How the Unwritten Rules of Baseball could have saved Will Smith a lot of trouble

Apparently the U.S. Constitution now requires absolutely everybody to have an opinion about absolutely everything and they need to have those opinions right now this minute and post them on social media as quickly as possible.

Since the beginning of the pandemic I’ve had pretty much the same social calendar as J.D. Salinger and despite the fact that I see other people about as often as Marlene Dietrich on a bad day, I’ve already been asked multiple times what I think of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the Oscars.

Turns out, it’s complicated.

But first…

The Secret to Lasting Fame

Mentioning J.D. Salinger reminds me that he stayed really famous for a really long time despite rarely writing anything after Catcher in the Rye and that reminds me that former ballplayer and current Milwaukee Brewers announcer Bob Uecker wrote a book called Catcher in the Wry and when I happened to get on a Kauffman Stadium elevator with Bob I told him that over the years he had made me laugh a lot and with his usual deadpan delivery Bob said:

“You should have seen me play.”

Anyway…

The Secret to Lasting Fame is doing Something Great like writing Catcher in the Rye (OK, that’s definitely the hard part) and then immediately quitting or dying because then we don’t have to see you get old and stumble around making mediocre versions of the thing that made you famous.

Think about it:

If Bruce Lee had lived he might of wound up making Enter the Dragon 9, the story of a group of terrorists who try to take over a retirement home where ex-President Joe Biden lives after his one term in the White House, but are thwarted by a spunky group of octogenarians who have been taking a tai chi class led by 82-year-old Bruce Lee and now that I write that down I think it sounds like a movie I’d pay good money to see and I think you would too, so if anyone from Hollywood reads this and wants to hear more about my terrific movie ideas, don’t hesitate to drop me a line or just go ahead and write me a bigass check.   

And now back to Will Smith vs. Chris Rock

If you want to hear what I think – and you must if you’re reading this – I’ll give it a shot and we’ll start in what seems to me to be the logical place:

Monica Lewinsky.

When Bill Clinton got caught in a morality shitstorm for allowing Monica to perform oral copulation on his Administration Member, I said nobody knows what goes on inside somebody else’s marriage and if we knew all the facts it would probably change the way we view things.

(And from here on in, instead of saying “oral copulation” which is long and awkward — two words that sometimes describe the act itself — we’ll say “BJ” which gives a whole new meaning to the 1979 TV series B.J. and the Bear which sounds like a show about an extremely satisfied and relaxed Bear and if I’m on the right track, really makes me wonder how much they had to pay that stuntman.)

If we knew the whole story maybe Bill getting Monica BJs would seem justified or at least logical or maybe Bill was just the hound dog we all thought he was when we voted for him twice.

The point is: we don’t know and that being the case, maybe we should withhold judgement which, as you might have already noticed, is not America’s best thing.

Anyway…

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s relationship sounds more complicated than the Treaty of Versailles and may or may not be an “open” marriage because they get kinda vague when asked about it and you’d think it’s nobody’s business but theirs, right up until you realize they’re the ones talking about it and sharing too much information on social media and Oprah, which reminds me of Hollywood celebrities who show up at places like the Viper Room where they know paparazzi hangout and then complain about their lack of privacy.

Hey, if you really want some privacy, go to Applebee’s.

If you still want to read more about Will and Jada’s Pinkett Smith’s complicated relationship, here’s an article:

https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/will-smith-jada-pinkett-smith-marriage-open-relatioship-b990947.html

And now, some Chris Rock background 

In 2015 Chris Rock hosted the Oscars and made fun of Will and Jada boycotting the ceremony because there weren’t enough Black nominees by saying:

"Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties.  I wasn't invited."

Rock also said:

"Jada's mad her man Will was not nominated for 'Concussion.’ I get it. It's not fair that Will was this good and didn't get nominated. It's also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for 'Wild Wild West.'"

According to the following story, there are “rumors” that Jada and Chris had an affair, but the story provides absolutely no evidence and if that’s the standard of proof we now require to start a rumor, I’d like to start a rumor that People magazine has secretly named me Sexiest Man Alive for 2022, a title which makes me wonder if all the previous Sexiest Men Alive are now dead or just gained 50 pounds, decided to quit bathing and grew a pony tail.

https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/movies/2022/03/28/6241b871e2704e04048b4623.html

OK, how about we agree that you shouldn’t slap comedians?

So Chris told a joke based on Jada having alopecia and generally speaking we don’t like people who make fun of someone’s condition or disability unless we’ve decided we don’t like the victim of the humor and then you can tell all the Joseph-Goebbels-club-foot jokes you want, right up until someone says: “Hey, my son has a club foot!” and then everybody feels bad unless you’ve got someone like Joan Rivers on stage who went right after some guy who objected to her jokes about being deaf.

And if you haven’t seen Joan let this guy have it, here it is:

(BTW: It’s a really bad idea to heckle comedians because they’ve all got comebacks and know how to deal with loudmouth jerks so you’re the one who’s going to wind up looking like an asshole.)

As a person who has told some bad jokes and resides behind what my mirror indicates is a fairly-slappable face, I’m definitely against physically assaulting comedians because you don’t like their material. (Lenny Bruce would have been considered a bad risk for medical insurance.)

And here’s another thing to think about:

Generally speaking I am not a Howard Stern fan, but Howard did make what at the very least seemed to be a good point:

Would Will Smith still slap the person who made the joke about his wife if the person was Jason Momoa?

According to the internet, Chris Rock is either 5’ 8” or 5’ 10” (which gives you a pretty good idea of just how accurate the internet can be) and weighs 168 pounds and I got that off celebhights.com which is an actual thing, even though it clearly shouldn’t be. 

Meanwhile, Jason Momoa is 6’4” and weighs 214 pounds.

So if you only slap people smaller than you, then your outrage has a weight limit and maybe you should cool your jets and talk it out later, but make sure you do it around other people so if Jason Momoa decides to put his foot up your ass, bystanders can help pull it out.

Having said all that, if you decide you just have to physically attack someone, you might pay attention to how professional ballplayers do it.

An Unwritten Rule of Baseball

It is considered unprofessional to have altercations in the dugout and if you want to choke somebody you invite them to leave the dugout and go up the tunnel and then choke them, so what you’re doing is not caught on camera and I pointed that out right after Jonathan Papelbon choked Bryce Harper in full view of everybody.

I also added that this information would come in handy if you ever played with Bryce Harper because at some point you would definitely want to choke him.

Bryce is known for classy things like grabbing his crotch after striking out and in the photo below…sent to me by a friend…after getting booed by Colorado Rockies fans, Bryce folded his batting glove into an obscene gesture, which I actually think is a pretty funny response to getting booed.

My observation about the socially acceptable method of choking Bryce Harper resulted in me having a conversation with my editors about my condoning “violence in the workplace” and maybe I needed counseling (which is clearly the case…just not on this subject) so I pointed out that comparing an office to a baseball team wasn’t exactly analogous unless they started letting us take out co-workers with hard slides by the photocopier.

(Jesus…this political correctness shit gets way out of hand.)

My article about Baseball-Approved Choking Techniques also motivated Keith Olbermann to name me “The Worst Person in the World” so for at least one day I was apparently worse than serial killers, wife abusers, drug dealers, con men, Vladimir Putin, whatever nutcase was in charge of North Korea at the time and the people who call to sell you stuff at dinnertime.

If Will Smith had followed Baseball’s Unwritten Rules he would have waited until they were backstage or at an after-party or both went to the men’s room and then slapped Chris Rock and then Will wouldn’t be dealing with all this fallout and having to apologize or promising to seek counseling or any of the other crap he let himself in for.

Actors and their need for attention

Besides requiring everybody to have opinions on everything, the Constitution also mandates that actors who make a movie together fall in love and leave their current spouses or at the very least have an affair and after Warren Beatty and Madonna were in Dick Tracy they became a thing, but you could see the end coming in the following year’s documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare when a seemingly frustrated Beatty asked why Madonna would do anything at all if there wasn’t an audience to watch her do it.

(OK, I had a pretty decent “Madonna and Dick” joke, which I’m too classy to tell, but also because I don’t want to get slapped by Warren Beatty.)

I haven’t been around actors all that much, but the times I have they seemed to require constant attention and if that’s an accurate analysis of the personality required to be a top-notch actor I can’t believe the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hasn’t given me a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Anyway…

I read at least one account that said Will Smith originally laughed at Chris Rock’s joke while Jada looked a lot less happy and then the cameras cut away so we don’t know what if anything passed between the couple, but the next thing we saw was Will Smith acting like Bruce Banner halfway through the change, so it’s possible my advice to follow the Unwritten Rules of Baseball is way off base because maybe the whole point was to do something very public.

We have a very complicated relationship with actors because we often confuse them with the roles they play and if you read much about Hollywood it sounds like actors sometimes have the same problem, which reminds me of a story Tom Hanks told about Saving Private Ryan and some of the actors who received instruction about how to wear a uniform and fire a gun without looking like complete dipshits started saying:

“It’s like we went to boot camp.”

And Hanks who is maybe a little more mature recognized some actor bullshit and said:

“We did not go to boot camp and quit saying that.

And now I’ll leave you with a line from The Ecstasy Business a 1967 book written by Richard Condon – the same guy who wrote The Manchurian Candidate – and he worked around movie people while they turned his books into films and here’s what he wrote about actors:

“No one, no matter how dedicated, can be expected to live among actors for any sustained period.”

(See?...I told you it was complicated.)

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/