Don't Think, Just Pink

So it's Mother's Day, which means that it's time to see lots of guys toting pink bats in an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer. Which would seem to be a good and noble and simple thing, if it weren't for the fact that, had anyone in MLB been paying attention to anything beyond what's in front of them in the off season, said breast cancer awareness is the brandwork of the Susan G. Komen For The Cure group...

Who, well, got into a lovely PR disaster last year when they announced that they were going to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, just because Planned Parenthood, on fairly rare occasions, aids and abets women who do not wish to bring a fetus to term. Planned Parenthood, of course, also does much more of its work on providing mammograms to poor women, which would kind of seem to be important to an organization that cares about, um, breast cancer.

Now, I'm not going to get into the morality of that decision; there's simply no way to change anyone's mind about that, and the only thing I'm going to do is irritate one or both sides of the fence. Kind of like, well, what Komen did by changing their stance, taking the PR heat over it, then trying to stick the toothpaste back into the tube by saying that they've gone back to the way things are.

And this disaster was just, really, the most obvious misstep. They went for a pink Smith and Wesson hand gun, and pink KFC buckets, as if either of these corporations weren't just here for the pinkwash. They marketed a perfume with harmful ingredients (no, seriously), and like to sue anyone who speaks of a cure as somehow being in their brand only. A brand that, by the way, only spend 21% of its donated dollars on research.

So when you see pink bat hitters this year, what you are really seeing is guys who aren't paying attention, guys who don't want to think very much about their actions, or guys who like getting praised for things that don't require any thought at all.

Which is, to say, the majority of baseball players.

So expect to see these things for the rest of your natural lives...