In the past, you may have seen Jimmy Rollins wearing a Red Bull hat, or seen a Red Bull shirt with JRoll on it wearing a Red Bull hat. Or maybe you’ve seen a can of Red Bull featuring a picture of Rollins on it wearing a Red Bull shirt which holds his likeness wearing a Red Bull hat. Either way I think you get the point; Jimmy Rollins has a a sponsorship deal with the energy drink that gives you wiiings (and in most cases, heart palpitations and diarrhea). I’m not knocking James on this, every athlete nowadays has a sponsorship deal of some sort. (See: Ryan Howard talking about meat in Subway commercials, or Cole Hamels talking about milk-chocolatey Peanut Chews on radio spots.) Here’s what I am knocking, however. The fact that next Monday, June 27 from 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM, Jimmy and Red Bull are holding a special event where our little shortstop who could is going to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the longest hit baseball. The current record, for anyone out there who cares, is 576 ft.
There are some things cool about this, and some things that I find very, very wrong about it. Let me start with what’s cool about it, in case you want to check it out in person. The event is being held for the public, free of charge, on the Ben Franklin Parkway (around 20th St.), which they’re shutting down. Okay that takes care of what cool about it: they’re holding BP in the middle of the city and it’s going to be free.
Now let’s get down to all that is wrong with this. First of all, they’re using a specially designed metal bat made from space age blah, blah, blah. C’mon, I know you go by Jimmy, but you’re not an eight year old. A metal bat, dude? Really? At this point the whole “attempt at history” has lost all credibility. Any major leaguer could hit the ball at least 500 feet with a metal bat. No great moment in baseball history has been accompanied with a “ping.”
Next, is the fact that Jimmy is not known for his power. Even if he whacks a ball 600 feet, I’m only going to assume that Ryan Howard can hit it 800 feet. Can’t we just play to Jimmy’s strengths here? Like maybe he tries to set the record for most consecutive pop outs to the shortstop on first pitches. That, I would argue, is something that truly only Rollins could do.
My final (not really final, but last that I’ll bore you with) problem with this whole charade is Red Bull itself. They do this crap all the time. Always making their athlete spokesmen (or spokespeople if we’re being PC about it) do bullshit stunts for the sake of selling sugar water. Not too long ago Travis Pastrana jumped a crack in the grand canyon with a go-kart or something, in a marketing tactic quite like this little show on the Benny Frank. I prefer the old days (that I wasn’t alive for), when athletes just told us “when I’m in the dugout, I smoke Lucky Strikes,” and we all went about our day. Nope, not in today’s day and age. Now, we have to shut down roads in the city at lunch time, making everyone even more pissed off than they usually are in the middle of a hot Philadelphia summer day, just so Jimmy can wear a hat with two red bulls on it and swing a tee ball bat at balls thrown from a pitching machine. What fun! Plus this is how they’re adverting it:
Last time I invited people to come watch me “crank it” in public, I had to go around and get my neighbors to sign a piece of paper letting them know I was moving into the neighborhood.
See ya on the Parkway, Phillies Phans.
SW-Ian Anderson
Tags: Jimmy Rollins, Megan's Law 10 hours ago 1 Comment Short URL Share this post! Share on Facebook Tweet This! 1 Comment
Andrew says:June 21, 2011 at 8:13 pmhahahaha fucking classic.
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