OC Register: Hoornstra: The 2030 baseball season – download it today!

AngelsWin.com · August 6, 2020

Greetings from Publicly Funded Ballpark in Portland! I’m J.P. Hoornstra, and welcome to Opening Day of the 2030 season. The Portland Protesters are hosting the Los Angeles Angels of Orange County. So sit back, relax, and enjoy seven innings of baseball. Today’s Spotify broadcast is presented by Amazon Autonomous Vehicles. Amazon AV: let us drive responsibly when you don’t want to!

The Protesters will have five rookies in their lineup today, more than any of the 32 teams taking the field on Opening Day. Portland’s lineup is predictably the youngest in baseball, with an average age of just 23. Their payroll is just barely above the salary floor. In fact, this was a major storyline throughout spring training: Can the Protesters get above the league-minimum floor, which was set at $99 million for the 2030 season? Then eight days ago, they signed their only free agent since the end of last season, Yasiel Puig, the Wild Horse, 39 years young. And so Portland becomes Puig’s 13th team in the past 11 years. If you can believe it, his past nine have all been as a non-roster invitee to spring training.

Now Puig is the oldest active player in the game – a title he wrested from the Angels’ designated hitter tonight, Mike Trout. Trout will be batting cleanup, sitting on 650 career home runs. His 9-year-old son Beckham will be the Angels’ bat boy, sitting on zero home runs, but we’re looking forward to plenty from him someday. Something else we’re looking forward to? Today’s game is brought to you by “Star Wars: Ewoks,” opening in home theaters Friday.

We’re a few minutes away from the first pitch presented by Nordstrom*Sears*Macy*s, but good seats still remain for this game. Take out your smartphone, open the Protesters app, reserve your seat, and retina scan your way through the turnstiles. Even if you can’t make it here today, those of you listening to this broadcast will hear the sounds of a sellout crowd. The ambient noise has been upgraded again for a new season, so you’ll be hearing the sounds of exactly 35,978 Portlanders – a capacity crowd at Publicly Funded Ballpark – whether you are here or not. Think about how far we’ve come since the infamous coronavirus season of 2020. Hard to believe it was only 10 years ago that some players actually preferred the sound of silence to the sound of digital crowd noise.

Of course, back then, it wasn’t uncommon to see a rookie play nine innings in a four-hour long game. Thankfully we’ve gotten time of game under control, and who even misses those final two innings anyway? Just don’t expect to see any rookies play the full seven today. The Protesters need to keep their youngsters’ service time under control. And thanks to a new rule this year, they can do that while putting their best players on the field every day. Service time will be accrued on a per-inning basis, so enjoy those first five innings, folks. The last two could get dicey as the Protesters empty their bench.

Tonight’s sixth inning will be the TikTok America inning! We want to see your best TikTok video featuring you wearing your Protesters gear. Upload your video, use the hashtag #ProtestersBaseball – the “baseball” part is really important – and you’ll be automatically entered into our 2031 season ticket giveaway! We’ll be choosing one winner every sixth inning, 154 times a season. The Protesters will be wearing their home Thursday alternates today, the ones with two sponsor patches on each sleeve, but you can wear any old thing with a Protesters’ logo in your video. Good luck to all today’s contestants. TikTok America: where America pretends it can dance.

Your chances of winning depend on the number of entrants. The Protesters’ chances of making the playoffs, on the other hand? Well, they went up again this offseason without lifting a finger. That’s because Major League Baseball increased the number of playoff teams yet again, from 16 to 24. Remember that MLB sent the winner of the American and National leagues directly to the World Series until 1969, then expanded from four to eight teams in 1995, then from eight to 10 in 2012, and from 10 to 16 in 2020.

The 16-team postseason was supposed to be temporary, you might recall. But it was such a hit, it stuck around for another nine years! Now, with the regular season being trimmed from 162 to 154 games, that left room for yet another postseason round. Portland finished with a 70-92 record last year, but if a 24-team postseason had been in place, they would have been only two games out of a playoff berth. Imagine how much fun that will be at the end of another rebuilding season!

As for me, I’ll imagine it from home. Your Portland Protesters broadcasters will finish the regular season on the road, but the broadcasters are not traveling with the team in 2030 – another legacy reminder of that fateful 2020 season. Not to worry: all 50 camera angles available to the Official MLB Replay Booth, Presented by Warby Parker, are available to me here in our Stumptown Coffee Studios, which was recently outfitted with 6G wireless technology. What could we possibly miss?

OK. Only one last item of business to check off before today’s first pitch, brought to you by Nordstrom*Sears*Macy*s. We’ll throw it down to pitcher Jimmy Stiles in the dugout. He’s starting for the Protesters on Sunday and, due to some staff budget cuts, he’ll be serving as our in-game reporter this season. He’s also the host of his own podcast, Stiles and Strikes, now available on Spotify. Subscribe to Stiles and Strikes, and don’t forget to rate and review today!

Now Jimmy, we understand the National Virus Index has been declared Threat Level Orange today, so you’ll be required to wear a mask in the dugout just like the fans in the stands. That’s OK. Speak loudly and clearly into your Apple earpiece, and we’ll be on our way.

Jimmy, take it away!

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