It has not been a good spring for David Ortiz. First the Red Sox didn't extend his contract, then for the second straight season he has gotten off to a slow start, leading to speculation that he may be benched shortly, and now he's getting sued. Turns out that Ortiz opened a night club in the Dominican Republic and he called it the 40/40 Club, which is the same name as a couple of clubs owned by rapper Jay-Z. Why Ortiz couldn't just name the club the Big Papi Grille like his restaurant in Framingham we may never know. Now, I'm actually willing to overlook Ortiz being unoriginal because, let's be honest, he's a baseball player and not a marketing major. Also, it's not like Jay-Z is even a professional baseball player, let alone in the 40/40 Club, so you can see why Ortiz's people may not think he has exclusive rights to the name. Or maybe Ortiz thought since his club in the Dominican Republic it would fly under the radar. Either way, Ortiz has allegedly been in Jay-Z's club before, so it's not like he can claim ignorance. The bigger question to me is why Ortiz would even want to name his place the 40/40 Club, cause it's not like he's even slightly connected to those numbers.
For those of you who may not be baseball fans, the 40/40 Club is made up of people who have stolen 40 bases and hit 40 homeruns in the same season. As of right now, only four players in history have ever reached those numbers (Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and Alfonso Soriano). Other than also being a suspected steroid user, which 3 of those 4 players are, Ortiz has no connection to the 40/40 number. In fact, he has a grand total of 10 stolen bases for his career. In other words, he's never even come close. Calling it Club 34 (his jersey number) or Club 54 (his career high for homeruns in a season) makes infinitely more sense. Also, while we're at it, Jay-Z should be asked to re-name his club as well, because 40/40 doesn't make much sense for him. Maybe something in reference to his musical career would be more appropriate, even though the 40/40 Club is a supposed to be a sports bar. I'm just really surprised that it ever came to this, because every guy has at some point in his life thought about owning his own bar and thus spent some time coming up with a name for this imaginary bar (we also do the same thing with band names before we've even picked up an instrument). I never would have thought this would be an issue.
-You know what is annoying me this week? iTunes "Album Only" restriction in the iStore. Usually this is used as a way to prevent people from only buying the one new song on a band's greatest hits album and I have always had a problem with bands that do that to begin with. Greatest hits albums are pretty much just a money-grab attempt any way, so I don't like it when they add one new song to the mix as if that makes it ok. "Hey, look, one new song to cover up the fact that we want you to spend money on a collection of songs loyal fans would already own." It's not cool, and trying to prevent fans from saving $8 and only buying the only song that wouldn't be a repeat in their collection is exactly why people find alternate (read: free) ways to download music. I'm more than happy to go the legal route and spend the $1.29, but don't expect me to shell out the cash for the full album just so I can have a third version of the same song in my library.
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