Who is Dane Cook and why is he yelling at me on my TV? And why does he sound like he has a mouthful of chestnuts? And why does it look like he spends four hours making his hair look so meticulously messy?
Worse, why is MLB using Dane Cook to sell me on baseball? I’m already watching and because the games start so late, I’m also ready to fall asleep. Putting that loud, chestnut-eating guy on between innings to yell at me about how exciting baseball is is really, really annoying.
But give MLB credit for one thing – it made me want to (kind of) find out who Dane Cook is. Apparently he’s a comic. Perhaps he’s even a comic with no material that has swiped jokes from Emo Philips, Joe Rogan and Demetri Martin. But more than that he is a humorless comedian, which is worse than being a trickless magician. David Blaine is a trickless magician, as was pointed out by the adroit Chris Rock. This is an odd thing because, as Jerry Seinfeld once observed, magicians base their entire act on making YOU look stupid.
”Hey, here’s a quarter… now it’s gone and you’re a jerk!”
Who wants to be subjected to that? Worse, who wants to see a guy just sitting in a box for a month? He's just sitting there, in a box, in public. That's magic? What’s the big deal with that? People do it all the time, but they don’t call it a box – they call it a couch and they’re smart enough to put it in front of a TV. Sometimes people sit in their "box" so long that they actually feel their ass grow.
Top that, David Blaine!
Note: Here’s an idea for a David Blaine’s next trick – sit through Dane Cook’s HBO show. Afterwards, if he chooses, he can hammer six nails into his skull.
So not only is David Blaine trickless, he isn’t even original… which is kind of like Dane Cook.
Anyway, I suppose MLB hired Dane Cook to yell at me because of marketing and demographics and all of that stuff. The thought, I suppose, is that someone like Dane Cook blathering on about baseball with his messy hair on the TV will make younger folks in the key demographic to watch baseball games on Fox or TBS. I wish there was more to it than that, but that’s probably the depth of all of it.
But here’s where it doesn’t work:
Baseball, to that demographic, probably isn’t cool and even a shouting Dane Cook isn’t making it any cooler. Baseball, sadly, is what it is. Making it look "cool" is a lot like putting lipstick on a pig -- sure, lipstick makes ladies look pretty, but if a pig wears makeup, it's just a pig with hues that don't match its skin color or "season."
And no one wants to see that.
But if I worked for MLB and they asked me what idea I had in order to pander to the kids of the demographic they want Dane Cook to speak to, do want to know what I’d do?
Well, I’m going to tell you anyway…
Here’s the idea – I’d schedule the games for times where kids could watch them. That means Game 4 of the NLCS (an elimination game) would not start at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Why not? Because even people who don’t figure into the demographic (like me), but still want to watch the game, end up falling asleep on the couch during the fifth inning. When we come to after rolling off the couch and onto the floor with spittle attached to our cheeks, there he is – Dane Cook – shouting at us.
It’s not nice.
Yes, I know there are different time zones and just because something starts at 10 on the east means that it’s 8 in Denver. But you know what? Those kids have school the next day and they are going to fall asleep during the middle innings, too. Like the rest of us, they will get yelled at and, but then they will go off to bed where they will have nightmares about a sloppy, walnut-eating freak screaming at them about Troy Tulowitzki.
In other words, not even rumpled Dane Cook and his mouth full of walnuts is going to make us stay up late to watch baseball, and that’s too bad.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7lDaNhR4K4]
Sorry, that wasn’t funny either.
What also isn’t funny is that baseball fans aren’t getting the chance to watch the Colorado Rockies win every single game they play. For the past month (Sept. 15), the Rockies have played 22 games and they have won 21 times. What’s more incredible is that the Rockies finished the regular season by winning 14 of 15 games, and if they had won just 13 of 15 games, they would not be in the playoffs. Thirteen of 15 is pretty darned good, but it wouldn’t have been good enough to get the Rockies into the playoffs.
Now, though, they’re in the World Series. Apparently Matt Holliday clubbed a three-run home run to help the Rockies sweep the Diamondbacks. At least that’s what the box score indicates… I missed it. I was asleep on the couch all worn out after being yelled at by a better demographic.