*** CAUTION: This post contains content intended only for a mature audience. Parental Guidance is Suggested. ***
BY DC CUEVA
When you look at it, baseball is a sport that is rich in tradition and history, where this past season marked the 150th anniversary of professional baseball starting in this country when the Cincinnati Red Stockings (the present Reds) began play by the National Association in 1869. The sport is the true epitome of "old school" in American sport, from the Red Sox and Cubs playing in small & cozy ballparks that have been around for over 100 years, to the relative slow pace of games that take 3 hours to complete from first to last pitch. And it's a tradition every fall that baseball's best battle to make it to the World Series and claim the championship of Major League Baseball.
Even though no team has been able to put together back-to-back championships for a longer spell than in the 150-year history of the Fall Classic, the past two decades have seen classic postseason battles, the crown being rotated among the Yankees, Cardinals, Phillies and modern-day expansion clubs. But the most notable headline has been of lengthy title droughts coming to an end with the Red Sox turning an 86-year championship drought into four titles in 15 years, the Giants winning three in five years after waiting 56 years for a ring, and the Cubs winning it all after a classic Game 7 in 2016 in snapping 108 years of futility as those Lovable Losers.
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| Sports Illustrated |
In the end, history was made: the Nationals won their first World Series title and gave the Capitol its second baseball championship after the Senators and legendary pitcher Warren Johnson upset a heavily favored New York Giants team in 1924. For the first time in the history of American sports, a best-of-seven postseason series was won by the visiting team, and for the first time since 2012 a team not seeded first won all four of the biggest sporting prizes in the continent. And on Saturday - for the second time in over a year, the District of Columbia had a victory parade in their city for a sports title, a year after the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup... and coupled with the WNBA's Mystics winning their 2nd title, it makes the nation's capital the City of Champions.
But until Daniel Hudson dealt the season's last pitch to Houston outfielder Michael Brantley who swung, missed and struck out for the last out, the most talked-about moment of this year's Fall Classic came not on the field, but in the stands in Nationals Park during Game 5 last Sunday. There - and similar to what happened at Madison Square Garden at UFC 254 a few days later, the President and his wife received an expectedly unwelcome welcome from the crowd just a year before what should be an intense reelection campaign amidst a divided America we are in now (and a capital that always goes blue on election night).
But that pregame moment paled in comparison to what happened during the game itself. There, two women sitting behind home plate decided to take advantage of the national spotlight of the grand old game's biggest showcase to do something that is as risque as it can get at a sporting event, and something that stole the spotlight on a night that, with momentum at stake heading back to Texas in what became a best-of-3 World Series, was THE big story on social media in the hours afterwards.
Compared to other seasons of MTV's Are You The One?, Season 4 of three years ago may not have the status of the quintessential perfect match of Amber & Ethan of the first class, the notoriety of the Season 5 cast that went home broke, or what seasons 3 and 6 have of becoming vital figures in later seasons of The Challenge or Ex On The Beach. But the 2016 class of lovers do have a key player of War of the Worlds 2 in Tori Deal - her being engaged to 2-time champ Jordan Wiseley and her move on last week's episode of becoming a member of the U.K. team after her elimination win. And there's Asaf Goren - the lovable Israeli-born castmate who's become a big reality star in his homeland having won a Big Brother season there, in addition to dancing on So You Think You Can Dance.
But it's with the Season 4 cast that has the first member of the AYTO family to have an Instagram following in the seven figures... just before Cheyenne Floyd of Season 3 (and now part of the Teen Mom family with her baby daddy Cory Wharton and his mom-to-be EOTB girlfriend Taylor Selfridge) got to 1 million followers, she was beaten to that milestone by New Orleans native Julia Rose, who was part of that season with Tori, Asaf and seventeen others who flew to Hawaii for love. Though her match by the science was Colorado cowboy Cam Bruckman (who recently got engaged with Carolina Durate from Season 5), Julia's true match was Philly native Stephen McHugh and their relationship began on that show and continued years afterwards. And save for a brief time being separate after he cheated on her with season 5's Hannah Fugazzi, Julia & Stephen are still together and earlier this year they got engaged.After the show Julia has turned her attention to extending those precious 15 minutes to becoming a model, which included her becoming a finalist in an open casting call to appear in the 2018 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Though she didn't make the final cut, that experience translated into her founding the digital magazine SHAGMAG, which its founders see as "the millennial version of Playboy," made for the digital age and for which Julia is its CEO and Stephen as a co-founder in the venture. The SHAGMAG website describes itself as "all you can eat buffet of everything you want to know smushed into a digital magazine," and having "exclusive and uncensored content of up and coming Instagram models" in addition to its lead star... all for a $14.99 subscription fee paid through Patreon, and where the 8,000+ subscribers have shelled out $125,000+ to get that juicy material.
On that pre-Halloween weekend, Julia and fellow models Lauren Summer (a Florida native who's posed for Playboy and suffers from severe panic disorder) and Kayla Lauren (a European model born in France and of Spanish descent) flew to Washington for Game 5 of the World Series in a stunt they had in the plans for a year, and all for the opportunity to promote their fledging outlet. And it was when they sat behind home plate - and in the view of the camera in center field of the pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire in view that they flashed Astros pitcher Gerrit Cole in the cold weather, which became visible on live television for a brief second. And Cole was at the end of his 7-inning night where, thanks to two 2-run innings by the batters, gave him plenty of breathing room in what became a 7-1 Houston rout.
That came after the ladies decided to reveal all under those shirts with the Shagmag logo on them. They also reiterated their claim of also promoting breast cancer awareness and, as they got to say in a video posted on Kayla's Twitter account, to "save the boobies" during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Lauren tweeted afterwards, "Our proceeds from @SHAGMAG_ will be going to women with breast cancer and paying off their medical bills. Meeting with them in person and doing whatever we can to help with the platform we have. ☺️"
Whenever something like this happens in front of a national TV audience, those who work behind the scenes at these sporting events and the venues where they take place notice it almost immediately. And Nationals Park staff sent ushers out to Julia, Lauren and Kayla after the incident and were escorted out... and a few hours later each were sent letters from the VP of Major League Baseball's Security and Baseball Operations, David Thomas, that gave them the same treatment that past commissioners of baseball sent to Pete Rose, the 1919 Chicago White Sox and anyone who has committed cardinal sins in the national pastime have gotten: a lifetime ban.The letter reads, in part: "...you violated the fan code of conduct by exposing yourself during the seventh inning in order to promote a business. You are hereby banned from all Major League Baseball stadiums and facilities, respectively." Her dad, who lives in Texas, sent her a tweet with crying emojis... and while she is more of a football fan than anything else in the athletic world (more on that in a moment), Julia told Genius that it's baseball's intimate feel and TV-friendly nature that she & her friends decided to flash it all.
For those in the TV industry, this incident came fifteen years after what happened at Super Bowl XXXVII, also involving Houston as the host city, and at the halftime show produced by MTV. It was what happened with Janet Jackson and her "wardrobe malfunction" that left a lasting scar over her great career, saw CBS get docked a record fine, and led broadcasters to take greater care over what they get to air over our publicly-owned airwaves. And once again, this incident will lead to FOX getting hammered by the folks in D.C., too.
And this may not be the end of Julia and free SHAGMAG publicity being in the same sentence, as she told the New York Post that, "We definitely have some more stuff up our sleeves," which may include more chances for her & her mates to crash the bash at sporting events. And this former Hooters girl opened up to the Post about her ban from baseball and why she thinks those in the MLB office are hypocritical: "There’s definitely a double-standard. I feel there's a lot of men who are able to body-paint and be shirtless all the time, but because we were topless, we were banned for life."
As for the ladies who don't have the CV of the most well-known of those who are part of Team Shagmag, just this past weekend Kayla and Lauren were treated like members of the Royal Family when they went to the Chargers/Packers game in L.A. The both of them wore Chargers jerseys and TMZ reports that they were given field passes and were on the field when the two teams warmed up - it was a somewhat awkward sight for Summer being raised a Chicago Bears fan in seeing her team's blood rival, but given she's an overall football fan she just enjoyed this newfound celebrity.
When sports fans look back on this year of 2019, except in the District they'll likely remember many other things other than the World Series... it's pretty much the way it is when it involves a team not in a major city (ask those in New York or Boston). But the lasting image of this year's Fall Classic will be two things: in D.C. it's an improbable run of a team who moved to the nation's capital in 2005 who then brought Washington a baseball title - and where a children's song and its lovable shark became rallying cries.
In the rest of the country, it's of three girls deciding to crash the World Series by flashing it all in promotion of their website and to promote breast cancer awareness that is the most memorable moment. It having ties to the world of MTV Reality in one of its own being one of those three models who bared their boobs in the cold may have given them a ban from baseball, but continues the string of strong publicity and good news for alumni of this proud family that brought, at least, many more eyeballs to, save for its last act, an otherwise uneventful World Series.
- I AM DC
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