Miami Ink

My wife is addicted to "Miami Ink," the tattoo show on TLC, which pretty much means I see it all the time too. Given that the show is basically about shallow people trying to explain how the koi fish they want on their arm represents some dead relative, its stars, Ami James and Chris Nunez, spend a lot of time doing out-of-the-shop stuff like opening a bar, traveling to Las Vegas, and all manner of other things to add spice to each week's episode.

Tuesday night's show had James and Nunez designing a temporary tattoo to give away to Florida Marlins fans, as well as throwing out the first pitch on the night of the giveaway. The setup was actually kind of funny, as team President David Samson and the Marlins' VP of marketing just sort of "happened" to walk into the tattoo shop to ask for James' and Nunez's help. Samson also just sort of "happened" to have his 2003 World Series ring on him, which he showed off for the camera. This doesn't have anything to do with anything, but Samson looks to be about 5'2" standing on a stack of phone books, and the ring pretty much dwarfed his hand.

Anyway, unlike Samson, James and Nunez are pretty good at trying to add some sort of dramatic narrative to what is more or less a drama-free show, and the angle they took was about how nervous and out of place they felt walking into a Major League stadium to throw out the first pitch "in front of 30,000 screaming fans."

30,000 fans? My bullshit detector immediately went off. The Marlins couldn't draw 30,000 on Free Money Night. A couple of clicks confirmed my suspicions:

Game for which James and Nunez threw out the first pitch: Thursday, April 19th against the Mets. Official attendance: 18,115. Which, of course, means that there were maybe 12,000 actual butts in seats.

To the producers' credit, they featured a lot of tight crowd shots that tried to make those 18,000 look like 30,000. And for the record: neither James nor Nunez came anywhere close to throwing a strike.

Don't worry. Only about ten weeks until pitchers and catchers report and we can be done with this sort of nonsense.