It was like a scene from a bad movie, a very unpatriotic bad movie. Like perhaps Too Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar or Armageddon if it didn’t have Bruce Willis in it (he’s a real man, that Bruce Willis).

The US Open, that old-timey down-home tennis institution, played every year by a few sturdy American athletes and a bunch of foreigners, came to a conclusion with an American ready to dominate the final. And not just any American. This was Andy Roddick. The guy who turned Mandy Moore’s knees into jello. A bastion of Americanness.

But something was amiss. The celebrities were out in full force for the event (so I’m told, I really didn’t watch it), but something still just didn’t feel right. Tiger Woods, the most recognizable American athlete on the planet, was spotted by television cameras sitting in the crowd as a special guest of Roddick’s competition, Roger Federer, a self-proclaimed citizen of Switzerland.  And Woods was cheering for Federer. Poor Roddick just couldn’t overcome that kind of treachery, and lost in four sets. 

Not since Wesley Snipes donned a dress and extensions has America been so insulted.

On the surface this seemed to be nothing more than one man’s trite act of hatred for his own country, like spitting on the Liberty Bell or calling Thomas Jefferson “lard ####.” But this goes much deeper than that superficial analysis. The real truth is buried deeper, and I’m here to tell you, loyal readers, it is horrifying.

Tiger Woods is a Swiss spy.

It all makes perfect sense now. Oh those sneaky Switzerlanders! Those 150 years of neutrality were nothing more than an elaborate ruse! A devious plan to lull the world into a chocolate-induced coma before striking full-force at the infrastructure of international democracy. But a plan like that needs operatives. A plan like that needs top class spies who can get into the most secure places on the planet, dine with dignitaries, and sleep with hoards of Stanford coeds.

Enter golf phenom Tiger Woods.

Think about it. Tiger Woods marries, out of nowhere, a Swedish nanny. SWeden is very similar to SWitzerland in spelling, blondes per capita, and extreme political radicalism. Then he signs on to endorse Tag Heuer watches, which are made, conveniently enough, in Switzerland. Coincidence? You tell me watchful American readers.

Recently, unmanned paparazzi spy planes en route to snap topless photos of Heidi Klum and hopefully not Seal in Germany discovered a massive Swiss Intelligence compound tucked away in the Alps. Closer examination of the photos revealed the complex contains numerous facilities used in espionage, including elaborate topographical maps (complete with very accurate ridges for all U.S. mountain ranges), a sausage laboratory, and a driving range. A driving range!

That we have discovered Tiger’s loyalties at this point can only be seen as a fateful bit of luck. His original mission, as sent to him in a directive by Swiss Intelligence director Tobe Lerone, was to attend the US Open Final, wearing a Toby Keith T-shirt and cheering for Roddick like he was witnessing the best downhill luge race in history. This was intended to throw off any pesky American intelligence officials who were getting su####ious. But transmission of the message was interrupted, causing only a fraction of the mission statement to be transmitted to Tiger (or as he’s known in Swiss spy circles “Agent Chompers”). Using top-secret decoder rings, that portion of the transmission was intercepted. It said only “InFILtraTE yaNKEe mAtch OF TenNis BaLL.”

The logo on Tiger's hat is not a "T" and a "W." Squint your eyes and you'll notice it's a hand flipping America the bird.

We must act now to counter this cut-throat act of global espionage. If Tiger Woods is allowed to continue at this pace he will be able to outfit entire army units in highly disguising green jackets for combat. Can you imagine the horror? An entire army clad in green jackets and able to carry assault rifles, anti-aircraft weapons, toenail clippers and a toothpick in one convenient little pocket knife?

It’s time for Tiger Woods to take his place in the pantheon of American traitors next to the likes of Benedict Arnold, Leopold, Loeb, and Hasselhoff. You can play on our Ryder Cup teams and you can count your victories in Majors as American ones, but after that, watch your back. You are dead to us Tiger Woods. Or would you prefer to be called Agent Chompers?

We were kids inhabiting a planet that spun on a Louisville Slugger axis, and the cards were our reward for good drugstore behavior. My cousin Jeff and I followed our mothers silently down makeup and soap aisles awaiting our dollar pack of Topps baseball cards, complete with that glorious stick of balsa wood gum that crumbled in our mouths and required every liquid ounce of saliva we could muster just to get to a chewable consistency. Thirty minutes of torturous eight-year-old composure got us all that remuneration.

Ken Phelps was tucked into one of those wax-paper-wrapped packs. I remember the exact moment Jeff and I discovered him. We were flipping through our newest bundles of cards in the living room of my grandparents’ house one afternoon, our excitement tempered by the trouble we would find ourselves in if we woke my napping grandfather. From a stack of action photos of anonymous bench sitters Phelps appeared to us, equal parts Charlie Chaplin and Rick Moranis; a wacky imposter in a baseball uniform. He dared us to interrupt the geriatric silence in the house and we accepted the challenge, rolling on the carpet, wallowing in the kind of laughter that can only engulf a child.

From that moment Ken Phelps became our symbol of the absurd. He was the band geek of baseball. He was the right fielder on our Little League team who stood with his back to the plate, gnawing on his glove and staring at passing trains while a batted ball rolled between his legs unnoticed. He was the kid in our Boy Scout troop who whipped up a soufflé just to get a ridiculous cooking merit badge. Ken Phelps was the embodiment of everything uncool, and that worthless card became the butt of the greatest of all our childhood inside jokes.

Jeff and I had a favorite after school game we called “Front Yard Home Run Derby.” The rules were simple: hit the whiffle ball into the street to score a home run. Seven innings, ten outs per inning. We listed our lineups on a piece of notebook paper, each of us selecting, very strategically, our seven favorite Major League hitters and five favorite pitchers. When I batted as Ricky Henderson I mimicked him, hunched over the imaginary plate and swinging with an exaggerated uppercut. If one of us failed to hit a home run during a given inning, we blamed Eric Davis or Cecil Fielder for the drought. We believed sincerely that pretending to be a certain player made all the difference.

While drafting our lineups for the afternoon games we each regularly attempted to goad the other into picking Ken Phelps. One of us might say, “I know you’re gonna pick Ken Phelps. You know he’s your favorite player. You look just like him.” Or maybe it sounded something like, “You just won two straight games, why don’t you bat Phelps cleanup if you’re so good.” But no matter how the proposition was posed, no one ever had the guts to pencil him in. Doing so would have undoubtedly meant a homerless inning, ten inept swings. Neither of us ever took the challenge of overcoming the invisible Ken Phelps millstone.

What was it about the Phelps persona that made him so assailable to a couple of giggling third graders? Was it the massive hair hedge planted above his upper lip? Perhaps. Maybe it had more to do with the twelve-inch thick bifocals he wore on the field. Legend has it that Ted Williams could see the laces on a baseball as it hurtled toward the plate. With those glasses Phelps should have been able to see the fibers in the laces on the ball while he was batting. His appearance led directly to our relentless Ken Phelps obsession. He impacted directly that portion of the adolescent sense of humor that has made Adam Sandler a millionaire. It’s the mentality that creates so many teenage overeaters and anorexics. The kid sitting alone in the cafeteria is funny, but that same lonely kid spilling chocolate milk down the front of his pants? Well, that’s sheer hilarity.

Jeff and I aren’t the only ones who remember Ken Phelps in a less than favorable light. He will forever be remembered by baseball historians as the centerpiece of one of the worst trades in the history of the sport, the 1988 deal between the Mariners and Yankees that put the 34-year-old Phelps in pinstripes and sent future all-star Jay Buhner to the Pacific Northwest. The trade was so notoriously one-sided that it served as comic fodder for an episode of Seinfeld years later. In the episode Yankees owner George Steinbrenner contacts Frank Costanza to give him the news that his son is believed to be dead. Confronted with this horrible information, Frank’s first reaction is to lay into the Boss for the Buhner/Phelps trade. The death of his son is a minor tragedy when compared to the heinous transaction.

But a more mature examination of Ken Phelps’ career reveals more than a goofy physical appearance and a disastrous trade ever could. It may come as a shock, but get this: Ken Phelps was a decent Major League ballplayer. No joke. While his career best season saw him finish with an unimpressive .259 batting average, Phelps managed to hit for power and draw more than his share of walks when he was given the opportunity to play. Despite never getting the opportunity to see the field in more than 125 games during any of his ten seasons, Phelps’ career home run to at-bat ratio ranked 28^th in Major League history through 2004.

I got my hands on a list of players who made their first big league appearances during Phelps’ rookie year of 1980, and he is one of the few names that look even vaguely familiar to me now. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for Jeff and I to spend our boyhood hours making fun of someone like say, Kim Allen, who at 27 was a year older than Phelps when he debuted with the Mariners in 1980, and had the misfortune of owning a girl’s name? Or should we have concentrated on throwing figurative rotten eggs at Bobby Bonner, whose name could serve as a textbook example of childish sexual innuendo?

For some reason it had to be Ken Phelps.

Jeff and I were both going to be professional baseball players. There wasn’t any question as to whether or not we would make it. We only wondered what kind of players we would be. Jeff fancied he would grow into a Steve Sax clone; the second baseman with power. I saw myself as a future incarnation of Ricky Henderson; a leadoff man with blazing speed and a thunderous bat. We weren’t just going to play baseball professionally; we were going to be superstars. Through the eyes of a future Cooperstown inductee, I suppose even the accomplishments of Ken Phelps are a bit pathetic.

But now Jeff works in a furniture store and I spend my days in an office cubicle, medicating myself with substantial doses of Starbucks coffee and sports talk radio. Either of us would probably give everything we have to be Ken Phelps for a day; to step onto a lush carpet of Major League grass, even if it meant sporting a hideous moustache and ten pound glasses, just to know that three big league at-bats awaited us.

I discovered recently that Phelps works in broadcasting, but I try my best to ignore this disappointing reality. I prefer to imagine Kenneth Allan Phelps (DOB: 8/6/54; Bats:L; Throws:L) on a beach in the Bahamas, or relaxing in some quaint European street café, enjoying the luxurious life afforded an ex-professional ballplayer with a .239 lifetime batting average and 123 career home runs. The kind of life that not even Front Yard Home Run Derby could provide my cousin and I.