Blabbin' Maddon

Cubs’ skipper Joe Maddon thinks he knows what hazing is:  “To me, hazing was back in the day at Hazleton High School [in Maddon’s hometown of Hazleton, Pa.] when they made all the sophomores jump off the wall [which was ten-feet high] at the risk of breaking a leg,” he told the Sun-Times today.  “That’s hazing.”

And baseball rookies dressed as women?  Maddon says “situations like this are purely based on fun among the group.  [Do rookies volunteer to be part of this fun?]  I don’t think there’s a player out there that would be adverse to any of that.”  So says the Sage of Wrigleyville.

I wonder, though, why do players always dress up as women?  Why not different types of men?  Everyone could be former president Barack Obama.  No, wait, there’s that blackface thing if white players did it.  Then maybe everyone could be Elton John for a day.  Imagine the hilarity of ostensibly straight players trying to dress gay.  What would Elton say?

The LGBT community probably would miss the joke, in which case we can always hope that rookie ballplayers will decide on their own to keep dressing as women.