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Showing posts with label George Steinbrenner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Steinbrenner. 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.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Full Count

By the end of spring training I could tell that the Yankees weren’t going to be sitting on top of the scoreboard come World Series time. By the end of February, I had personally intercepted their signals for bunt, steal, and get the heck out of Dodge.

The way I see it, the past months have been a kind of spring training season for the Presidential elections, with teams scrimmaging and jostling for the top position in the standings. The recent unpleasantness involving Georgia, not the peach capital of the world; the other one, may have cleared the benches, but it also gave us some insight into each candidate’s bullpen.

As we head into October, tensions tighten, rosters change, and the road to the pennant is scattered with hit and run plays. Roster changes could make the difference in who waves the flag and who cries in their pinstripes. In the playoffs, the highest paid third baseman might bobble the ball like a lipsticked pig.

I’ve studied the presidential candidates and finally decided who we need in charge of the lineup for the greatest country on Earth. Only one person has showed the necessary courage in the face of unwavering antagonism, tact in the place of obnoxious displays of power, and skill in drawing out the best in the people on the team.

So, I’m voting for the Yankees ex-manager Joe Torre. If he can survive George Steinbrenner, handling a pack of warring countries will be easier than switching pitchers during the seventh inning stretch. And he showed he has the smarts to get the heck out to the Dodgers.

I just wish he had Mariano Rivera to call on when the bases were loaded. A simple fastball, high and tight, works wonders when the bad guys threaten your borders.