Happy Turn Ahead the Clock Week!

Today is July 25th, which means BuckBokai will take this opportunity to celebrate that greatest of real-life sports events ever, namely the Turn Ahead the Clock games held by Major League Baseball in 1998 and 1999.

Begun with a single freaky promotion designed as a parody of “Turn Back the Clock Nights,” the first such game featuring futuristic duds happened on July 18, 1998 in a game pitting the Kansas City Royals against the Seattle Mariners. (Is there anything Seattle couldn’t do in the 1990s?)

Well, this funny little innocent idea wasn’t about to escape the notice of the Bud Selig dictatorship MLB marketers, who turned a one-night stand with the 21st century into a weeks-long relationship spreading over 14 games in 1999. These games featured such awesomeness as teams called the Mercury Mets, Saturn Rings and Pluto Mighty Pups: all to have begun play by 2027 in the Interplanetary Baseball League.

(The IBL will be founded sometime in or before 2020, according to Buck Bokai’s baseball card.)

Turn Ahead the Clock gave those paying attention in those shallow, pre-9/11, fin de siècle days a definitive view into the century to come: Before professional baseball as a concept goes out 2042, we now know that baseballeros will soon(ish) be wearing silver gloves, showing off (perhaps genetically supplemented) forearms and, unfortunately, institutionalized racism in America will remain alive and well.

For more on this seminal achievement in science-fiction sports history, BuckBokai can recommend the piece written by Uni Watch’s Paul Lukas, if not necessarily the cynical viewpoint espoused on the evenings. (BuckBokai adores the ESPN.com “Uni Watch” column, but has two fundamental problems with the otherwise brilliant Lukas: his utterly irrational loathing of purple and his disparagement of Turn Ahead the Clock Night.)

Happy Turn Forward the Clock Week, everyone!*

* Except New York Mets fans, who sadly will not only see their team so desperate to leave Queens that they depart for a planet with a typical temperature of -450ºF for night games, but will later suffer the ignominy of their team performing just as haplessly in Major League Blernsball. By 3002, of course, the Mets will have established an unprecedented 1,016-year championship drought.

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