Indians’ pitcher Trevor Bauer suffered a highly-embarrassing injury Friday, cutting his pinky finger while repairing a drone, and missed his scheduled American League Championship Series Game 2 start as a result. However, his press conference about the injury may have revealed something even more embarrassing: his favorite Star Wars movie is The Phantom Menace.
Yes, that’s right. This came up because Bauer brought his drone to the press conference Sunday and explained what happened (one of the propellers spun up too fast when he plugged the drone in, in a way it had never done before), but then went on to discuss how he got into drones because drone-racing footage (now an ESPN-broadcast sport!) reminded him of Star Wars:
“So in 2013 I saw a video of these drones with the LED lights on the back of them racing through the forest and it reminded me of the scene on Endor where they’re driving the speeder bikes, and I said, ‘That looks awesome, I’ve got to learn how to do that.'”
All right, a Return of the Jedi reference is pretty good, and the speeder bike chase is great. So you’re cool, right, Trevor? Want to tell us what your favorite Star Wars movie is?
“My favorite one? I don’t know, ‘Phantom Menace’ probably, just because I think Darth Maul is one of the coolest villains, double-sided lightsaber and his theme song. I like that one for whatever reason.”
I guess that question was a trap, as the answer led to millions of nerdy voices crying out in terror and being suddenly silenced. While The Phantom Menace‘s podracing was sort of interesting and actually bears some similarities to drone racing, and while it’s not the abhorrent mess that Attack of the Clones is (seriously, try to find less-believable love scenes), anyone who picks a prequel movie over the original trilogy has highly suspect taste and loses a million nerd points. Seriously, this was a movie that thought featuring Jar-Jar Binks extensively was a good idea:
Sure, Bauer’s fleet of “eight to ten drones” is pretty cool (is it massing near Sullust, though?), and sure, he has an impressive pitching career, but he doesn’t have strong taste in Star Wars movies. The real phantom menace is that he’d pick that movie over the greatness of the original trilogy. We’ll see if he and his midi-chlorians can get a win in Game Three Wednesday night.
[Cut4]
