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27 D-Backs News Items that All 90s Kids Remember

With each subsequent PR blast by the Diamondbacks, I can't shake the feeling that the team is built is being run more as a viral sensation, than a team playing baseball.

Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

Next week I'll return with Double Thinking the D-backs, but recent and continued Diamondbacks news made me go in to 'shake fist at sky and curse my elderliness' mode.

When the Diamondbacks released the D-bat Dog a couple years ago, I had a good laugh along with everyone else. I'll admit I was curious to try it, though not at over $20. It was buzzy, you found it on every site that covered baseball and even some that didn't.

Then last year the one-upped themselves with the Churro Dog, another culinary creation designed more for clicks than for consumption. This year sees an even larger slate of stunt food, though none seem to have the same traction the two previous iterations.

The D-backs didn't invent stunt food, and they're not alone in doing it. But given the widespread attention their items have received, and some of their other moves, it feels more like the team is a Buzzfeed article than a ballclub. Look at the uniforms, with it's University of Oregon levels of variation. Signing Grienke makes a certain amount of baseball sense, but it might not have been the best move for the team with more than one need. These moves and others grab attention but fade quickly, so I'd anticipate ever more ridiculous moves.

It's all harmless fun, generally, so if you're into it, then I guess it's just not for me. I keep hoping, though, that the Diamondbacks build something that will last at some point. Constant uniform turnover, constant changing of direction on the field, even the stadium can't last for 20 years, apparently.

But maybe my complaints are rooted more in the effects of social media, which has the ability to get us closer to the game and other fans. It also has the power to replicate and amplify everything. It'd be nice to have a break from that, sometimes.

It just makes me want to head out into the desert to live a simpler life when baseball was pure and perfect, and certainly not full of gamblers and degenerates. I could live off cacti fruit and lizards, and train cottontails to play ball and return to Eden away from the terrible noise and the robots on the World Wide Web with their chemtrails and sky holograms I can stretch my arms to the heavens like a great saguaro and get my energy from the sun and wind and absolutely never ever change. And then baseball will finally be perfect.