ST. PETERSBURG, Florida. As the New York Yankees slipped into last place following a 5-2 loss to the first-place Tampa Bay Rays last night, Yankees' senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said he would petition baseball commissioner Bud Selig to break up the Rays, a team he says is ruining the game through its dominance.
Steinbrenner: "It's getting out of hand."
"Do we want to end up like one of those lopsided college football rivalries where Podunk State thinks it's a big deal to beat Nebraska twice a century?" Steinbrenner asked as he kicked a stray dog and refused to sign an autograph for Timmy Salmon, a ten year-old Tampa Bay fan who dreams of working in sports management some day. "I don't think so, and I don't think the American people think I think so either."
Kazmir: "The Yankees? I get up for them by watching tapes of high school girls softball games."
The Rays took three of four games from New York, causing Steinbrenner to call a team meeting at which he bit the head off a live squirrel to demonstrate the sort of toughness he expects from his squad, which has the highest payroll among major league baseball teams and Fortune 100 manufacturers. "This place looks like the waiting room of an orthopedic clinic," Steinbrenner said, referring to the injuries that have crippled the Bronx Bombers in the early goings. "If you can't get over your testicular anemia, maybe I'll send you back down to Wilkes-Barre," where New York's Triple-A affiliate is located.
Selig: "Dear Lord, please let the Brewers sweep the Red Sox in inter-league play."
As commissioner of baseball, Selig has broad powers to take action he deems in the best interests of the game, subject to limits imposed by the collective bargaining agreement with players. "He can require players to shoot up steroids out of view of fans, for example," says sportswriter Neil Kinnel of the Bergen County Register, who covers the Yankees. "Or he could make Bartolo Colon lay off the Twinkies."
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the team with the worst record in baseball, today announced that they will dedicate their 2008 season to Mimi, the late French poodle owned by Valerie Cardinale, long-time interior decorator for Alison Price, the second wife of minority owner Thomas Gibson of Ft. Myers, Florida. Players will wear black arm bands in memory of the dog.
"Mimi was sort of a friend of mine---"
"We look for inspiration wherever we can find it," said Rays' Assistant Vice President for Promotions Andy Bannister. "Nobody really important in the Devil Rays family has died recently, which may account for the team's lackluster play."
Fred Tenney of the New York Giants, mourning the death of NL President Harry Pulliam.
Baseball players first used black armbands to express mourning in 1909, when National Leaguers donned the symbolic accessory following the suicide of League President Harry Pulliam. Since then, clubs have used the symbolic armband to motivate players, send signals to baserunners, cover holes in jerseys caused by head-first slides and express disappointment with teammates' on-base percentage.
"I want you to go out there and win one for the Gipper--our Academy Award is riding on it!"
"Death can be a bummer, but it can also inspire a team to do the little things like hitting the cut-off man or signing that extra autograph," says baseball historian Bernard Small. "The Devil Rays use of a non-human, non-employee, non-playing relative of a non-front-office investor is unique in the annals of sport, and mortuary science."
Mimi
Devil Rays' players seemed both enthused and depressed by the announcement, and said they would do their best to honor the memory of an animal who was loved by all who knew her, unless they tried to take away her "rawhide" chew.
Rawhide chew: Don't even think about yanking this out of Mimi's mouth.
B.J. Upton
"It's probably the most exciting thing to hit the clubhouse in a really long time," said center fielder B.J. Upton. "The black armband will make our uniforms look totally sick next year."
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."
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."
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.
