Catchy, Funny, or Inapropriate: Si Mother@!#$% all the above

It is crazy how fast the online community can come up with an idea and mass produce it.  Last week during a Detroit batting practice, for Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, ESPN blogger Buster Olney witnessed the following events transpire:

When Cabrera took his turns in the box, he carved long liners to right field, over and over, shouting to the others to guess whether they would clear the fence.
“SI OR NO?” Cabrera yelled. “SI OR NO? SI OR NO?”
When the ball would land on the other side of the chain-link fence, Cabrera punctuated the drive this way: “SI, M———–.”

 Within 4 days a Tiger's blogger, Walkoff Woodward , has already begun mass producing the t-shirts (pictured above).

What will the side effects of Cabrera's new "catch phrase" be?

Well to begin with, it adds a whole new chapter to the mythology surrounding Miguel.  Fans will now have a different image of Cabrera due to a fun conversation at a batting practice.  As we have discussed in class, fans want to view baseball players as pure beings.  It turns out pure beings usually dont spout out Motherf$#@%! when they hit the ball over the fence.

This does a few things to Cabrera's image, first it labels him as more of a bad boy.  This is potentially something fans can latch onto, they could see this devious speech as a projection of Cabrera's life as a whole.  This mirrors the main concept Barthes discusses in Mythologies, that myths are created by the confusion between history and nature.  Just because Cabrera was using profound language at one instance in history, it does not mean that he is a "devious" person in nature.

However due to the enormous amount of myth present in baseball this new catch phrase could forever change the image of Miguel Cabrera, for better or for worse; only time will tell.

Cespedes! ...or Soler?

            Jorge Soler, an outfielder from the Cuban national team is one of three players from Cuba receiving attention for the upcoming MLB season.  He has been slightly shadowed due to the huge hype around newly signed A's outfielder Yoenis Cespedes.  But the weird thing about that is, " (He) profiles as a corner guy, long term. He has the same sorts of tools as Cespedes. He’s much younger too: 19." (http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/02/14/jorge-soler-expected-to-sign-with-the-cubs/) 

Also surprising is his contract which is looking like it will be much cheaper than Cespedes; 27.5 million for four years compared to the 36 million the As are paying Cespedes.

This was especially interesting to me after reading "Money Ball"; I am confused as to why Billy Beane would go for Cespedes over Soler, with his famous frugal ways in choosing ball players. Although in the novel Beane does say that the players age is severely misconceived as being more important than it should be.  Also another radical decision is the As starting Cespedes straight away in the majors, just as he did in the novel.  Whatever the case, what I am most interested in is why exactly Beane thinks Cespedes is a better option than Soler and an extra 2.5 million a year.

Since in class we've discussed just how much a win is worth to a team, how many wins would 2.5 million cost? And how many more wins will Cespedes give to the As over Soler?  These are questions that I'm sure Beane figured out mathematically in order to make his decision, well "Money Ball" would have us believe he did at least.