The Oakland Athletics have always had a strange relationship with the Seattle Mariners. Year after year after year, it would seem, no matter how well the A’s were playing or how bad the Mariners were playing, they’d find the strength and will to beat Oakland and send the team home distraught.
Now, before the season has even begun, they are firing arrows at our beloved team in a new advertisement that was released this week. The advert features Fernando Rodney‘s (in)famous bow and arrow bit that all of us in Oakland are so impressed by. Anyone who has listened to episode 11 of our podcast will know that I’m being super sarcastic. I hate the Mariners and Fernando Rodney makes my skin crawl with his crooked hat and his arrogant demeanor on the field.
Instead of walk you through each beat of this highly offensive, inappropriate and infuriating commercial, I’ll let you watch it on your own.
Don’t you just want to drive Rodney’s ERA up to 1000?
They did miss one golden opportunity to really stick it to the A’s fanbase, though, by not casting the actor who brought “grandpa” to the game from last year’s A’s commercials. I would have still hated them for the commercial but I could have respected it.
I’d be curious to find out what John Madden thinks of this Mariners commercial on the heels of his public distaste for last week’s Will Ferrell stunt. Should a team be blatantly endorsing this type of behavior? Baseball is a game that prides itself, publicly at least, on sportsmanship. Players aren’t allowed to watch their home runs go over the fence but they are allowed to little touchdown dances on the mound after completing a job they get paid millions of dollars to do?
I know for a fact that the Athletics would never try to capitalize on the idiosyncrasies of, let’s say, a closing pitcher by poking fun at his most polarizing and unsportsmanlike conduct. It just would never ever, ever, ever, happen.
Ok, but name a second time!