The Dodgers are like Donald Trump

You had one of two thoughts upon seeing the title of this post: "Ha ha, I don't like either of them. This could well be amusing!" is one possibility. The other is "This is just a cheap way to get clicks by using a person in the news to game the SEO results while lamely relating him to the ostensible subject of this site."

It's the second one. It's absolutely the second one.

So now that I have explained the premise of the article, I'll start writing the meat of it, acting as though this article is anything more than ephemera that will be forgotten, certainly within a week of your reading it and possibly several hours from now. You will play along, as the name of this article is "The Dodgers are like Donald Trump" and let's be honest here: you knew what you were getting.

How many reasons will I give for the Dodgers being like Donald Trump? Five, I guess. It seems like a good number. Three is the minimum for a list, but I don't want to do the bare minimum; I want to express myself! However, I worry that you, the reader, will get bored if this list is too extensive – it is low-grade prattle, after all – so I want to keep it fairly short. Five items seems like a good compromise. Here is the first one:

1. They have both built their #brands on being very rich

Well gosh, I just started with the low-hanging fruit, didn't I? It's important to lead off with one that's indisputably true so that when Dodger fans click over because they want something to be mad about – this is not to say we're any better, because we're not – I won't lead off with a subjective or ridiculous one that makes them roll their eyes and close the page. The reaction I'm looking for is outrage, which leads to that person sharing this article on social media, which leads to more outrage as their friends read it and also vehemently disagree, sharing the article with scathing insight like "What kind of idiot would write this?"

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, Giants fans also do all of this all the time.

2. They both have several high-profile financial disasters in their past

And then you have this item, which displays a surface-level understanding of both baseball and business. These kinds of mistakes happen to everyone who is around long enough, and the subjects of my comparison have both been around for a while. Anyone else who has also been around awhile has also made financial mistakes, but by drawing your attention to these specific ones, I can make it seem as if these two have something specific in common when their commonality is really so general as to be meaningless.

3. Steve Garvey also wore a hairpiece

In pieces like this, factual errors will often crop up, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes because they help a point land and the author doesn't care about facts. This entirely humorous entry serves several purposes. First, it's red meat for the users on the site, whose opinion of Steve Garvey is very low. Second, should someone call me on a factual error, I can imply that they should have known that this isn't a SERIOUS piece because of course there isn't any proof that Garvey wore a wig, but I'm treating it as a given. Lighten up, reader, I'm saying, expecting and hoping the reader will not lighten up. Errors happen. It's not a big deal. I don't have to be accountable. I'm very poor. Why not pick on someone who matters?

4. They both receive media attention incommensurate with their impact on their field

Shame on you, media, I say, while acting as the media and doing the thing that brings shame upon them. How could you do your job so poorly, I ask, while doing the same thing. What kind of monster would pay attention to The Wrong Things, I wonder, while etc etc you get the point.

This hypocrisy will not be mentioned in the article.

5. They both act like they're entitled to anything they want

And this is where I wrap up by acting as if one rich organization trying to acquire good baseball players for the sake of doing well at baseball is anything like a man seemingly driven by ego who thinks he should have things because he is rich. Do I wonder if any of this is getting through to you, the reader? Sure, a little, but at this point I'm so worried that the premise of the article has worn thin that whether you think one point out of five is off is almost immaterial.

Sometimes you read hacky articles on the Internet (sometimes I'm the one who writes them). They are designed to outrage you, or pander to your interests, or appeal to the part of you that likes reference humor. Sometimes they're written out of cynicism, sometimes out of laziness, and sometimes the people behind them just wrote something bad. It's just the Internet. It's easy to get so used to a format that you don't think about it anymore. But it does merit thought, because you spend a lot of time reading these kinds of articles, and you should be aware of how they work.

OH! One more way the Dodgers are like Trump: Neither of them will ever win anything!!!!