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Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Hall of Blame

To celebrate the first day of my favorite season (Baseball!), I'm reposting a tidbit created a few years ago during the height of the steroid superstories. Seems to me that it should be easy to tell who's on steroids. The Captain took them for a week to rid himself of a mysterious rash, and was meaner than a fire ant the whole time. As a lifelong Yankee fan, any reference to George Steinbrenner is respectfully meant to be taken exactly as intended.

Major league baseball is embroiled in a scandal so big that by comparison Marge Schott looks as sweet and innocent as, say George Steinbrenner, except that old Marge has gone to that great big dugout in the sky, and Steinbrenner is still hanging around trying to make the rest of Joe Torre’s hair fall out. Marge Schott was a very bad lady who gained fame by mistreating minorities, such as baseball players and her coaching staff, as opposed to George Steinbrenner who was never a lady at all.

Apparently, one baseball player, who shall remain nameless except on the cover of his best-selling book and on the front page of all the newspapers that showed the­ Congressional proceedings, ingested enough performance-enhancing medication throughout his baseball career to give him biceps the size of vitamin-enhanced hams. This particular baseball player claims that most of the other baseball players he knows also took performance-enhancing medication and that is why baseball players make the field look like a meat-lovers pizza when they all come out to play ball.

For the most part, the other players involved say they are innocent babes who grew extraneous body parts the size of small wildebeests through good genes. None of them mentioned who the good genes originally belonged to, or if they came in small bottles with instructions that read: Take one every four hours as needed for ginormous growth spurts.

The government took charge of the steroid scandal for two reasons: 1.Because baseball people have a notoriously difficult time discussing anything without a large man in a suit and chest protector squatting over them hollering Hiiiiiieeeeehhh!!! while pointing his finger, and 2.Because government employees don’t have anything else to do until it’s time to campaign for a Federal holiday to honor Shoeless Joe Jackson, another famous baseball player who got in trouble for not doing anything.

In a dazzling display of intelligence, the government brought several large baseball players to Washington where the government people asked them questions to trick them into giving themselves away. “Did you take steroids?” the government people asked. “No,” the baseball players responded. “And anybody who says we did is a stinky goo-head.” Here all the baseball players stared meaningfully at the book-writing baseball player. Well, they stared meaningfully in his direction, but a lot of them have bad eyesight from years of not taking steroids and weren’t sure exactly where he was sitting.

Major League Baseball, an organization so important it is nearly always written with initial caps, banned the used of steroids in the year 2002. Some baseball players thought they said stereos because they had bad hearing from years of not using steroids, and also from listening to loud stereo music with headphones on, so they were unaware that they were supposed to deny steroid use.

Therefore, Major League Baseball, who hopes to someday be written in all caps, instituted testing for steroids two years later and promised that anyone who got caught would have to sit and watch the game before cashing their paycheck. These days they’re getting really tough and the baseball powers that belong to the exclusive Baseball Rules Club considered instituting a penalty of at least $10,000 which is as much to a Major League Baseball Player as a shiny new quarter is to you and me.

This season, the average baseball fan is ready for the Government People and the Major League Baseball People and the Baseball Players with Thighs the Size of Boston Butts, no offense to the Red Sox, to stop arguing so that he can finally go to the ball bark and settle down in his seat with a nutritionally enhanced and nitrate fortified hot dog served in an enriched bun, and for one afternoon forget death, taxes, and whether it’s a crime against nature for Washington D.C to be home to a baseball team.

And if a large man in a suit and chest protector points his finger at anybody, he’d better be sure he knows his balls from his strikes.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Christmas Claws

I figure it’s time to take down the Christmas tree when the lights haven’t worked for two weeks, there’s a mysterious lump under the tree skirt that resembles petrified reindeer poop, and local landscapers offer to buy the pile of mulch in the corner of my living room.

I hate to take down the Christmas tree because as long as it is in the room, that corner is as close to decorated as it is any time during the year. I have teenage boys in the house. Once the tree is gone, that spot will automatically give way to a pile of cast off T shirts, sixteen pairs of old tennis shoes, and a large tabby cat. Actually, the cat may be lost somewhere in the maze of branches. I haven’t seen him since before the lights stopped working, but every now and then I can hear the angel on top purr. I think she's had a little too much catnip.

When the breeze of the ceiling fan caused a pile of pine needles the size of a sand dune to settle on the floor, the man who promised to love, honor, and teach the teenagers to drive crossed his arms and regarded the Christmas tree with raised eyebrows.

“It's gotta go.”

I came up beside him, licking the sprinkles off the last holiday cupcake. “It could be a Presidents Day tree. You could hang little pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on it.”

“The kind of pictures you find on small bills? What if I make it easy and just slip you a twenty?”

“What if I go to the mall and take out my New Year's anxieties on the clearance racks?”

“I don’t have enough presidents for that sort of stimulus package.”

“Well, how long does it take for wood to petrify?” I mused.

“Why do you ask?”

“Maybe we could leave it in the corner all year and pass it off as a sculpture.”

“If dead plants make great sculptures, we have an entire art museum around here.”

The man had a valid point. I’ve killed enough vegetation to decorate a dozen zombie weddings.

I reached for a drooping branch. "According to tradition, all of the decorations should be put away before the New Year starts.

A paw shot out of the center of the tree, snatched the marshmallow snowman off of my cupcake with one claw and disappeared without a sound. A pool of dry needles puddled on the carpet at my feet.

We stepped back a safe distance from the tree. "Let's leave it," I said handing him the tattered remains of the cupcake. "I think the ghost of Christmas past lives in there and he means business."