There’s something wrong with me, I’m sure of it…
And after some of my sports assertions, I’m sure many of you agree. That said, I’m still rubbing my eyes, pinching myself, thunking my noggin and trying to figure out a front page sports section story in today’s Kansas City Star.
Maybe you can help me with this one.
It’s about a friend of former Kansas City Royals star Willie Wilson buying him a new 1985 World Series ring to replace the one he had to sell when he went bankrupt in 2001.
Nevermind that the replica ring won’t have the intrinsic value of the real deal original, here’s the part I don’t get. Or do I?
And that’s that in spite of the fact that this lady’s website williewilsonbaseball.org has been soliciting money for however long to buy Wilson a new ring – and despite that the Star has a front page story today – they’re asking the public to help keep this a secret so they can surprise Wilson next month.
Would you mind re-reading that last sentence?
Let’s proceed.
So somehow, we’re all being asked to 1) Believe Wilson has no clue about any of this new ring business and 2) If we help keep it a secret from him, they’ll be able to surprise him with the ring when they present it to him at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in September.
How hokey is that?
Are we to believe Wilson is dumber than a rock? Or that perhaps the brains behind this deal, Helen Mohr, believes readers of the Star are that naive? Or that the Star sports editors bought into this “surprise.”
Worse yet, freelancer Rob Wheat – the dude who fed this fairytale to the Star – is a self-described “national media placement specialist” affiliated with a company called Zebra Partners. A company that describes its mission as simple:
“We want to make a difference in your business. So we become your strategic partner, offering overall business counsel along with fully integrated marketing, public relations and social media programs.”
In other words, this cockamamie fable was effectively fed to the Star sports section by a PR firm.
They got duped!
Which isn’t so bad except for the fact that going along with it and plopping it on the front page of the sports section makes the Star look dumb for buying into the charade.
“Wilson in for happy surprise,” the headline reads.
Righhhhhhhht…
This is really going to blow Wilson away when he – wink, wink – finds out.
I dunno, is it just me?
When I first saw that website from another story a few months ago I thought to myself the idiots that actually contribute to this farce are truly, truly stupid. What makes you think he won’t hock this ring either or trade it in for a few lines of blow?
And if he got rid of the original ring in the first place what makes you think he cares about it at all? Stoooooooopid.
Well, let’s assume he’s all growed up now and living a clean cut lifestyle.
That said, who was auditing how much money was raised how could Wilson possibly be surprised by all of this?
I liked Willie as a player, but I got to agree with dude on this one. We’re not talking some down-on-his-luck former player that had his ring stolen or lost and just had monetary difficulty replacing it. We’re talking a former player that repeatedly made adult mistakes with his money and then willingly sold off a supposed prized personal possession. How’s that any different than any other low-rent crackhead or degenerate gambler hocking/selling off personal stuff to support a habit from mistakes they once made that led them down that road? He’s a grown-ass man that should face the consequences stemming from his real-life decisions. Just like the rest of us. And I too question how prized the ring even was to him as it couldn’t have possibly brought back enough $ in itself to bail him out of his financial woes. Why not liquidate everything else and keep the damn ring or why didn’t these so-called friends just step up and buy it from at the time so that they could later “sell” it back to him?
I guess I’ll just add that to the why does seemingly everything The Star prints, no matter how inconsequential, gets called out in this space?
This is one I don’t mind Hearne calling them out on. Lord only knows how much money is being grifted off this deal and what if any oversight is involved.