#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 21^st 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?”