The Kansas City Royals, the only team in the majors to have less than twenty wins (also the only team so far to be at least twenty games out of first place), turned a triple play their own way. It was clumsy, charming, and included a would-be throwing error. It was the first triple play in recorded history to make fans embarrassed for the defense.

On a lazy Sunday, the Royals were losing to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It was 1-0 in the top of the second inning. The Rays had two men on; Aubrey Huff was on third and Rocco Baldelli was on first.

Scot Elarton pitched and Russell Branyan lifted the ball into shallow center field. Royals center fielder David DeJesus, perhaps a little bit too used to chasing batted balls into the depths of the field, backed up. After a brief pause, though, DeJesus realized his mistake and charged forward, ultimately catching the ball. Seeing Huff charging in to score, DeJesus wildly heaved the ball toward home plate. The effort caused him to fall down. So hard was his throw that it sailed over the head of Royals catcher Paul Bako. This inspired Baldelli to tag up at first and make for second. Huff was called safe at home. Unexpectedly, DeJesus's throw landed squarely in the glove of Elarton, who was backing up Bako and who happens to be more than six-and-a-half feet tall. Elarton threw to shortstop Angel Berroa, who was covering the bag at second, and had no trouble tagging out Baldelli. Berroa then threw to third, where third baseman Mark Teahen stepped on the base and appealed to third base umpire Bob Davidson that Aubrey Huff left the bag before DeJesus caught the ball, which would make him out. Davidson agreed with Teahen. Three outs.

Now, who's on first?

The Royals went on to lose 8-2.

Madison Avenue wants to be hip. There is a pathetic desperateness in its attempts to cash in on fads and fashions. Focus groups notwithstanding, the advertising industry -- one with a sprawling, corporate infrastructure -- is fairly isolated from whole strata of the country. It is not the ideal apparatus to keep up with the slick preferences of the young and the monied.

Even with hipster scouts always in search of the next fashions and crazes to be turned into marketing materiel, it takes time to devise campaigns, pitch them to clients, respond to client feedback, and produce and mount ads.

Which is exactly the lag that seems to have beset the advertising industry with Japanese culture and japanimation. Since that rocky period in the '80s when rumors swirled that the Japanese owned New Jersey and Detroit urged everyone to buy American cars, Japan has been shedding its untrustworthy status. Sushi is beloved. Cartoon Network began banking on anime as the style edged closer and closer to the main stream. "All Your Base are Belong to Us" became one of the most successful Internet virals ever. Iron Chef brought the oddly overwrought Japanese sensibility to the Food Network demographic, and then Lost in Translation capped it all off by putting Tokyo at the center of the hippest movie of 2003.

Two and a half years later, Madison Avenue is looking to cash in.

ABC is busy promoting its new show Master of Champions, which has a Japanese pedigree. A very white announcer tries and fails to capture the apparent zaniness (and I don't use the word Zany lightly) of the program, the graphic doesn't quite dare to embrace the hyper inflated standards of anime, and the title itself genuinely wants to invoke the delightful translations that make the bridge between Japanese and English such an amusing place to be.

Honda's Fit, a Japanese car the company is releasing in the US, has done a less half-assed job but doesn't quite nail it, either. The teevee spots are quick and quippy; the title cards have the brush stroked backgrounds favored by low budget anime, a la Speed Racer; and to avoid the too-white-announcer vs. unsettling stereotyped voiceover conundrum, the producers have taken a page from "All Your Base"'s playbook and used robot voiceovers. Still, the ads lack the car equivalent of the huge anime doe-eyes and are too ironic to truly capture the earnest sense of amazement that makes anime so enjoyable.

The closest parody or tribute to anime came not from Madison Avenue, but from an operation much lower to the ground. Homestar Runner's Strongbad, in one of his emails, captured details of anime that are simultaneously easy to miss and crucial to the entire aesthetic. And he did it several years ago, making the joke when it was actually relevant.

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