Let’s all be honest with each other – it’s been a long time coming.
Whether or not the teams giving them away, the sponsors plastering their names all over them or the borderline psychotic “collectors” who stood in line to get them were willing to admit it to themselves, it’s obvious that for quite some time the bobblehead giveaway phenomenon has been begging to be put down like a three-legged race horse.
Shortly after the bobblehead gained renewed popularity as a humorous retro collectors item, the major professional sports leagues smelled the blood in the water and attacked like Prince Fielder on a bowl of cookie dough ice cream.
They took every player and personality, turned them into a plastic doll, dropped a spring under their dome and watched as the sponsors tripped over themselves to put their logos on them. In 2008, there were over 100 bobblehead giveaways set in Major League Baseball alone.
They have become such an overbearing presence on the sports promotional calendar that we’re seeing thousands of bobbleheads given away for every one fake Bronson Arroyo mullet handed out. People, that’s just wrong. If the sports world could use more of something, it’s giveaways like the Arroyo mullet-hat.
Even worse than the stifling lack of creativity the bobblehead promotes, is the fact that there just aren’t any players left to bobble-ize. Anyone who is anyone in their sport has had a creepy doll created in their likeness – and we use the word “likeness” very loosely; if you don’t agree, ask Kyle Korver – in a weak attempt to create a “collectors item”.
Teams are getting desperate. They’re turning to marginal players, retired permed pitchers or just re-using star players with new “themes”. As much credit as we give to the Reds for the Arroyo for the hair giveaway, they pretty much went back to even when they put Adam Dunn in a Sonny Crocket outfit and promoted it as an 80’s bobblehead.
In 2008, we’ve seen Asdrubal Cabrera bobblehead night in Cleveland, Yuniesky Betancourt bobblehead night in Seattle and Joe Beimel bobblehead night in Los Angeles. And while it might seem like a prestigious honor for these players to get their very own bobblehead doll, in reality it’s just one more thing that they share in common with Joey Fatone. And no one wants that on their resume.
But as bad as its gotten, the Kansas City Royals may have finally taken the phenomenon from “charmingly kitschy” to “for the love of god, you can’t seriously think people are going to come to the game for this”.
Even despite all the horrible players that have been immortalized with a plastic toy, the Royals have still somehow managed to top them all.
On September 6th, as part of “Hispanic Heritage Day” the Royals are unveiling a bobblehead of a player who is currently hitting .168 with a slugging percentage of .188, 38 more strikeouts than extra base hits and whose closest career comparable according to baseball-reference.com is a guy named Marv Breeding.
Saturday at Kaufmann Stadium, Tony Pena Jr. will arguably become the worst player ever to have his own bobblehead night when this puppy is distributed to the masses...
You might assume that perhaps Pena Jr. has some cult status in KC or is one of those borderline players who establishes an inexplicable connection with the fans of his team despite sucking balls on the field, but I can assure you that’s not the case here. Not even Royals fans understand why someone will be handing them a figurine that is worth more as melted down raw materials than it will be on eBay.
And they’re not going to be alone either. Amongst the 15,000 at the K will be one supremely uncomfortable backup shortstop sitting in the home team’s dugout dreaming of a simpler time. A time when a baseball player could be one of the worst in the Majors without having to watch his team publicly humiliate him. There's no way Tony Pena enjoys this attention.
As much as the organization will try to ignore it, the damage may be done. With well-known sportswriters like Joe Posnanski openly mocking them for their bizarre choice of players to base a promotion around, the Royals are in full spin mode, falling back on the “it’s not really performance based” defense. The Royals – albeit a team largely devoid of true stars to promote – made a mockery out of something that was already a mockery, got called on it and now they’ve got to deal with the aftermath.
If we’re all lucky, that aftermath might include one or two other Major League GM’s shying away from questionable bobblehead days in 2009 out of fear that they’ll be the next in line to challenge history by erroneously picking the wrong fringe player to get one.
Perhaps then people will finally appreciate Bronson Arroyo’s fake hair like they should.