I (used to) live by a rule. It was, “If Antics slides into your DMs, you gotta do whatever he asks.” I never thought I’d get a chance to experience Antics in my DMs, so imagine my surprise when the guy actually slid into my DMs!
I was excited of course. Curious as to what he was sliding in for. And then this man says, “You should do what letter of the alphabet each team is for power rankings this week.”
Well, a man has to live by his code, so I started writing. And let me tell you, this was the most difficult, the most annoying, the most educational, and probably the least funny Rankings I ever wrote.
And we have Antics to blame.
Time for jokes…
24. B: Bears (0-11). Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
23. K: Twins (2-12). A salute to K-Mart? Am I trying to point out he’s only several K’s away from #2000? Am I suggesting the Twins need more potassium? Or am I just thinking that these guys are the only ones in the league who’d remember Radio K, my all-time favorite AM radio channel? (I assume it’s no longer on the air).
22. V: Lugnuts (0-12). V is the 22nd letter in the alphabet, and if my memory serves me, the ‘Nuts are always, “feeling 22.”
21. Y!: Marlins (2-12). Y!, like the logo for Yahoo!, where I play most of my fantasy football every year. Like the Marlins surely did, at the beginning of every season I look at my roster and I think, “Yeah, this year’s going to be awesome!” But just like me and my fantasy football rosters, this year started with high expectations and… yeah, not so much.
20: i: Millers (3-11). Kendrick Lamar’s song, i. I remember a couple years back (I think) when Kendrick released an album (Mr. Morale?) and Bliss Jr tweeted something about it. I forget what, something positive, and I’d forgotten the album was coming out and ran to go give it a listen. I loved it. That isn’t funny. Just a comment that I think of Bliss Jr. every time I hear a Kendrick song now. Weird.
19. X: eXpos (1-13). A night with the eXpos used to be something special. They were awesome. Good dudes, good drinkers, good wiffleballers. A great embodiment of what the league was at the time. I miss them very much. Now, I’m not saying the current Expos aren’t those things, but… they aren’t… at least not yet and not in the same way. Hmmm, I wonder how many beers they’d have to drink to get there… Answer: a lot… and I’m not even sure these guys drink.
18. F: Braves (3-9). F is for Fahrenheit. “Two hundred degrees, that’s why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit!” I love Freddy Mercury. And I’m quite certain with his mustache he’d fit right in with the Braves.
17. H: Hops (3-7). I’m working in Bloomington this week and as I was thinking about the Hops, I looked out the window and saw a huge ‘H’ staring back at me from the side of the Holiday Inn Express across the way. So the joke is something like, “Are they Hops a real wiffleball team?” And then Tootin’ would say something like, “No, but we did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” Get it? Cause that was the commercial? And it’s poking fun at their 3-7 record making them a fake team? Anyways… the alternative joke was about ‘N for Nitrogen’ being good for Groundskeeper Willie’s grass and… it just kept circling back to Eagan sucks because it doesn’t have grass… neither does Hopkins, so suck it.
16. J: Cyclones (5-8). Js or “jays” is slang for Jordans, the super cool shoes I’m currently obsessed with. I was feeling pretty darn good about myself for getting a pair of Jordan cleats for the season until I played the Cyclones. I am pretty sure they’re averaging about 1.5 pairs of Js per player. Oh well. That’s what Nightmare gets for trying to be cool for the first time ever… [Bonus “joke:” at the time I wrote this, the ‘Clones had struck out more batters than any team and been struck out by other teams more than anyone else. Meaning, they had more Ks in their books than anyone else… but that just seemed mean to point out… but I couldn’t help myself.]
15. A: Mariners (6-10). A is for Amazon, where you order all the stuff… and then when it shows up, you forgot you ordered it. I think something similar is happening to Trent. He’s asking dudes to play, forgetting, and then asking more dudes to play. They have a DOZEN guys on the roster. That isn’t an exaggeration. 12!!! The other version of the joke was something like, Amazon has everything from A to Z, like the Mariners have every player from A to Z… meh. Those were so bad my Amazon Alexa might have written them. [Boom! A crappy joke trifecta!]
14. Q: Trash Pandas (8-6). Do I think they are far right conspiracy theorists? No. Do I think they’re round with weird dangly bits? Haha… no. Do I think they’re James Bond’s genius gadget builders? No. But I have questions about this team, and “questions” starts with ‘Q.’ Are they really good scoring all those runs? How do they have 30 more tanks than anyone else? How is Sayles Guy on pace to set the all-time HR record (I think)? And how are they doing all of this without having hit a single tank or scoring a single run against my beloved Reds…
13. R: Space Cowboys (7-5). R as in Robin, you know, Batman’s sidekick with the little ‘R’ on his shirt. I just keep picturing Sully in the little outfit with the short cape and the tighty whities on the outside of his leotards… What that can’t just be me…
12. L Rubberducks (8-6). L is for Lysine which is important for proper growth. Now, I’m not sure if these little guys would benefit from a diet high in lysine, but… it wouldn’t hurt. (Cause they’re short.)
11. f: Blue Wahoos (8-6). (I promise, I’m giving T-Sea a break this week.) f is for the Facebook logo, where I see Kershaw constantly making me feel inferior because he’s running so much farther (and faster) than me. F you Kershaw! But also he’s motivating me, so… I take it back. I F’in love you Kershaw! #FatherFigures [For the record, Antic’s joke was “An A looks like a pyramid for T-Sea.” Not good.]
10. e: Tourists (8-6). In statistics, the symbol e is a mathematical constant approximately equal to 2.71828183. Which is about how many times Daddy mentions the Tourists (8-6) beat the Reds every time he opens his mouth.
9. C: Americans (9-7). As in the report card grade. I googled ‘Americans’ and scrolled a bit and found an article about Americans “excelling at mediocrity.” I chuckled. At 9-7, the Americans, like the rest of us Americans, are apparently pretty mediocre. And excelling at it!
8. s: The Mets (9-7) definitely don’t care about wiffleball, they’re just out here to have fun. /s.
[note: I’ll save you the trouble of googling “/s.” It means whatever was written before it was meant to be read sarcastically.]
7. W: Vibes (10-4). Did you know the Italian alphabet doesn’t have a ‘W.’ (It’s true, I saw it on the interweb.) Just like the Vibes no longer have a player whose name starts with W… Yikes… I am digging DEEP for this crap. The Vibes still do their Italian family thing, right? I assume so, but I haven’t seen them much this summer. Was that intentional, Huck?
6. O: Yankees (11-3). This one was pretty easy. An ‘O’ looks just like the iconic Yankee huddle from above.
5. M: Reds (11-3). I had to dig DEEP in my alcohol riddled brain for this one. One of my most… interesting nights of all time was at a Russian bar and involved free vodka shots, a friendly bouncer, and otherwise… questionable company. This communist friendly bar was located on M street in Washington, DC.
4. D: Aces (13-3). Is this the letter grade I’d give the team? Heavens no. D for Dumpy? Kinda. D for dropping his celly in the toilet a couple weeks back? Haha, not this time. D is for De, as in DeLaSalle, from where both Dumpy and I graduated… Several decades apart of course.
3. Z: The Rumble Ponies (12-2) are all Gen Z, right? Zoomers? I just spent way too much time trying to come up with a joke about Gen Z and… all attempts result in me burning myself badly. Due to my excessive age. Welp…
Pp: Chihuahuas (12-2). I just saw the (most recent) video of A-Jizz getting hit in the peepee. I laughed.
G: Grasshoppers (14-0). Cause like Eazy-E, these are some real mutha**kkin G’s. That’s from a rap song that is probably older than 75% of the league… sigh… and the song is what you might call a “diss track” and if you’ve ever heard Cakes and Griz talk about… literally anyone else, they’re like walking talking diss tracks.
Well, those were painful. If you made it this far, blame Antics. He's the worst, isn't he?