What Passes for Culture in Baseball

Athletes have a lot in common with rock stars, including that they are mostly halfwits that even really smart people look to as heroes.

The imbecility of athletes has often amused me and this story from Baseball America on young Cleveland Indians pitcher Jeremy Sowers really made me laugh. He was described this way in the preface to his interview: "What a lot of people don't know is Sowers is a different sort of cat. The 23-year-old lefty is a pop culture sponge, devouring all different kinds of music, dissecting feature films like Roger Ebert and gobbling up books faster than he can read them."

I thought, OK, maybe this guy will be slightly interesting. Like Barry Zito or that guy who used to be a utility player for the Tigers who was a huge Dead Kennedys fan. Or maybe not. The first question thrown at this, for baseball, cultural literate, was Journey vs. Foreigner. He came out for Journey. There is actually a right answer to this question--"Neither. They both suck."

But wait, it gets better. In the ever important Eric Clapton or Bruce Springsteen question, he answers, "Springsteen, because he can write songs . . . although he's a huge liberal, but I'm sure Clapton is too." Nice. It's great to know that even the "cultured" baseball players are wingnuts. If this is any indication, I'll bet it's really fun to talk cultural stuff with the average baseball player!