Baseball is full of acronyms. Everywhere you look, be it a box score, stadium, or Baseball Prospectus, you see acronyms. These acronyms have meaning to us because we know what they stand for. Those three or four or five letters, when strung together, bring to life a particular image in our head.

But what if they didn’t? What if a baseball writer, let’s call him… Thug Doorburn, had an accident and got amnesia? What would these acronyms come to mean to Thug? How would Thug approach this random alphabet soup? I think it would go a little something like this……

Stat: ERA

What We Think: Earned Run Average

What Thug Thinks: Everyone’s Real Age

Thought Process: “Well, these players have ages” Thug will ponder to himself at night alone on his floral pattern couch. “But are they the real ages….?” Good point, Thug. Good point.

Calculations: Player 1’s Age + Player 2’s age + Player 3’s age…….

League Leader: N/A. This is more of a league wide stat.

Stat: BABIP

What We Think: Batting Average on Balls In Play

What Thug Thinks: Balls that Are Bunted plus Infield Popups

Thought Process: Thug will watch maddeningly as players waste outs with useless bunts. He will realize that the only way to fix this dilemma is to add those bunts to popups to show everyone all the useless outs.

Calculations: It’s pretty self explanatory. 

League Leader: Probably either Elvis Andrus or Pete Kozma

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Last week, I examined the majestic Microsoft tablet commercial that featured two of the most confused baseball scouts you could ever possibly dream up, as well as two general managers that love imaginary statistics. You can read my #analysis of that brilliant masterpiece by clicking here.

There’s another baseball inspired commercial that’s rather well known around the interwebz and that is the Head & Shoulders commercial starring The The Angels Angels of Anaheim’s two overpaid superstars: Straight-edge lefty C.J. Wilson and The Second Coming of Christ, Josh Hamilton.

I’ll admit, this one isn’t nearly as bad as the Microsoft one. This commercial is also only about 15 seconds so there wasn’t as much time for things to go horribly wrong. But it’s almost as fun to over-analyze so I’m gonna go ahead and do that. Here’s the commercial:

Frame by frame. LET’S DO THIS.

Spectacular opening. Our two demigods gracefully enter the shot with glorious heads of hair. There is an extremely derpy teammate in the background who is wearing number 13. There is no number 13 on the Angels, and definitely no one that looks like that…okay maybe if someone shrunk Jered Weaver and punched him in the face. This could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure lockers in the clubhouse are alphabetical. Clearly they attempted to portray this by placing a mysterious “White” to the left of Wilson…but they also went ahead and squeezed Josh Hamilton’s locker right between them. Simply reprehensible. Also keep in mind that this is clearly THE ANGELS’ CLUBHOUSE.

Hamilton continues to stare at us. Wilson explains that Head & Shoulders and Old Spice are now together. IN THE SAME BOTTLE. C.J, is also clearly winking at someone attractive to his left. I am 100% sure it’s Mike Trout. If you look behind Hamilton, we see another clear bottle of Head & Shoulders in Wilson’s locker. Did C.J. just STEAL Josh’s bottle?!? Does C.J. have 2bottles? Just not sure why they felt the need to product place another bottle of the same thing when Mr. Wilson is clearly showing us the bottle and then

BAM. Super HD close up of the bottle. C.J. seems to have placed it down in someone else’s locker that only consists of 2towels, a helmet, and some wristbands. It’s almost definitely either the first or third base coach’s locker. Not sure why Dino Ebel or Alfredo Griffin needs a bottle of Head & Shoulders but whatever.

Hamilton emerges from the dugout without his hat because duh. Derpy midget Not Jered Weaver hustles out to his mysterious position. Josh tells us that this mystical shampoo allows him to be 100% flake-free which is clearly helping his plate discipline. An unknown member of the Angels bench is checking Not Jered Weaver’s ass.

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