Here at the gigaplex news desk we like to tackle the big issues from time to time in honor of our days as a hard-hitting news reporter pounding the pavement in search of a scoop.

We do this, because ink runs through our veins, in addition to doing it in order to keep those journalistic skills sharpened in case this whole sports thing falls apart, and it is back to days of covering school board meetings, investigating pet crematoriums, and interviewing families living on lead tainted land.

There are so many stories to be told if one just stops to listen, and asks the right questions to get the answers that need to see the light of day. Good journalism brings those stories to the masses.

So, it is in that spirit of hard-hitting investigative journalism that we find ourselves asking the question that is no doubt on everyone’s mind. If a bobblehead falls in an empty ballpark, and no one is there to see it,  does its head go up and down?

In warehouses and store rooms around the world there are boxed bobbleheads waiting for a chance to be given away once fans return to Ballparks.
Photo R. Anderson

I mean, the simple answer is that if you ask the bobblehead, they will no doubt say yes. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, since literally the only answer a bobblehead can give to any question is yes. Because, you know, the whole fact that they are a bobblehead whose one job in the entire world is to nod up and down.

Of course, wearing our hard news hat, we were not going to just take a bobblehead at their world. I mean can you really trust a yes bobble? At least a Magic Eight Ball has the decency to tell you, “Reply hazy, try again,” if it is not ready to answer a question without just always answering in the affirmative.

So, once it was determined that a bobblehead could not be trusted to answer truthfully, the investigative issue became how best to get to the bottom of answering this bobbleheaded conundrum that has no doubt caused numerous philosophers to at least give it a minor bit of thought.

We could be sitting on a huge conspiracy theory, that is about to blow the head bobbing lid off of the entire thing. Either that or we could just be sitting on a big pile of cardboard boxes.

Perhaps that is why Major League Baseball is still at an impasse related to whether to start the season. People were getting too close to the truth and they needed more time to hide the answer along with the Illuminbobbleati.

The question on everyone’s mind is what did the bobblehead know and when did he know it?
Photo R. Anderson

(Mental note, stop binging X-Files into the wee hours of the morning, it is making you paranoid. Who said that?)

Just think about it. Right now, Ballparks across the country are likely filled with boxes of bobbleheads that were set to be given away to fans during games this year. With no fans, and no games so far, the bobbleheads are just sitting in a store room in the bowels of a promotions closet haphazardly stacked there by an intern who quite possibly can’t believe that they are getting college credit to stack boxes of bobbleheads.

Of course, it is also possible that thanks to the impacts on international shipping, brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, that the nation’s 2020 bobblehead inventory is sitting in a warehouse somewhere in China, and that the intern never had the chance to stack them in that aforementioned promotions closet. After all, the gloves I ordered from China three months ago still have not arrived, so there is definitely some shipping delays on the slow boats from China.

What really goes on inside a bobblehead’s box when no one is there to see it?
Photo R. Anderson

In the big picture, with no games and no fans in the Ballpark, it does not really matter whether the bobbleheads are stateside, or still in their country of origin since they won’t be getting passed out any time soon.

So, with this new wrinkle of the nation’s supply of bobbleheads potentially being trapped overseas, we sought to go right to the source and really explore the issue with the full resources of our entire Action News Team of one.

We then realized that international travel is kind of hit and miss right now, so, flying to China to witness how the bobbleheads are made was probably not the best thing to do.

So, with travel to China ruled out, we did the next best thing and asked Google how bobbleheads were made in an attempt to see whether something in that process would tell us whether they would indeed bobble after a fall in an empty ballpark. Google basically told us that the most common bobbleheads are made from resin and plastic and that they involve a spring.

Dodger Stadium has an impressive display of bobbleheads but it is still unknown whether a bobblehead falling in an empty Ballpark nods its head up and down.
Photo R. Anderson

I am not sure what additional details I was expecting Google to have given me, but the response was entirely underwhelming. I mean I can look at a bobblehead and know that it is resin and plastic with a spring. Worst of all, now my browser and Gmail are clogged with ads telling me about the bobbleheads I can buy, and I am no closer to answering the question that started this all.

On a side note, if anyone is interested in commemorating the Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter of COVID-19 I did learn that they can order bobbleheads of infectious diseases experts Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx.

In our investigation into bobbleheads we encountered some bull.
Photo R. Anderson

In the end, it was determined that the world may not be ready to learn the truth of what happens when a bobblehead falls in an empty Ballpark.

For now, it shall remain an open case, just like the age-old debate pertaining to how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. I never did trust that Mr. Owl. I just know he is hiding something underneath those big glasses of his.

While I failed to get to the bottom of my investigation of bobbleheads, to all of my fellow journalists out there working tirelessly day and night to tell the stories that need to be told, keep up the good work.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to watch some more X-Files. I really hope the Smoking Man is in this one.

Copyright 2020 R. Anderson