Now that we are a fifth of the way through the Major League baseball season, I can report with confidence that there are, in fact, few things in life more aggravating than watching a four-hour long Seattle Mariners game with Jay Buhner filling dead air.
It's bobblehead night at Safeco Field
Here are few that come close:
Stepping in fresh dog poop and not realizing it until you are halfway down a flight of carpeted stairs to your basement man cave. Definitely aggravating.
Sitting next to a chatty stranger on a long flight and not having any headphones to send a message that you don’t care to make new friends at the moment. Def aggro.
Dropping a dollop of ranch dressing on the crotch of your pants while eating a salad at your desk and spending the rest of the day walking awkwardly with your hands directly in front of your zipper. Super frustrating.
But none of these actually surpass the unique aggravation of watching an interminably long M’s game with “the Bone” in the booth. And to commemorate that fact, the M’s will hold “Jay Buhner Bobblehead Night” on Saturday. Might as well hand out ear-plugs.
First things first.
Four-hour baseball games in April and May should be legislated out of existence. And I’m not talking by the commissioner of Major League Baseball, I’m talking by Congress. This, in fact, may be the only thing our current slate of federally elected officials might actually agree on.
Eliminating the requirement to throw four pitches in order to obtain an intentional walk was a small step in the right direction, but baseball needs to do more. If it were up to me, pitchers would have electrodes taped to sensitive parts of their bodies and zapped every time they go over 15 seconds between pitches.
Similarly, they should only be allowed two pick-off moves to hold a runner on first base before they are required to swallow a plug of chewing tobacco, put their head on the handle of a bat and spin around three times.
I would also like to see the baseball-themed golf cart make a return. In addition to speeding up the time it takes for a reliever to come in from the bullpen, it would pre-emptively shame him away from pitching slowly. If he pitches too slowly, the cart comes, picks him up and drives him out of the stadium onto I-5 during rush hour.
I would do away with mangers who insist on playing “match-up” games with right-handed relievers only pitching to right handed batters and lefty-on-lefty situations. Last week as I watching a televised game with my son, Nick, I was able to wax the tent, rotate my car’s tires, go to the store and barbecue some steaks, all in the space of a half an inning as Scott Servais tried to match wits with the opposing manager. Enough already.
But as bad as long, drawn-out Mariners games are, the Misery Index goes up by a factor of 10 every time dead air is filled with Jay Buhner’s twangy voice, self-aggrandizing tales, and obligatory bromance stories about his BFFs “Junior and Gar.”
The seventh stage of hell, though, is reserved for Buhner’s ridiculous and brutally over-used Bone-isms like “that sounded crispy” to describe the sound a fastball makes when it lands in the catcher’s mitt; “base knock” to describe what most people in the Western Hemisphere call a single; and “squishy” which is used to describe, well, anything from a well-struck ball to how he, Junior and Gar used to cuddle together on long road trips.
Isn’t it enough that we’re subjected to his gawdawful radio ads for “Trucks, Trucks and MORE Trucks!” ad nauseum? I pulled a triceps muscle last week reaching for the off button on my car stereo when his voice leapt from the speakers and literally tried to strangle the life out of me.
Honestly, and speaking of bad radio ads, I would rather listen to an endless loop of Tom Shane commercials than be subjected to the Bone and his commentary.
I know he’s popular with the buzz-cut crowd. I know he wore high-top black shoes when it wasn’t stylish to do so. I know he was the king of hitting prodigious home runs when the game was already out of reach, and yes, he did hit for the cycle one time. He also holds the Mariners’ career record for strikeouts (1,375) and has the lowest career stolen base percentage in the history of Major League Baseball. So I’ll grant that he has some notoriety.
It’s just that lonnnnnng baseball games are hard enough without having to listen to Buhner drone on and on and on. It’s time to bury the Bone and get someone less full of himself and more full of the game in the booth to break the monotony.
Somebody’s gonna get a letter!