Advertising on Jerseys

With sports teams trying to find new avenues of income some of the purity of the sport is being drained away. Slowly, the original names of the stadiums and arenas gave way to corporate sponsors. Obviously, the inside of these stadiums and arenas are covered in advertising on scoreboards, boards, and even in the bathrooms. Now, NBA teams will soon be advertising on jerseys.

The Boston Celtics, Sacramento Kings, and Philadelphia 76ers were the first to unveil their new ads that will be on their jerseys in the 2017-2018 season. The Brooklyn Nets joined the new trend this past week with their deal with Infor. Eventually other teams will follow their lead as other teams have contacted the Celtics to inquire how much they made from their advertising deal with GE.

And this won't be where the trend ends. NHL, NFL, and MLB teams will follow soon afterward. Anything for an extra dollar.  

There is something special about buying a jersey of your favorite player and wearing it out in public, especially at sports events. Instead everyone buying an NBA at the end of this year will effectively be a walking billboard.

This isn't new in sports. Soccer has been doing it for a long time already, but America never fully embraced soccer as one of their own sports. NASCAR has been doing it forever too, but for some reason it never bugged the fans. Perhaps this is because there isn't an official team jersey for each driver as a team such as the Boston Celtics has. It started off that the cars were advertised on before the drivers themselves wore the ads on their driver suits.

There was just something simple about wearing a jersey that only featured your favorite team and/or player. Within five years, that feeling will probably disappear now that this trend has started. It's a shame because even though sports teams are multi-billion dollar business, the jerseys were still pure.

Now that feeling is gone.

There is no Baseball in Heaven

Picture taken and edited by Daniel Millhouse

Three out of every four Americans believe in some sort of afterlife according to a poll conducted by CBS in 2014. Most of the people that believe in an afterlife believe that Heaven exist and is the perfect place to spend eternity. Heaven is supposed to be the place that is literally perfect and residents of Heaven are always happy. If this is the case, then it could be argued that in Heaven, competitive sports such as baseball doesn't exist.

Maybe this is the reason that so many ghosts in Field of Dreams wanted to play on Ray Kinsella's baseball field in the middle of an Iowan cornfield.

The reason being, especially in team sports, there are always losers. If Heaven is supposed to be a place of complete and eternal happiness, then how could a batter strike out against a pitcher in a baseball game played in Heaven? How could a fielder misplay a grounder, putting the winning run on base? This would seem that someone, even if for a short amount of time, would be unhappy in Heaven.

Could it be possible that there is no baseball in Heaven? For some of those on Earth, baseball is their favorite sport of all time and for some others, baseball is life. If there is no baseball then in the afterlife then how could they be as happy? Maybe it could be that God or whoever is in charge of the spirits, changes your mind about baseball not being so important, but if this is true, then wouldn't that impinge on free will?

In the opposite end of the spectrum, it doesn't seem possible that baseball would exist in Hell either. There's always a winner which doesn't feel like something that there would be in Hell. Unless every time before a game starts, there's a rainout and everyone is disappointed, but then there still wouldn't technically be baseball in Hell. Just the idea.

If the idea of Heaven in What Dreams May Come starring Robin Williams is the most accurate, then it's possible to play baseball and even have fun (as long as you keep winning) with some sort of creations of ballplayers you mentally create, but they wouldn't be real people/souls then. Playing against some sort of projection of a baseball player, especially one that lets you win in every instance seems empty.

The same can be said of other sports such as football, soccer, basketball, tennis, etc. There's always a loser and if there is, are you really in Heaven?