MR WRONG: Debased-ball
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 65
END TIMES DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
The final chapter of Tom Scocca's serialized novel THE STAIRS will be published tomorrow, Friday August 7, 2026! It would help if you had a time machine, but you have one day to get yourself caught up on THE STAIRS! You can do it!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: The Ballpark Was a Nice Place to Drink a Beer Till They Started Putting Bars in It
THE MR. WRONG column does not cover “local” topics too much anymore on the regular. When the Mr. Wrong column ran in a printed-on-paper Newspaper, there was stuff about the city the paper served, so it made sense to be Local about some stuff, and then after they (and you know who They are) invented the Internet and stuff, and the Mr. Wrong Column got its newsprint platform yanked out from under it, stuff mutated, changed, topicwise, since now the Mr. Wrong column is National, Global even, Galactic!
So today in the column we are going back to basics, it’s a “throwback” if you will, a Retro-Wrong, wherein we will be complaining about a Global thing, Baseball, but in a Local experience, on account of I live in Baltimore, MD, USA, and am a regular attendee of Major League Baseball as presented on the natural grass surface of Oriole Park at Camden Yards (OPACY), which, nobody calls it that, except professional announcers, and whenever I say it or try to type it I always go “Orioles” and not “Oriole,” but anyway, I don’t call it “Oriole Park” or “Camden Yards,” and like, if it’s “Oriole” park, why ain’t it Camden “Yard”?—I go the fucking baseball stadium and see the Baltimore Orioles play at Major League Baseball (MLB) and it is frequently a struggle for it to be, for me, a pleasant experience.
I have been to National Football League (NFL) games, and they have all been outdoors, and almost all of them have been in frigid temperatures. To me, this explains a lot of the behavior at football games such as doing a lot of yelling and cheering, and drinking alcohol. I feel like back in the day, a grown-ass person would maybe bring a little flask to nip at and take the edge off the cold, but that has all degenerated into “Sunday Funday”–type idiocy, where a buncha slobs go to the parking lot five hours before game time so they can “tailgate” and destroy as many brain cells as possible with their own alcoholic beverages before they get inside the stadium and have to pay $14 for a beer or whatever. Basically though, I see a lot of people turn watching a football game into New Years Eve, and like, have you ever attended a football game at a giant arena where you are up in the nosebleeds? You are better off watching the game on teevee in the parking lot with the drunks, you can’t see hardly anything of a football game at the football game.
Baseball, on the other hand, I find to be a hundred percent completely enjoyable from the upper decks, which is where I typically sit, and I attend at least 10 games a year. You can watch an entire contest and see the pitches and all the plays perfectly. You don’t need binoculars or anything, it’s easy.
I am not trying to shit on anybody’s Sunday or Funday, I like to make the tiny brain cells die as much as the next drunk, it’s just that in terms of Baseball, a big part of my unhappiness with attending MLB games is the Footballification of going to a Baseball game. They have been trying for years to Football my Baseball! I don’t like it!
Part of what’s going on at my local Major League Baseball venue is they are turning everything into a fucking bar. They eliminated a big chunk of bleacher seats, cheap seats, that I enjoy, and they made a “Pavilion,” which means they put a beer stand in there and some cafe tables. It has giant signage on top of it, “PUREWAGER PAVILION,” which I am assuming is some gambling company, or else it’s something German, because every time I read the sign I pronounce it in my head “pure WAGGer,” like “Volkswagen” somehow. Anyway, they took some cheap seats opportunities away from me, fuckers!
The other new bar is in an area known as the Flag Court, and I guess it still is, but it used to be a place to stand around and watch the game over the top of the biggest part of the outfield wall, and now taking up half of the acreage is this giant lean-to bar, except it’s not a bar, it’s a place to buy a beer, because you cannot then relax with your Adult Beverage, put your elbows on the bar and chill, because you are only a few steps away from the outfield, where they are having the baseball, and if you were at this bar, behaving like it is a bar, you might have your back to the field, and you could get hit in the head with a fly ball. The people who are in charge of maximizing profit at OPACY can’t tolerate having an area that is not supported by advertising and being used as a vending machine, so we get these two dopey bars with giant signs that have contributed to fucking up the aesthetics of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, along with the new and improved monster-sized giant TV screen in the outfield, jeez.
OK, yeah, this is too much for one column, we will have Part Two about “Why I am Mad at the Baseball Stadium” next week. Thank you, and Go O’s.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, August 2, 2026
★★★ The day was gray and wind-tossed but still rainless for the moment. It was too humid to escape the need for the air conditioner. Sunlight came and played outside the window while the afternoon bled away with customer-service representatives explaining why they couldn't do what previous customer-service representatives had said they would do. When the sky was available for viewing at last, high flocked clouds on blue showed here and there above smooth, fast-drifting lower ones. Caution tape ringed the remains of a fallen tree south of the Pool. The phragmites were passing head height and through them the surface of the water lay paved over with duckweed and algae and shed willow leaves. A bright rust-colored film covered the rocks of the entrance falls. A pack of children came pelting down the path on the hill, one of them doing a roundoff as they came. Globs of melting ice cream, studded with sprinkles, lay further up the path. After the climb, when the breeze paused, the air felt suddenly clingy. A man climbed the steps carrying two folded camp chairs on top of a case of Modelo. The sun seized control of its quarter of the sky from the clouds, and sweat came out to meet it. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" was playing tinnily but loudly enough to dominate the block.
New York City, August 3, 2026
★★★ Dreams of flash floodwaters pouring downhill gave way to the sound of drumming rain carrying through the bathroom vent. The front shutters opened on water-blurred glass; the bedroom blinds came up to let in a flash of lightning. The rain subsided, returned, and subsided again. A bright spell was followed by a downpour even louder than before. At lunchtime the rain was pelting down too hard to duck out the store when the hot dog buns turned up moldy; the bratwurst just had to be split and flattened on rye. By later afternoon it seemed safe to send people out in sneakers, and sun shone on the end of the workday through drying air. A modest-sized hornbeam near the hilltop stood with its branches swaying a little above a crowd of knee-high hornbeam suckers, likeways swaying, that had sprouted from its own roots. A breeze overtook the walk back from dinner—a quickening, unexpected breeze, a new and delightful thing, a breeze to get back home and open the windows to.
New York City, August 4, 2026
★★★★★ Clear sun bounced off the buildings and leaves and branches as it were lighting the details of an enameled miniature of an ideal city. Mower furrows ran along the contours of a shallow slope of lawn. Little rose hips were reddening. The bird app declared that the elaborate floating song by the Pool belonged to a catbird or catbirds. A bindweed vine had twined so close in among the hanging racemes of the pokeweed that its silky white blossoms seemed, illogically, to be part of the same plant. The direct sun was hot but no hotter than was necessary to uphold the standards of early August. Up on the hill more than a dozen barn swallows were spinning wildly around the crown of a smallish tree, clockwise and counterclockwise at once, while dragonflies darted in and out just below them, at trunk level. Sharp bird-shadows slashed and crisscrossed across the grass. Only by facing into the sun was it possible to pick out a few drifting motes of tiny insects among a vast and otherwise unseen slaughter.
VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEP'T.
Celebrating FIFA 2026 at CVS
More consciousness at Instagram.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Daily Bread: Tested Recipes of the Ladies of Fergus County, Montana, by the The "Home Workers" Society of the First Presbyterian Church Lewistown, Montana, published in 1907 and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
MINCED SANDWICH.
Chop half a pound of lean ham very fine, add 1 minced pickle and a tablespoonful of mustard; put 4 ounces of butter in a frying pan, stir over the fire until it creams, add the ham and beaten yolk of 1 egg, with a little salt and pepper. Remove the pan from the fire, stir all together, pour out on a large dish and let cool. When firm cut in slices and lay between slices of buttered bread. — Mrs. Deaton.
PEANUT SANDWICHES.
Grind the peanuts in the food chopper to make peanut butter, then soften it with melted butter, boiled or mayonaise dressing. Spread on thin slices of bread. — Mrs. G. J. Wiedeman.
A CLUB SANDWICH.
Toast a slice of bread evenly and lightly and butter it. On one-half put first, a thin slice of bacon which has been broiled until dry and tender; next a slice of white meat of either turkey or chicken. Over half of this place a circle cut from a ripe tomato, and over the other half a tender leaf of lettuce. Cover these with a generous layer of mayonaise (or other dressing) and complete this delicious "whole meal" sandwich with the remaining piece of toast. — Mrs. Theo. Hogeland.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and a photo or three to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
