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 ...
Consider, if you will, the presumed duality of the high-school letterman's jacket. Worn coincident with one's high school years, the tunic signifies membership in the ruling class via sporting achievement ranging from merest participation to autumnal Friday night glory in the utmost. Whether cutting into the front of the lunch line, walking with teammates five abreast down the hall between classes and casting aside lessers like a hydra-headed snowplow, the world – glimpsed through carefully tousled bangs – glistens more resolutely when the letterman's jacket is worn. Recoil before me, ye asthmatic national-merit semifinalists, the jacket says – so long as it is not the residue of, say, soccer – you thronging goobers serve at my pleasure.
Then, however, there are those who wear the high-school letterman's jacket long after the diploma has been secured thanks in large to measure to loving forgeries undertaken by an easily flattered guidance counselor. This is after the three fumbles during sectionals, after discovering that the locks on the fieldhouse have been changed, and after the principal has told you that you really shouldn't be hanging around campus at your age and certainly not during school hours, at least not until you put a proper muffler on that thing you're driving that you claim is street-legal. Wearing the high-school letterman's jacket during the gloaming of youth and beyond is the desperate lurch of the fallen, the chronically heartsore who in private moments away from wage labor whisper "click, clack, click, clack" just to hear again something close to the sounds of cleats upon the clamshell walk leading to the stadium from the fieldhouse they are now locked out of.
But wait: After you're done waiting, behold: The duality of the high-school letterman's jacket has become a threefold experience thanks to Philadelphia Phillies cloutsman Bryce Harper. Please bear bullied witness:
In this image, Harper – this Son of Las Vegas and and holder of first rank in the Nevada peerage system – teaches us the letterman's jacket in vanishingly rare instances can signify someone who has remained atop the social hierarchy long after the fake IDs have turned real.
Are you one who in the spring of your 11th-grade year turned to the stars above and found written in them, "Don't worry about your grades; for you, they shall not matter?" If so, then you may follow the Third Way modeled by Bryce Harper and wear the letterman's jacket after high school without any condemnatory implications. I think that nerd over there was just looking at you like he has a problem with you or something.
If Law Tigers knows about two things, it's law and tigers. If they know about three things, then the third one is effective ad placement at the expense of San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. Please regard the following color-television sports highlight:
As you'll recall, Tatis Jr.'s First Mistake was breaking his wrist in a December 2021 motorcycle accident. So is the above plug an accidental broadside of Tatis, who's back in town only to clear his name, or is it a bit of calculated brand-promoting symmetry? Listen, if Law Tigers knows about four things it's law, tigers, effective ad placement at the expense of San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr., and – unlike San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. – doing nothing by accident. If you step to Law Tigers expect to get hit upside the head with heavy law books and clawed by tiger claws. Even if you don't step to Law Tigers, don't go around getting in motorcycle accidents and then appearing on professional-sports television broadcasts within firing range of an ad buy slot.
In any event, one anagram that can be formed out of the words "law tigers fernando tatis jr" is "jostled, farting warranties."
The American 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. Now it appears it's time for the American League West Anagram Standings:
*Reinserts Tamale* Legless Lasagne! No!Lit Skoal Dance HatHas Torso Snout?A Stranger's ExWhile it's possible Legless Lasagne! No! or Lit Skoal Dance Hat could wind up claming an anagram wild-card berth, no one is challenging *Reinserts Tamale* for the AL West anagram division title. You'll please express your agreement with this claim by now reinserting the tamale.
What has this been? People, this has been what it has been.
