Why is Baseball Destroying the Word "Epic"?

I like Major League Baseball a lot. But I do not like its new marketing campaign, "MLB Always Epic." At all. This is because I like the word "epic." Or I used to, at least. But now it doesn't mean anything any more, and the new MLB television commercials are the most glaring examples of that fact that I've seen.

I don't mean to be a prig. Language is fluid, the meanings and usages of words change over time, and I'm fine with that. I even like it. But it still makes me a little sad to see a word go from specificity to vagueness, to watch all its power drained away just because a nation of fraternity brothers did bong hits and watched The Return of the King. (That's my guess as to how this started.)

I came to like the word "epic" when I was young and reading the The Lord of the Rings and listening to Led Zeppelin songs like "Kashmir" and "Achilles Last Stand" all the time. (And as I understand it, the word bears connotation to some even earlier examples of cultural achievement!) I learned that it was meant to describe something heroic and grand in scope, something long—a story taking place over many years, and many miles, and involving lots of characters. And I'm sure part of the reason I liked it was because it sounded as sharp as Aragorn's sword itself. ("Anduril"—Sindarin for "Flame of the West.")

You know what I think the word epic would not describe? A beard.

Or a baseball pitcher's arm.

Or, most confusingly of all, someone's name.

I mean, I understand that all these things might be accurately described by one of the aspects of the word. Brian Wilson's beard is pretty long, I guess. I suppose Felix Hernandez's arm could be described as "heroic" (although, I don't much like that it would be). "Ubaldo Jimenez" does, technically, include a lot of characters. But not that many.

But something described as being epic ought to display much more than just one aspect of the word. It ought to encompass its full meaning. The fewer things described with a word, the more specific we are with our use of it, the greater the impact the word has. By playing it so loose with meaning, MLB is wasting a good strong word and contributing to the dilution of language. I know they're not the first—as I've said, I've heard the youngs using "epic" as a synonym for "awesome," for a while now. But soon it will just be (as awesome is, pretty much) a synonym for "cool," or "good." And then the way that people say things like, "Oh, cool, it's warm out," people will say, "Oh man, I just read this haiku about a single drop of water dropping of a single leaf and landing with a slight ripple in a small pond. It was EPIC!!!"