If Major League Baseball is hoping to shake its growing image as the watching-paint-dry sport, the big bust-out might be just around the corner.
MLB reportedly is in serious discussions with Barstool Sports, a deal that would have Barstool telecast a midweek national game, in a format catering to in-game gamblers. Barstool could beam the games through its website, Instagram and Twitter accounts.
MLB talking about hooking up with Barstool is like your rich, terminally ill grandmother announcing plans to marry a 20-year-old guy who lives in his van. It’s a cool van, yet there is cause for alarm.
By the way, this column is not about gambling. There will be no moralistic preaching here against sports wagering. Who among us doesn’t have a friend or relative with a gambling problem who needs that little nudge to leave rock bottom and seek help? If MLB can make a buck by bedding down with Big Bookie, hey, that’s the American way.
The problem is Barstool Sports. Problem? MLB calls it opportunity. MLB is desperate to connect (financially) to a younger demographic. Barstool features a younger demo, especially emotionally.
Barstool has a massive social media following. It prides itself on being a media outsider, flipping a middle finger to the wussy old rules of journalism, taste and manners. To scold Barstool for its disregard for professionalism and civility would be like waving a copy of the Marquess of Queensbury rules in the face of an angry guy in a bar who’s coming at you with a (clever reference coming) barstool.
MLB execs must be slapping one another on the backs at the thought of instantly making their sport hipper and edgier by tapping into this vibrant pool of energy.
Or, as Washington Post columnist Norman Chad characterizes Barstool, “an overflowing toilet disguised as a sports blog.”
That’s a bit harsh, I thought, but Barstool not being one of my regular pit stops, I did some research. Chad, typical of him, was delicately understated.
Barstool’s founding guru, a guy named Dave something, once joked that a woman wearing skinny jeans “kind of deserve(s) to be raped.” He said that any BLM-type protester who blocks traffic “deserves to die a horrible gruesome death.”
Barstool teeters a bit to the right. Colin Kaepernick and his protests? “Throw a head wrap on this guy, he’s a terrorist,” Dave said, adding, “He looks like a Bin Laden. That’s not racist.”
Barstool ran a photo of Tom Brady’s infant son naked, Dave commenting admiringly of the size of the lad’s ladhood. Dave ran a video of one of his male employees in the shower, against the man’s objections. Dave kind of went to bat for Harvey Weinstein.
What fun. And if Barstool has a signature move, like a wrestler, it is the all-out attack on any critics, especially any critic of the female persuasion. Barstool devotees, who call themselves Stoolies, are an airplane hangar full of attack dogs, waiting to be unleashed on the next target. Barstool is famous for its targeted harassment campaigns. The Cauldron ran a story headlined “How Barstool Uses Social Media as a Weapon.”
It’s not that Barstool is anti-female. They simply prefer “CHICKS,” who can be featured in such Barstool blog posts as “Guess that rack” and “Guess that ass.”
But women in the media who criticize Barstool? You know, those fat, ugly, c-words (Barstool go-to descriptors)? Not so much.
Jemele Hill, the former ESPN commentator, felt the full wrath of thousands of Stoolies tweeting third-grade insults from the comfort of their mothers’ basements.
“A lot of these people have no problem physically threatening you and saying horrible things about you and your family,” Hill said, “This is a space where they are allowed to be insulting to women, to people of color, to all the ‘others.’”
By the old rules, Barstool would never be allowed into the club of respectable sports and journalism. But as I may have mentioned, the old rules are old, and Barstool has financial juice. In 2017, ESPN brought in Barstool for a weekly comedy-interview program, Barstool Van Talk. It was canceled after one episode.
Now MLB is swimming circles around the bait, a bright and shiny lure designed to hook the big ones. Gamblers! Yes, jump on that bandwagon or get left in the dust. Grow your sport through millions of young dudes with tons of energy, influence and money!
Sure, MLB, if you climb into bed with clowns, you wake up with scary makeup smudged all over your body, but all that new money will buy only the finest gas to pour all over the game and set yourself on fire.
Life is about trade-offs, right? You have to be flexible, open to creative, new concepts.
On the other hand, as Deadspin founder Will Leitch wrote in New York Magazine, Barstool “is making the world a worse place. It is endorsing harassment and cruelty and bullying. It is, in the way so many little things do these days — with such a relentlessness that you have to rouse yourself to even notice it anymore — making us dumber and number and emptier at our core.”
How about it, MLB? Whaddya say, want to make the world worse to “grow the game”? Play ball!
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler
