oakland A's have always been at the forefront of. While the other teams complain about the macaroni problem, the A's actually find a way to use it to their advantage. How they did it would be a mystery for many years, until finally unveiled in a best-selling book entitled Macaroniball.

Comments
2006-01-16 13:06:23
1.   scareduck
Clearly, you and your daughters have been touched by His Noodly Appendage:

http://venganza.org/index.htm#emails

2006-01-16 13:59:30
2.   joejoejoe
Great post but I think beer sales would remain constant.
2006-01-16 22:41:38
3.   Kenny
Yeah, I've had mac & cheese with beer before, doesn't taste that bad.
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