Are you ready for Sseri the Brontosaurus, AKA Swole Daddy? I know I am.
Mr. Met's got some competition from South Korea...
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The Great American Pastime is on an indefinite pause. Opening day came and went without a single pitch being thrown due to the coronavirus lockdown, leaving baseball fans everywhere in a funk. Major League Baseball has floated a plan to play a shortened, 82 game season in empty stadiums beginning in July. Yet even this half measure hangs in the balance.
For the shortened season to happen, “spring” training needs to begin by no later than mid-June to allow a start by the July 4th weekend. The window to retrofit stadiums and create new protocols for players in the age of social distancing is also closing. Yet rather than prioritizing bringing back baseball, the league and billionaire team owners are instead spending their energy stirring up a contract dispute with the players union. The long and short of it is that that the league — which earned $10.3 billion last year — is asking the players to take a pay cut by pegging player salaries to a 50/50 revenue split, so as to account for the lack of ticket sales. The players, although open to prorating their salaries for the shorter season, are loath to accept the league’s revenue sharing proposal and argue that such a split constitutes a backdoor salary cap.
The last time a salary cap was floated by the league in 1994, the players opted to strike, resulting in the complete cancelation of most of the 1994 season, including the World Series. Unless negotiations between the league and union turn around quickly, the 2020 season will be completely spiked, but due to a labor dispute, not COVID-19.
Where does that leave the fans? Will 2020 be the year without baseball?
Thankfully, no. The United States is not the only country that plays baseball — although its teams are generally considered to be the best in the world — and that means there is another option for 2020. South Korea quelled its coronavirus outbreak before it got out of control and has brought back professional sports, albeit without a live audience. The KBO, South Korea’s top baseball league, is playing its regular season right now. Not only that, but a new deal with ESPN means you can now watch those games in the U.S., either live at 1 or 2 a.m. eastern or on tape delay, typically at 2 p.m. eastern.
Overall, the level of play is exceptional, and the teams field top talent from South Korea as well as players who either dropped out of MLB contracts or who want a few more years of playing pre-retirement. Beyond the fact that the KBO is actually playing real, top tier baseball right now, there are other reasons to be a fan. Since the stadiums are empty, the league has put cardboard cutouts of cartoon fans and kitty cats to cheer on the home team. They are fun and whimsical. Plus there are cheerleaders who seem to follow a K-Pop formula for their routines. And the mascots are incredible. Personally, I am considering becoming an NC Dinos fan. Their mascot is a Brontosaurus (not technically a real dinosaur) called Sseri, although thanks to the wonders of the internet, he’s now known as Swole Daddy here in the U.S. What’s not to love about that?!
So. If Major League Baseball and the players union want to spend the rest of the 2020 season bickering about revenue sharing and a salary cap, let them. I’ll still miss my Mets, but I am happy to give things a shot with the Dinos. They’ve never won a championship before. Maybe this will be their season? In baseball, anything can happen.
Today’s Film: Logan (2017)
Of all of the superheroes in the Marvel universe, the X-Men has always been among the silliest. For every hardcore badass like Wolverine, Mystique, Magneto or Dr. X, there are about a dozen cheesy mutants ranging from Cyclops, with his special wrap-around sunglasses, to Wing, the flying X-Man who actually didn’t have… wings. Google “worst X-Men ever” and you’ll get 413 million results. Seriously.
On the silver screen, the X-Men have also been a mixed bag. The 2000’s, X-Men, the first film in the franchise, introduced Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Patrick Stewart as Dr. X and Ian McKellen as Magneto in a fun, oddly low-stakes romp. The subsequent movies deteriorated rapidly, with the possible exception of X-Men First Class, which went back to the 1960s for some period action. In a way, as the Avengers movies and big name heroes like Iron Man, Hulk and Spider-Man took up more and more screens at the multiplex, and even smaller supers like Ant-Man got their own movies, the X-Men became Marvel’s ugly step-children.
All of this makes Logan, director James Mangold’s 2017 superhero western, an incredibly welcome surprise. Gone are the cheesy mutants with bodysuits and dumb powers. The teen angst is (mostly) gone as well. Instead, Mangold drives Wolverine and Dr. X, played once more by Jackman and Stewart, through a gauntlet of violence and pathos as they seek to save the life of Laura, a young mutant on the run. Like many great westerns, Logan just keeps moving, and it puts Wolverine — always the most interesting of the X-Men — in the saddle. He’s a sick and world weary fighter taking one last stand against evil men who want to stamp out the last of the mutants. That fight carries him all the way from Mexico to Canada.
Jackman and Stewart both deliver the goods, and they bring emotional depth to their characters while clearly appreciating getting to play opposite each other once again. Dafne Keen, who plays the escaped mutant Laura, is electric. Her role is extremely physical, and she tears up the screen on command. She also has several poignant moments with Jackman and Stewart and ultimately becomes the beating heart of the story. The complex characters and high stakes conflict are hard to shake — Logan isn’t a movie that lends itself to distracted viewing — and Mangold and co-writers Scott Frank and Michael Green earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for it.
It takes a special kind of person to persevere in the world of Logan. The film is an unexpected, gripping vision of a future populated by heroes and villains that feel remarkably real. There are terrible challenges to overcome, but there’s also hope, and maybe, just maybe, better things on the other side of the horizon.
Logan is streaming on Hulu or available to rent on YouTube and other platforms.
Reading List:
The Times has an exhaustive oral history of Mad Max: Fury Road. It sounds like an exhilarating production.
The Boston Globe ran a nice primer on KBO baseball, if you want to go deeper. The author particularly likes the league’s affinity for bat flips, and I’m inclined to agree. We could use some more of that flair here.
I’ll leave you with a vision of what American baseball looks like, in case you’ve forgotten. There are tons of mascot hijinks — that’s the point — but the Phillie Phanatic stars in a lot of them. Back in 1988, the Phanatic made a dummy that looked like Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, and, well… here you go:
Wolverine could learn a thing or two.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.