MR WRONG: Foul mood
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 68
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: I'm Mad That I Can't Stop Getting Mad About the Baseball Situation
OK, TODAY IS part fucking three of me blathering and complaining and “whinging” as the British-English speakers like to say, about baseball, and again, I apologize for all the sports “content” in the last few iterations of the Mr. Wrong column, and I appreciate any of you who are bored outta your gourd by the sports stuff, but really it is also a Consumer Report, about how the Brands really don’t give a flying foul ball about you as a human, they just want you to somehow Identify with their Product and come back for more.
So the Brand in Question is the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball (MLB), and they, objectively, as a team of baseball players, stink on ice. I even have a chart! From the Major Baseball League! Observe:
They are the worst at playing baseball in their entire division, or whatever it’s called, the “AL East,” which stands for the East part of the American League of baseball. To further illustrate my point about the stinkitude of the Baltimore Orioles, the “O’s” if you will, please to compare and contrast the performance of the Baltimore Orioles with the New York Mets, who are renowned for not being good, and comedically so, even, on account of they spent a lotta dough to get good players, and here’s another chart:
The New York Mets have a worse win/loss record than the Baltimore Orioles of the American League of baseball, which is no fun if you are someone who has been attempting to enjoy the baseball antics of the New York Mets this season. I feel your pain. The Mets stink! They are the worst in the specific division of their thing! Feh!
Also, though, the NY Mets are in the National League East of MLB, which is half of MLB, the National League. You have the American League and the National League, which are really not the greatest names for two things that do the same thing? American and National, right? They kinda refer to the same thing, but one is specific to the country of America, and the other name is a generality? It should be like the Blue League and the Red league or something? The Squares league and the Circles league, like on the Hollywood Squares game show, or deeper still, the game of tic-tac-toe, which is centuries older than stupid baseball, and is way more fun for me this season than Orioles Baseball! Which I pay good money to see, the baseball, getting back to the whole Brand thing, which, the Baltimore Orioles don’t care about me, they are trying to get me to buy a ticket plan for next year’s season, and they should be apologizing for this year! I go to all these games and it’s really all about seeing some Major League Baseball, but come on, do stuff! Where’s that whole “Moneyball” thing the O’s were supposedly embracing? What happened to the supposed five-year plan I heard about, like, seven years ago? Eight? Are we in year eight of the Baltimore Orioles Five-Year Plan of Becoming a Baseball Team that is Good at Baseball? I bought a partial plan of season ticket! I used to get a 25 percent discount on beer with my convenient no-cash “O’s Pay” app that is a pain in the ass on my phone! And now there’s no discount on beer!
Look, I didn’t mean to, but I am gonna present some Reporting to you about the Baltimore Orioles. I went to a game and got to talking with the Orioles employee in charge of the section I was sitting in. This is the person who shows you where your seat is and answers questions about stuff, and if it was raining, they wipe the water off your seat before you jam your ass into the tiny seat which is tiny so they could cram more paying customers into Oriole Park at Camden Yards (nobody calls it that). I sit up in the cheap seats, Crammed-in Yards, hiyo!
This employee, let’s call them Wild Bill, which is not their real name, this employee said they were tired, and they were happy that it was the ninth inning, because they have to stay on their feet for the game but they can sit down during the ninth inning, oh boy! Anyway, this employee said they have not had a raise in four years. Last year, I had to dig into my pocket to pay for like 30 percent more games as part of what used to be my 13- or maybe it was 14-game plan, I can’t remember, but now it’s a 20-game plan, and I expressed my feelings about that in part two or maybe part one of all this complaining, I can’t remember, I am boring myself to death with this baseball crap!
How wacky is it that you go to a thing and a big part of the Thing Experience is you buy a shirt with the name of the Brand on it? So you can be “proud” or whatever of your Brand that you patronize with your hard earned money? If you become a steady and predictable consumer of the Brand, they then put the squeeze on you for more dough to see more episodes of a worse thing?
I go to a lotta games, I see all the empty seats, the Baltimore Orioles are not making money on tickets this season, but meanwhile, they jacked up the beer prices and took away my 25 percent "O's Pay" discount and made a buncha extra places to buy a beer with giant signs branding the places, plus, they removed seats to make room for these bars, so they make money on signs and beers and not happy fans watching a team that can win more games than they lose! The Baltimore Orioles aren't even winning half the time! They are losing at coin toss!
The Baltimore Orioles are making me mad at Baseball! That’s it, enough. Thank you. Go O’s.
NEXT WEEK, I will be on Vacation but I will be filing a shiny-new and not-about-baseball Mr. Wrong column. Always Be Columning!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, August 16, 2026
★★★★ A man in a print shirt and a woman in a light dress strolled through the morning as if they were at a vacation resort. The sun had left by early afternoon but a vivifying wind was blowing along the cross street. People thronged the Park in the gusty dimness, and the scent of horse manure endured on the air. The soft greens of the carpets and walls and upholstery of the Frick played off one another in subtle harmonies in the cloud light coming in. A quick shower outside the museum had subsided to intermittent flecks of water on the walk back, too sparse to count as even a drizzle. The Park held the same opulent green aura that the mansion had, with the peeled yellow limbs of the plane trees twisting up out of it. What the wind was carrying after dark was a real drizzle, but still not worth zipping up the rain jacket against.
New York City, August 17, 2026
★★★ The rain that had sounded through the night was down to a mist for the walk to the grocery before breakfast. It made a smooth fog on the stacked two-liter sodas waiting in mid-delivery on the sidewalk. By the back half of the workday the sky out the windows was blue and white and the sun was so strong it seemed fully disconnected from what had gone before, or from the claim in the forecast that more rain was due back for the evening. The damp edge of the Park reeked like a pet store. The Pool was lumpy and bubbly with algae, the greens and yellows going to dead gray patches toward the middle. Wet, flattened clumps of mower clippings lay on the path. A catbird gave a grating call from the upper part of a small tree, its sound avoiding monotony by being too irregular and occasionally strangulated. A cloud of insects boiled in a sunbeam on the path up through the dark, dense-leafed trees. August, rain-fattened, had yet to burn dry; burgeoning weeds and grasses filled a seam in the rock, swelling up to catch the low sun. Up in the open, above the crown of the hill, dozens of gulls, an appalling number of gulls, squawked and flapped in Brownian motion, crisscrossing in all directions at once. Drifting a bit westward, they were suddenly moving against gray skies. In the time it took to walk down the hill and back up out of the park, the flock had kept on drifting, to end up churning right above the apartment.
New York City, August 18, 2026
★★★ Traces of rain lay around on the gray morning, but shortly the day got sunny enough to heat up the apartment. The air conditioner exhaust ruled out using the balcony even if outdoors might have otherwise been tolerable. Afternoon turned gray enough to look like a missed opportunity, but the sun made a late, complete recovery, reclaiming its place in the sky before even reaching its evening elongation. Insects sizzled in the trees.
New York City, August 19, 2026
★★★★ The pleasure of leaning out into the bright, dry air with a faceful of sun was interrupted by the hands registering that the balcony railing was too thoroughly sun-heated to keep leaning on. The clouds assumed shifting, not-quite-figurative shapes. Windows stayed open; the warmth hung loosely on the day, with cool currents working their way in underneath. People with less work or more sense had long since settled in on the clover-flecked lawns in the Park. The sky was full of bright hammer marks and flowing wisps, dark small moving birds, a brilliant spiky molecule of an airplane. Jumpseeds leaned out over the path, the most distal ones primed to fire at a touch.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cookbook: An Encyclopaedia of Practical Recipes and Processes, by Sidney Morse, published by Success Company's Branch Offices in 1908 and now available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
SANDWICHES
The old-fashioned sandwich—two thick wedges of bread, erratically buttered, hard of crust, exuding mustard, and with frills of ham or corned beef about the edge—has been relegated to the past by the arrival of the meat chopper. The sandwiches of the past were of a half-dozen varieties; the filling of a modern sandwich is limited only by what you have on hand. Fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables, eggs, nuts, olives, fruit, cheese, and pickles may be utilized alone, or combined, and the result, when prepared by a skillful cook, is a dainty and delicious morsel.
Before preparing sandwiches, if they are to be used at a luncheon or entertainment where other dishes accompany them, be careful that the flavoring is different from the salad with which they are served. It is really in better taste to offer nothing with a salad or cold meat except plain bread and butter; still, fashion seems to demand a flavored nibble as a salad accompaniment. Fish, lobster, or shrimp salads are most appetizing with sandwiches of Boston brown bread holding a tender lettuce leaf or a sprig of watercress dipped in mayonnaise. Serve sandwiches of mild cheese, flavored by mustard or tarragon, with green salads. White-bread sandwiches holding tender young nasturtium leaves between the buttered folds go well with salads of meat or fish. Garnish a plateful of this variety with a few nasturtium leaves and blossoms. Finely cut peppergrass, chives, endive, or celery are all fitting accompaniments to sandwiches which are offered with a meat or chicken salad. Cucumbers and tomatoes thinly sliced and spread with mayonnaise make a delicious bite between buttered bread. Cut with a small cooky cutter rounds of bread slightly larger than a slice of tomato or. cucumber, and put the vegetable between them. These, as well as herb sandwiches, must not be made until immediately before serving.
Sandwiches in Cream Sauce.
Sandwiches left over are not usually inviting, but they may be made so by this method. Toast them delicately in the oven, and to every four sandwiches made from chicken, veal, or tongue make a white sauce with 1 tablespoonful flour, 4 teaspoonful salt, a dash of pepper, and 1 cupful milk cooked until thick. Then add the yolk of 1 egg, well beaten. Pour this over the sandwiches and serve at once.
Lamb Sandwiches.
Mince cold roast lamb, season with salt, pepper, and a dash of Mcllhenny’s Tabasco Sauce. Add minced olives and a chopped pimento, then make into a paste with mayonnaise dressing. Spread between slices of white bread.
Sweetbread Sandwiches.
Cut cold boiled sweetbreads in a meat chopper, moisten with whipped cream, season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice. Spread between thin slices of buttered bread,
Hot-Ham Sandwiches.
Butter thin slices of bread. Broil thin slices of ham, put between slices of white bread, and eat hot. Bacon may be served in the same fashion.
Chicken and Celery Sandwiches.
1 cupful cold chicken,
1 cupful celery,
4 tablespoonfuls mayonnaise.
Put chicken through the finest knife of a meat chopper, add celery cut fine and mayonnaise. Butter white bread and spread with the chicken mixture.
Tongue Sandwiches.
Make a dressing of one part mustard and six parts butter, add salt, pepper, and a dash of McIlhenny’s Tabasco Sauce. Butter the bread with this mixture and lay between thin slices of cold tongue.
Oak-Hill Sandwiches.
1/3 cupful butter,
1 cupful finely chopped cold boiled ham,
1 cupful cold chicken,
Dash of salt and paprika.
Cream butter, add ham and chicken, then salt and paprika. Spread the mixture between thin slices of white bread.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and maybe a few photos to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
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TOM SCOCCA
FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS MAKE A S_BST_CK DEP'T.
