CARACAS, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez today threatened the United States with an embargo on the export of shortstops until Venezuelan native David Concepcion, a five-time Gold Glove winner for the Cincinnati Reds' "Big Red Machine" teams of the 1970's, is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
"The big medal is for Most Improved Right Fielder."
"Venezuela produces the world's most beautiful women and the best shortstops," Chavez said to a cheering crowd at the presidential palace in Caracas. "Let the Yanqui oppressors try to get by with their little David Ecksteins and Freddie Pateks."
Freddie Patek, world's shortest shortstop
On Monday Chavez took out a full-page ad in USA Today touting Concepcion's Hall of Fame candidacy and praising other Venezuelan shortstops such as Luis Aparicio and Miquel Cabrera. The socialist dictator has become increasingly eccentric over the past few years, calling for an end to presidential term limits and ordering the nation's clocks to be moved forward by a half hour. "He kept missing the Web Gems segment on SportsCenter," said Marvin Schaeffer, who covers Latin America for The New York Post.
Dave Concepcion
In addition to shortstops, Venezuela is a major exporter of petroleum, which is marketed in the United States under the "Citgo" brand. The company is perhaps best known in America for the sign in Boston's Kenmore Square that is visible to spectators in Fenway Park.
The Citgo Sign
Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Chavez uses the sign to disrupt the play of non-Venezuelan infielders such as former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and current Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who has developed "Garciaparra Syndrome", a disorder characterized by obsessive fiddling with batting gloves. Chavez has issued perfunctory denials of that charge, citing the writings of left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky as evidence that America is to blame for world poverty, teenage acne and Johnny Pesky's failure to throw out Enos Slaughter in the 1946 World Series.
"You think I'm wacked--read some Noam Chomsky."
Democratic Senator John Kerry issued a statement deploring the Bush administration's failure to maintain sufficient reserves to see America through a shortstop shortage, saying "When I was a boy growing up watching Eddie Yost play shortstop for the Red Sox, whom among us would have thought that America would ever lose its position as the birthplace of the world's greatest 'hot corner' men?"
Eddie Yost
In the 2004 presidential race Kerry identified Yost, who played for the Washington Senators, the Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels, as his favorite Red Sox player.
ANN ARBOR, Michigan. Gary Sheffield, the outspoken outfielder for the Detroit Tigers who transformed an upper-body tic into a powerful home-run swing, was today named Director of Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan Law School, whose program of racial preferences was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.
"No, I don't want to be your friend, you freaking half-breed."
"When it comes to making finely-calibrated distinctions on the basis of race, Gary's the man," said Evan Caminker, Dean of the University of Michigan Law School. Caminker said Sheffield would report directly to him on issues of diversity and racial purity, but Sheffield moved quickly to correct his boss, whom he characterized as a "pasty-faced nerd who sits in a liberry" all day. "Nobody tells me how to do things," Sheffield explained to reporters. "I do things the way I gotta do them, and that's it."
The Shef's Idol: Sammy "I've Gotta Be Me" Davis, Jr.
Sheffield has been in hot water recently after saying Derek Jeter, his former teammate on the Yankees, "ain't all-the-way black." Jeter's mother is white, his father is African-American, his maternal grandfather is an Aleutian Islander and his dog is a colliedoodlekeet, a mixture of a border collie, a French poodle and a parakeet.
"When you're Gary Sheffield, you're way the hell far out in left field--all the way!"
“Jeter used to come to me and basically used to tell you what (Torre) is all about, he’s a good man, he’s this, he’s that,” Sheffield said. “But like I tell Derek Jeter, ‘That’s you. It’s one thing that they treat you a certain way — you don’t feel what other people feel, 'cause you've got a brain.’ “
Those close to him say that Sheffield's prickly temper may be due to his use of anabolic steroids, whose side effects include irritability, back acne and shriveled testicles. "You can hardly blame the guy," said Joel Upham, who covered Sheffield during his years with the Yankees. "It's not easy attracting Baseball Annies when word gets around that your shoulder blades look like a fourteen year-old's face and your testicles are the size of pistachio nuts."
ST. LOUIS, Missouri. Detroit pitcher Kenny Rogers, the oldest starting pitcher to win his first career postseason game but also the most immature, agreed with MLB commissioner Bud Selig to undergo a full body cavity search before taking the mound in game five of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
"C'mon--I double-dog-dare you!"
"Fine," said Rogers, "but I'm not cleaning up my locker."
Rogers was accused of using a foreign substance to "doctor" a baseball in the Tigers' win over the Cardinals in game two, but Selig said results of tests were inconclusive. "It may have been foreign to you, but it was native to Kenny."
Selig: "It was gross."
Rogers has had discipline problems in the past, attacking two photographers before a 2005 game against the Los Angeles Angels. Criminal assault charges against him were reduced when he agreed to complete an anger management course and had one of the photographers' heads mounted for display in his den.
"I did not pick my nose, you doofus!"
"I admit I had something on my hand," said Rogers as he pushed a reporter and an elderly woman seeking an autograph for her terminally-ill grandson to the ground. "I'm not going to tell you where it came from."
Bill Gluck, current president of the Society for American Baseball Research or "SABRE", said that the application of slippery or sticky substances to baseballs by pitchers is a common occurrence, and was in fact legal during the 19th century. "Guys like Joe 'Milk Train' Evans of the Cleveland Blue Sox would apply earwax, snot, or even toe jam to make a pitch dip precipitously as it approached the plate."
"Milk Train" Evans: Pioneer in use of goopy crud.
Rogers' battery mate Ivan Rodriguez, the first Hispanic-Russian-American catcher to play in the World Series, denied that Rogers used #### or gradu. "It was a form of phlegm, but it wasn't a booger," he said. "I don't want to get into specifics, but when Kenny pitches I don't need to use pine tar."
Rodriguez: "With Kenny pitching, I don't need pine tar!"
Rogers' history of aggressive behavior towards the media was cited by Baseball Tonight writer Mike Olson as the reason reporters were reluctant to press him on the issue of the mysterious brown spot on his hand in game two. "One time I asked him how he was feeling, and he said my wife wears her underwear for two days in a row, which is not true," said Olson. "Another time I asked him what time it was, and he threatened to come to my house and kill my gecko."
"He's like foaming at the mouth, yelling 'You want a piece of me?'"
Whatever Rogers used, it worked, as he extended his post-season scoreless pitching string to twenty-four and a third innings, and increased his league-leading Reporter Punch-Out Average to 2.41 per game.
DETROIT, Michigan. It's October, and the Detroit Tigers are riding high as they return to Comerica Park after a 2-0 win over New York on the road in the American League Division series.
Tiger pitcher Justin Verlander
The Detroit Lions, on the other hand, are right where they usually are--down low in the standings of the National Football Conference's North Division with an 0-4 record. They haven't won a playoff game in a quarter of a century, and have the second-worst record in NFL history, topping only the Chicago-St. Louis-Arizona Cardinals.
So some Lions fans are receptive to a proposal being floated by team owner William Clay Ford; merge the team into the Tigers, creating the Detroit "Ligers", a cross between a male lion and a female tiger made popular by the cult-hit movie "Napoleon Dynamite".
Liger
"In football, when it's fourth down, you either go for it or punt. I think it is in the best interests of the Detroit Lions football team that we drop back ten and kick it to the more successful team in town, the Tigers," the executive summary of Ford's confidential forty-page report concludes.
William Clay Ford
In "Napoleon Dynamite", Napoleon draws ligers in his notebook. When the character "Deb" notices one of his sketches she asks what he is drawing. Napoleon replies "A liger," adding that "It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed . . . bred for its skills in magic." Ford says magic will be required to revive the Lions' franchise, which won five NFL championships before its merger with the AFL, but none since 1957.
Napoleon and Deb
Kenny Rogers, starting pitcher for Detroit in tonight's game, expressed concern that a merger would result in sterile offspring. "I'm not saying anybody on this club is on steroids," Rogers said, choosing his words carefully, "but if they are, they're gonna have enough problems with fertility as it is."
Tigers' shortstop Carlos Guillen said he had no objections to a merger, but had a problem with the name. "We should be the 'Tigons'," a cross between a male tiger and a female lion, he said as he stood outside the batting cage at Comerica Park today, "'cause we're stronger than 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.
