MLB's Home Run Derby Chain is terribly uncool

Look at MLB attempting to improve its All Star production with 2004 John Cena-levels of swagger jacking. Remember the G-Unit spinner chain? It has gone from Cena’s WWE championship belt now to the Home Run Derby. The 2023 winner will receive a chain with a bejeweled spinning plus sign.

One, this is further proof that no entity in sports is cooler than the creator of the turnover chain, the Miami Hurricanes football program. Second, a chain for the Home Run Derby champion is giving off real undercover police vibes.

Not that MLB is using it to entrap its players, but the league is trying way too hard to be cool. Many of the league’s young players do wear chains when they play. The 2021 Chicago White Sox were icier than that city’s weather in February. That is the players expressing individuality, which is something that MLB needs to embrace. However, coolness is something that is organic. People who are deemed worthy of that characteristic do act intentionally, but it comes out naturally.

A player being lei’d in the middle of T-Mobile park with a garish piece of jewelry is the MLB’s version of the Steve Buscemi “How do you do fellow kids? meme. At least when my generation put aluminum foil on their bike spokes in the early 2000s, that was coming from a pure place. A young person watches the Big Tymer’s “Get your roll on” video and wants his bike to look like Manny Fresh’s car. That corniness is no different than a kid turning his hat backwards to like Ken Griffey Jr.

When we’re young we imitate stars because we’re impressionable. Then one day we grow up, and it’s time to be more original. Going to the club wearing a camo bandanna tied like Juvenile’s will not result in a person receiving the same response that he would.

There are ways for MLB to do a better job of reaching out to young people, and one of their attempts has been an excellent idea. With the City Connect jerseys, designers were able to create uniforms that reflected teams’ home cities. Also, they didn’t bastardize the concept like the NBA and create a new one every year to make sure and snatch every penny possible from inside the couch cushions.

A Home Run Derby championship chain though, that is silly. If a parent walked into the house dressed like Jack Harlow it would not make said parent more relatable to a child. Once parents partake in an aspect of pop culture, it loses all of its cool factor. That is why Facebook stopped being the way that college kids primarily interacted on social media shortly after 2009.

Encouraging players to express their indviduality is a way to draw in a younger audience. Impersonating it is not. At least John Cena was young when he was running around like the guy G-Unit lets hang around the crew because he gives them free studio time.