Sunday, August 9, 2015

#BillyBeaneBobblehead

Billy Beane Bobblehead

The Oakland A’s have put the “I” back in team
And it’s the “I” in “Billy” as in “Beane”
Money Ball! Sabermetric Ball! Austerity Ball! Plutocrat Ball!
You could also say Stupid Ball!
But that’s only if you’re judging it
From the quaint perspective
That believes winning a world series is the objective.
If he was really so stupid,
He wouldn’t have been named a minority owner of the team
Granted more power in the organization
And a guaranteed contract through 2019.

In the meantime, rooting for Billy Beane
Has become kind of like rooting for all those banksters
With their multi-million dollar golden parachutes
At taxpayers expense, especially after the crash of ’08.
Ah, American as Apple Pie!
The 21st century kind with corn syrup for sugar.
& Hot dogs & Chevrolets no longer made in the USA.

We know the days of baseball teams
Made up of homegrown local heroes
Has been gone as long as the Negro Leagues,
but Billy Beane takes it to a new level
Proudly boasting: two decades of teases!
“Nipping team chemistry in the bud since 2001!”
when the research and analysis of his method
proves he didn’t need “La Potencia”
since it don’t matter if your career batting stats
barely poked their head above the Mendoza line
if you can sweet talk your way
out of the outfield into the front office
to exploit the peasants’ need
to have something local to rally behind
and the city officials’ need to keep the team here
even if they have to sell off the affordable housing requirement to do it

Would you buy a Billy Beane team jersey?
Will they give away a Billy Beane bobblehead?
Yet, Billy Beane can be made useful
In showing just how America is run
Like those colleges and universities
With swelling Human Resources middlemen
While teachers go homeless and class sizes are too large.

And, if the team manager
Is analogous to the mayor,
We can how his strings are pulled,
And hands are tied, by GM Beane
As say Libby Schaaf’s are pulled by the BIA
(the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area),
to name but one example
of the boss you can’t vote for
where the real game and intrigue lies
beneath the game they tell us to care about

proof of oligarchy’s anarchy
beneath the mask of democracy
proof of the impotence of sports call in shows,
or political talk radio and “free speech” on facebook
coz the business of America is business
& I suspect America will look more and more
like Moneyball, like Plutocrat ball
driven by the fear that a baseball team
could rise up and unite against its GM
who wages his war with a smiling, if geeky, face,
speaking softly, but with a bigger stick
than any designated hitter….

We’re stuck with him till at least 2019,
And I hear Gil Scott Heron’s voice alive and well….

“Four more years of that?”

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