The Braves Have to Quit Doing Their Big Hat Celebration Because MLB is Run by Imbeciles

To me, stylized, team-specific home run celebrations are to MLB what mascots are. Not really necessary. And completely unthinkable at one time. But the sort of thing that only bothers a small, rapidly dying breed of self-serious baseball purists, and add an element of fun for the vast majority of paying customers. After all, as the late, great Dan Jenkins once puy, he could never understand self-righteous intellectuals who talk about baseball as a metaphor for life, or part of the fabric of America or whatever,. since he never met a ballplayer who could finish a sentence without including the word "cunt."

So if the Red Sox want to pile into a shopping cart and roll down the dugout or the Braves put on a ridiculously large hat, it's just harmless entertainment, enhancing the overall experience. Because who doesn't enjoy a big hat? One that's bigger than a regular hat?

It sure is funny, right?

Wrong. The Fun Police have issued a crackdown on this small bit of frivolous joy injected into the game. For the worst possible reason:

Source - The Braves confirmed to WSB-TV in Atlanta that MLB nixed the celebration because of the request from New Era. The larger-than-life hat received a lot of play, as Atlanta currently ranks second in baseball in homers, trailing just the Tampa Bay Rays. 

The celebration had become a fan favorite in a few short weeks, inspiring social media content. But fans noticed the absence of the hat this week, drawing negative feedback on social media.

THIS feedback:

I say this as a fan of New Eras. I went through a period of my young manhood where every time my friends and I went to Fenway, we'd each buy one at Twins across the street. I still have a collection that all look amazing on my perfect 6 7/8ths cranium. My only regret is I wore out my Cubs and Expos ones, because I looked damned sexy in those color schemes. 

That said, this is utterly absurd. It's one thing if you're Coke spending millions for an exclusive sponsorship deal and one team starts a Pepsi celebration. By all means that's going to impact sales when all the impressionable dummies in your target demo see that and think they're part of the team if they drink some other brand of fizzy corn syrup water. But are we really supposed to think that Braves fans nationwide are going to stop buying hats that fit right in exchange for preposterously huge skull buckets? That the schools of greater Atlanta are going to be teeming with kids wearing inverted punch bowls on their heads because that's how Ozzie Albies would prefer it? 

I'm pretty sure I got a C- in Marketing, but I don't grasp how the New Era hats and this ludicrous novelty hat are cutting into each other's market share. And if MLB wasn't run by a gaggle of bloodless cowards, they'd point that out and tell their business partner to relax and get over themselves. Or to create a bigger and higher quality hat and put that in the Braves dugout, instead of just breaking up the party. 

Then again, the powers that be did finally give us the pitch clock, over the objections of the purists who hate this very sort of thing. I guess you can only hope for one miracle at a time.