mlbstarpower0627.png

Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a bi-weekly undertaking that determines with awful authority which players/baseball entities are dominating the current zeitgeist of the sport, at least according to the narrow perceptions of this miserable scribe. While one's presence on this list is often celebratory in nature, it can also be for purposes of lamentation or ridicule. The players/living baseball phenomena listed are in no particular order, just like the phone book. To this edition's honorees/dishonorees ...

Bruce Bochy

Managerial ejections are usually calculated self-sacrifices on the part of the skipper, designed to spare rostered employees from a similar fate and or to cover his charges in a rousing layer of esprit de corps. Sometimes to achieve this end, the run-up to the ejection is an elaborate and at-marathon-length Kabuki on the part of the manager – one that is greeted with a rising chorus of stomps and handclaps from players and paying customers. 

Texas Rangers boss Bruce Bochy, however, is more inclined to get to the point. Please behold as Bochy, following a grave injustice involving his catcher, achieves the heave-ho in the with the gait and concision of a cattle-driving vaquero who works alone, believes celestial navigation is the only higher power, and is also a mime: 

Did Bruce Bochy manage an ejection by using fewer than 10 words? 'Tis possible, so long as you use the right words – unsparing and deeply naughty words like thaspus, yicketty, doobler, and satchputch. Take the rest of the game off, Bruce Bochy. With you we are well pleased. 

Victor Wembanyama

Professional basketballsman Victor Wembanyama, prior to being selected No. 1 overall in the recently concluded NBA Draft, showed up at Yankee Stadium to throw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to a game involving, yes, the New York Yankees. Forthcoming is some relevant photographic imagery: 

The ceremonial first pitch is very often undertaken by the celebrity and or practitioner of the current zeitgeist, and Mr. Wembanyama is no exception. This also gives us occasion in this space to bask in the slipstream of another sport's search-engine-optimization prowess. We have nothing of note to say about Victor Wembanyama or even the ceremonial first pitch he authored, the video of which we have not bothered to find. Maybe it was funny. Maybe it was surprisingly well executed. Many people know. We never shall because who even has the energy these days. 

No, rather we are here to repeatedly put in searchable web-based text the name "Victor Wembanyama" so that URL-clickers the world over might find their way here not to have their Victor Wembanyama questions answered, but rather to have those questions stated back to them to no end but ad impressions. 

Are you typing, likely with one finger, things like?: 

  • French basketball player height
  • Victor Winbanana height
  • Vince Wimbledon height
  • Victor Wembanyama
  • victor wembanyama 
  • Can the Knicks still have Victor Wembanyama
  • Will Lebron hire Victor Wembanyama
  • Spurs Lakers Victor Wembanyama trade
  • Is Victor Wembanyama real life
  • Victor Wembanyama parents height
  • victor wembanyama knicks highlights
  • Victor Wembanyama wingspan
  • Victor Wembanyama free agent
  • Victor Wembanyama sister
  • Victor Wembanyama myspace
  • Gradey Dick 

Yes? Then you've landed on the correct web-based gathering of Hypertext Markup Language. Again, the purpose is not to answer these questions for you. The purpose is to acknowledge your Victor Wembanyama curiosities and unhelpfully repeat them to you in a fatuous waltz undertaken solely to harvest engagement. 

When Victor Wembanyama held and supposedly threw a baseball, he became for this space not a baseball player but rather a viable search term. Others encouraged to one day hold and supposedly throw a baseball include Will Smith, Queen Elizabeth, Taylor Swift, Novak Djokovic, Lionel Messi, BTS, Peso Pluma, and God. Should those potential search terms satisfy the aforestated requirements for inclusion here, then we shall swiftly amass your likely queries, type them here – likely with one finger – and wait for you to read them, likely with your lips moving. Then you shall turn your eyes to the uncaring middle distance as you process that in this call and response the call is the response. Genghis Khan net worth. 

The National League West Anagram Standings

In the interest of advancing the word count of this piece and in the general interest of advancing barely trying as a first virtue, the author is continuing a six-part SPI sub-series in which he ranks teams in each division based on the anagram that he's bothered to figure for each team's name. For the uninitiated, an anagram is formed when you take the letters of a word or words and form other words with them. So: These are divisional standings – or Rankings of Power – based on team-name anagrams. Why is this being done? Look, if the exercise itself hardly matters, then the same goes for its purpose and origins. 

We began with the AL East version of this, and then came the much stronger AL Central installment. Then the AL West was subjected to this indignity, and soon after the NL East assumed the position. Last time out, the NL Central took a break from losing games to have this inflicted upon it, and now it appears it's time to wrap up this vapid endeavor with the National League West Anagram Standings. Forthwith, like it or not: 

  1. A Doorman's Banzai D*ck
  2. Dead Logger Lessons
  3. Cocoa Odors Liker
  4. Disparaged Nose 
  5. Canasta Forcing Sins

What do the Dead Logger Lessons teach us? They teach us that A Doorman's Banzai D*ck is probably going to win the NL West, even though each and every one of us is a Cocoa Odors Liker.   

Whatever this has been, it is now over.