When it comes to sports, there is a long and storied tradition of punking rookies. First-year professional ballers have being forced to wear Justin Bieber backpacks or had their SUVs filled with popcorn, for example. Some high school sports teams even make their rookies dip their genitals in Icy Hot and dance to circus music. (Or maybe that was just our high school.)
Judging from Giancarlo Stanton's twitter account, the Miami Marlins have also been up to some rookie pranks. Yesterday the slugger posted pics of the team's rookies running around Times Square while dressed as olympic water polo players. It's a good thing the Marlins are having fun, since their fans certainly aren't.
Despite the new $500 million tax-payer-funded stadium and an offseason free-agent binge, the Marlins are statistically even worse than last year (.440 win percentage versus .444 in 2011).
The team sold most of its best players months ago. The stadium is, at best, half-empty. Worst of all, Ozzie Guillen quit tweeting for months and isn't funny anymore.
In fact, this season is so bad, not even a TV documentary series cataloguing the team's shittiness can compensate for said shittiness.
So maybe we shouldn't begrudge the Marlins for their road-trip shenanigans (the team is in NYC for the last road series of the season, starting tonight against the Mets).
After all, life goes on. Rookie biatches have to be put in their place. And these photos are definitely more entertaining than anything the Marlins have done on the baseball diamond recently.
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