Why Your Team Is More Awesome Than the Yankees

*** Outside of the links, text below is same as in cartoon. ***

Being awesome is taking the hand you are dealt and going beyond expectations with intelligence, performance, and hard work. Being awesome is welcoming competition because it will test your skills and prove your greatness. Giving yourself an unfair advantage and then declaring yourself a champion worthy of praise is childish and lame. Yet this is what “great” teams do in Major League Baseball.

The big-spending baseball teams always have a massive advantage. Imagine a recreational league where every year the best teams were able to take the best players from the unsuccessful teams. Would that be fair? Wouldn’t it be moronic for the stacked teams to boast and prance around like peacocks when they win? This silliness is what baseball fans have to tolerate annually.

For every small-market fan out there, remember your time will rarely come … but when it does, your team will have done it the hard way and it will be awesome—awesome in a way the fans of “great” franchises will never experience.

2012 MLB Division Series Team Salaries (millions)

Winners
Yankees 198
Tigers 132
Giants 118
Cardinals 110

Losers
Reds 82
Orioles 81
Nationals 81
Athletics 55

Dedicated to the 2012 Orioles, the 2012 Nationals, and Joe Orsulak.

Links

1. 2012 Major League Baseball Team Salaries, USAToday.com. LINK
2. Frank Deford, “Until a Salary Cap, MLB Outcomes Will Remain Predictable,” SportsIllustrated.CNN.com, 7 Apr. 2010. LINK
3. Neil deMause, “Does Baseball Need a Salary Cap?” ESPN.GO.com, 30 Mar. 2006. LINK

Pro-Drugs Column Runs In UK

London’s esteemed Times newspaper ran a pro-drugs piece by one of its columnists, Martin Samuel (left). This is amazing. In the United States even articles that simply make policy arguments against drug prohibition – while still echoing the “drugs are bad” mantra – are almost never published. (See Eric Sterling’s post, LINK.) Samuel’s piece was a flat-out defense of recreational drugs. Wow.

Here’s an excerpt:

Now I don’t see my views on drugs reflected too often in the mainstream media, so here goes. This is the comedian Bill Hicks quoted in performance at the Laff Stop, Austin, Texas, December 1991. “I don’t do drugs anymore,” he said, “but I’ll tell you something honestly: I had a great time doing drugs. Sorry. Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone, never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife, or kids. Laughed my ass off, and went about my day. Sorry.”

Martin Samuel, “Better to Have an E Than a Bee,” Times, 4 Jan. 2008. LINK

This Blog Is Spread

Narco Polo’s cartoons can now also be found at DoseNation.com. DoseNation is a collaborative blog covering all aspects of modern drug culture. Already posted cartoons at DoseNation include “Why They Hate Us” and “Healthy Drug Users vs. Obese Narcophobes.”