MILWAUKEE. Major league baseball commissioner Bud Selig today announced a bold plan to revitalize ailing teams by converting them into "fantasy" franchises, thereby avoiding big payroll costs for weaker clubs.
Selig Pontiac-GMC
"We looked at the numbers and the fastest growing segment of our business is the fantasy leagues," Selig said from behind a metal desk at his car dealership. "Frankly, virtual baseball is a helluva lot more exciting than a September game between the Marlins and the Astros."
Bud Selig: "You know, Kansas City is no Milwaukee."
Under the plan, the Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays would be the first underperforming franchises targeted for fantasy status. Each team's players would be released, and the league would track their stats at the Japanese, semipro, and company softball teams that picked them up. Fans would vote "American Idol"-style to select the teams' lineups going forward.
Milwaukee, the Venice of Wisconsin
"I don't see the Royals surviving in the real world," Selig said, his gaze wandering to a Pizza Hut on the horizon as he contemplated the future of the national pastime. "Kansas City isn't a world-class destination like Milwaukee."
"Mighty fine lookin' heifer."
"People think the Royals are named after kings or something, " he continued, "but it's actually just a livestock show--the American Royal. Last year they had 2,167 head of cattle, 583 hogs, 636 lambs and 156 goats at the damn thing," Selig said, a contemptuous smile forming across his lips. "Try to get the networks to cover a game in a city where Joe Buck has to breathe the smell of three thousand barnyard animals across town. It ain't gonna happen."
Prize-winning goat.
Evan Milken, a Tampa resident who admitted that he had once attended a Devil Rays' game, expressed surprise at the announcement. "That was major league baseball I was watching?" he asked. "Coulda fooled me."
What a great idea. Unfotunately, I'm afraid MLB will charge us for the American Idol-style vote. On the bright side, maybe this "fantasy" league can hire a real commissioner, unlike MLB.
Great post. Being a Kansas City Royals fan, we have learned to take abuse. You know 4 100 game losing seasons, pine tar and hemmorhoids and what have you. In our defense, it is a very likely possibility that we'll finish above the 2005 world champions, and to me that is good enough. This year....
Partsguy--I grew up in MO, and however low the Royals sink, they'll always be an improvement over the Kansas City A's, whose games I would beg my parents not to take me to (I was a Cardinals fan). And the Royals won the I-70 Series so, as Carl Spackler said, they got that going for them.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
