WASHINGTON. Former major league second baseman Chuck Knoblauch emerged from a meeting with congressional lawyers investigating drugs in baseball this afternoon denying he had named names of any player other than himself. "Today, under the pains and penalties of perjury, I admitted to Congress that I took human growth hormone," Knoblauch said with emotion in his voice, "but only to avoid having a disease named after me."
Knoblauch: "Oops--sorry about that!"
Knoblauch played ten years for two major league teams, the Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees, and one season with the Kansas City Royals, a minor league team with a fake ID. In 1999 he developed throwing problems, and was diagnosed with Steve Blass Syndrome, a disease named after the Pittisburgh Pirates' hurler who pitched two complete-game wins against the Baltimore Orioles in the 1971 World Series but subsequently left baseball after contracting "pitcher's yips".
Steve Blass
Because Knoblauch was not a pitcher, he feared that a new disease for second basemen who couldn't throw to first would be named after him, and started taking human growth hormone. Knoblauch's condition improved, but he left the game after injuring several fans sitting in seats along the first base line with his newly-revived arm.
Lou Gehrig: "Get your own disease!"
The New York Yankees have a policy of creating diseases named after players who succumb to them, such as Lou Gehrig, in the hope of collecting royalties from others who subsequently contract the ailment. The Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball, and try to hedge their "luxury tax" exposure by buying life insurance policies on fans who ask their players for autographs.
Sent down to the minors, or the Royals, which is worse.
Knoblauch urged Congress to legalize steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs for use by second basemen, saying he had noticed a veritable epidemic of "Knoblauch's Syndrome" as he traveled around the country. "It's so sad," he said as he wiped a tear from his eye. "I go to Little League games and I see second basemen who can't throw to first, just like me!"
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."
KANSAS CITY, Mo. With first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz on the 15-day disabled list and the Royals thirty-five and a half games out of first place with thirty-five games to go, team officials have decided to pack it in for the season and look ahead to next year.
"Doug would love to get back in action, but we've got to think about the long term," said Muzzy Jackson, assistant general manager and vice president-player personnel.
So Mientkiewicz and Mark Grudzielanek, the Royals' second baseman, will check into Truman Medical Center this weekend for a rare medical procedure that officials hope will improve the team's infield defense next year; a "Jumble"-based surgical operation that converts clumsy, nonsensical letter combinations into understandable words.
"Defense is all about communication," says manager Buddy Bell. "If you can't pronounce your first baseman's name, I don't know how you can expect to turn a double play."
"Jumble" is a popular word game that is syndicated in many newspapers. Readers unscramble four combinations of letters to form English words, then combine selected letters to obtain the answer to a riddle, usually in the form of a pun.
"Jumble is a great way for ballplayers to learn to work together, sort of like pepper," says bench coach Billy Doran. "Sometimes a letter will fly into the stands and hit a fan, so you have to be careful," he cautioned.
The names of the two ballplayers will be broken up into "cikw", "gurd", "neek", "umg", "eit" and "damklanr", which spell "wick", "drug", "keen", "gum", "tie" and "landmark" when unscrambled. Physicians say the remaining letters—z, o, e and two i's—will be used for stem cell research or donated to a homeless shelter.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. Missouri Governor Matt Blunt today declared Kansas City, the state's largest city, to be a disaster area and appealed to Washington to do something about what he called "a baseball crisis of Biblical proportions."
Blunt is referring to the Kansas City Royals, who won a World Series in 1985 but are currently on track to end the season with the worst record in modern baseball history. The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics won 36 of 153 games for a .235 won-loss percentage, while the Royals currently have a record of 10-33, a .232 percentage. "We obviously stink," said Ambiorix Burgos, a right-handed pitcher. "Maybe if they carried our record out a couple more decimal places we'd catch up."
Blunt appealed to the Bush administration and Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball, to give the Royals credit for men left on base in an effort to boost the club's anemic hitting.
"Whenever there's been a significant natural disaster in this country it has been the policy of the federal government to relax rules in order to help people get back on their feet," Blunt said as he waded through hip-deep excuses in the parking lot outside Kauffman Stadium, the team's home field. "Men on base ought to count for something."
Selig said he had no power to bend the rules since he is merely an employee of baseball's owners, who would be reluctant to put their teams at a disadvantage. "That's above my pay grade," he said as he clipped a "Marmaduke" comic strip from the morning edition of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "Remember, in 2002 they wouldn't give me enough relief pitchers to finish the freaking All-Star Game."
Under Blunt's proposal, the Royals would earn three runs for every runner advanced to third base, two for a runner left on second, and one for a man stranded at first. Royals' players would also receive USDA Food Stamps, and complimentary slurpees at convenience stores throughout the metropolitan Kansas City area.
Mark Grudzielanek, the team's second baseman, said he would welcome the proposed relief. "I have to go around with a phony name to throw fans off the scent," he said. "I'm tired of living a lie."
Boston Herald: The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are considering a change in the team's name.
TAMPA, Florida. New Tampa Bay Devil Rays' owner Stuart Sternberg hit a nerve when he announced Friday that he planned to change the team's name, the first such change in the name of an MLB team that wasn't also changing cities since the Houston Colt .45s became the Astros in 1961.
The name "Devil Rays" is "associated with losing," said Britt Beemer, chairman of American Research Group, a pro sports marketing research group, a sentiment echoed by Mark Ferguson, owner of Ferg's Sports Bar & Grill near the team's ballpark. "There's too much negativity around 'devil'," he said.
In a sort of domino-theory of sports team names, fans across the country rushed to phones and computers to urge local owners to change the names of their perennial losers. Cable and phone providers noted the highest volume of queries from the following regions:
Phoenix: There aren't many Cardinals in Arizona, and the football Cardinals have the worst won-loss percentage in NFL history. "Gila Monsters, Road Runners--anything but 'Cardinals'," said long-suffering fan Andy Bakersfield. The Cardinals abandoned Chicago and St. Louis before they moved to Phoenix, and no one was ever sorry to see them go.
Kansas City: There's nothing royal about the Royals, and until major league baseball adopts true revenue-sharing, there never will be. The name "Royal" comes from the name of annual livestock show when 3,000 head of cattle, sheep, goats and hogs come into a major metropolitan area, fouling the air in upscale sidewalk cafes in the Country Club Plaza area. "I was trying to impress a girl from out of town with my knowledge of French films," said would-be urban sophisticate Evan Wilensky of Overland Park, Kansas, "when the wind shifted and an odor like the farts of a 1,000 sows wafted over our vanilla lattes. All I could say was 'It wasn't me,' but it was too late. And I can't get the smell out of my beret."
Chicago: "The 'Black' part of 'Blackhawks' is too negative," claims hockey nut Jerry LoPresti, a Blackhawks season ticket holder for seven dismal years. "If they were just the 'Hawks', maybe they'd move to Atlanta."
KANSAS CITY, Mo. First baseman Doug Mientkiewicz is one of the newest members of the Kansas City Royals, but his teammates didn't hesitate when they found out the veteran infielder needed their help.
"I haven't known him that long, but when I heard he was in the hospital, I rushed right over," said infielder Angel Berroa.
Mientkiewicz was diagnosed with Wojciechowski's Syndrome, named after the Chicago Bears' tackle who died from a consonantal occlusion caused by silent letters in his surname.
Mientkiewicz's name is pronounced "Min-KAY-vich," but linguists had previously warned him that surgery might be necessary. "If that's how it's supposed to sound," said University of Missouri linquistics professor Harold Berman, "then my name is pronounced '####'s Uncle'."
Berroa agreed to donate an "r" and an "a" to the man perhaps best known for catching the final out of the 2004 World Series, which ended an 86-year championship drought for the Boston Red Sox. Berroa will now go by the name "Bero".
Pitcher Joel Peralta donated an "a", and catcher Paul Bako gave an "o", and will be penciled into the line-up card as "Peralt" and "Bak" from now on. Their new teammate will now be known as "Doug Mirenitaki-Wecazio", which, while longer than his former name, doesn't have as many weird Polish letter combinations as before.
In what doctors at Truman Medical Center called a "win-win" situation, another new member of the Royals, Mark Grudzielanek, donated a "i" that could have caused him problems in later years. The addition of this letter helped break up a dangerous "ntk" blockage for his teammate, but the second baseman downplayed his contribution.
CHICAGO. In an effort to capitalize on their 2005 World Series victory, the Chicago White Sox today announced a series of promotional events for the 2006 season that they hope will finally boost their attendance to levels enjoyed by their North Side counterparts, the Chicago Cubs.
"We've always been the bridesmaid in this town," said Sox official Oliver Gewertz. The Cubs outdrew the White Sox in 2005, averaging 38,751 fans per game to the Sox' 28,924, even as the AL franchise on the South Side was making a historic wire-to-wire run to its first world championship in 88 years.
Team officials plan a "Whack a Royal Night" on Monday, April 17th, when Kansas City comes to the Windy City for the opening match of a three-game series, to commemorate the 2002 incident in which a father and his teenage son climbed out of the stands at U.S. Cellular Field and attacked Royals' first-base coach Tom Gamboa.
"These yokels come up from Missouri, all corn-fed and happy--they're just asking for it," said Gewertz with a gleam in his eye.
White Sox fans have historically been considered more abrasive than Cubs followers, and their surroundings may have something to do with it. U.S. Cellular Field is bounded by a high-speed expressway on one side and housing projects on the other three, while Wrigley Field is located in a quaint residential neighborhood that includes restaurants, theatres and bars frequented by young professionals.
"You see people walking around Wrigleyville, big grins on their faces. You walk out of the 'Cell' with a smile on your face and the cops will stop you for questioning," said long-time Chicago resident Adam Kopik, "maybe even a beating if they're looking for a promotion."
Sox officials also plan a "Death to Rap" event that will recall another embarassing moment in team history, the "Disco Demolition Night" in 1979 when disco records were destroyed by a bomb at the club's former home field, Comiskey Park, touching off a riot that forced the cancellation of a game with the Detroit Tigers.
"We want to bring the excitement of South Side gunfire into the park where fans can enjoy it in comfort," said Gewertz. "Chicago rappers will make the potheads of the '70's look like a Yanni concert."
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.
