Baseball Toaster Catfish Stew
Help
STOP CASTING POROSITY! An Oakland Athletics blog.
Frozen Toast
Search
Google Search
Web
Toaster
Catfish Stew
Archives

2009
02  01 

2008
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2007
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2006
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2005
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  01 

2004
12  09  08  01 

2003
12  11  10  09  08 
Email Us

Ken: catfish AT zombia d.o.t. com
Ryan: rarmbrust AT gmail d.o.t. com
Philip: kingchimp AT alamedanet d.o.t net

Ken's Greatest Hits
28 Aug 2003
12 Jan 2004
31 May 2005
11 May 2005
29 Jun 2005
8 Jun 2005
19 Jul 2005
11 Aug 2005
7 Sep 2005
20 Sep 2005
22 Sep 2005
26 Sep 2005
28 Sep 2005
29 Sep 2005
18 Oct 2005
9 Nov 2005
15 Nov 2005
20 Nov 2005

13 Dec 2005
19 Jan 2006
28 Jan 2006
21 Feb 2006
10 Apr 2006
16 Apr 2006
22 Apr 2006
7 May 2006
25 May 2006
31 May 2006
18 Jun 2006
22 Jun 2006
6 Jul 2006
17 Jul 2006
13 Aug 2006
15 Aug 2006
16 Aug 2006
20 Aug 2006
11 Oct 2006
31 Oct 2006
29 Dec 2006
4 Jan 2006
12 Jan 2006
27 Jan 2007
17 Feb 2007
30 Apr 2007
27 Aug 2007
5 Sep 2007
19 Oct 2007
23 Nov 2007
5 Jan 2008
16 Jan 2008
4 Feb 2008
7 May 2008
20 Jun 2008
4 Feb 2008
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.

Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.