07-026
Hall of Blame
Major league baseball is embroiled in a scandal so big that by comparison Marge Schott looks as sweet and innocent as George Steinbrenner, except that old Marge has gone to that great big dugout in the sky, and Steinbrenner is still hanging around trying to make the rest of Joe Torre’s hair fall out. Marge Schott was a bad lady who gained fame by mistreating minorities, such as her coaching staff, as opposed to George Steinbrenner who was never a lady at all.
One baseball player, who shall remain nameless except on the cover of his best-selling book and on the front page of all the newspapers that showed the Congressional proceedings, ingested enough performance-enhancing medication throughout his baseball career to give him biceps the size of vitamin-enhanced hams. He claims that most of the other baseball players he knows also took performance-enhancing medication and that is why baseball players make the field look like a meat-lovers pizza when they all come out to play ball.
Many players say they are innocent babes who grew extraneous body parts the size of wildebeests through good genes. None of them mentioned who the good genes originally belonged to, or if they came in small bottles that read: Take one as needed for ginormous growth spurts.
Government people took charge of the steroid scandal because baseball people have a difficult time discussing anything without a large man in a suit and chest protector squatting over them hollering Hiiiiiieeeeehhh! while pointing his finger. They sternly invited several large baseball players to Washington where they asked clever questions like “Did you take steroids?” “No,” the baseball players responded, staring meaningfully in the direction of the book-writing baseball player, which was difficult because many of them have bad eyesight from years of not taking steroids and weren’t sure exactly where he was sitting.
Major League Baseball, which hopes to someday be written in all caps, instituted steroid testing and promised that anyone who got caught would have to sit on the bench and watch the game before cashing their paycheck. Later, they discussed instituting a penalty of at least $10,000, which is as much to a Major League Baseball Player as a shiny new quarter is to you and me.
This season, the average baseball fan is ready for the Government People and the Major League Baseball People and the Baseball Players with Thighs the Size of Boston Butts, no offense to the Red Sox, to stop arguing so that he can finally go to the ball bark and settle down in his seat with a nutritionally enhanced and nitrate fortified hot dog served in an enriched bun, and for one afternoon forget death, taxes, and whether it’s a crime against nature for Washington D.C. to have to a baseball team. And if a large man in a suit and chest protector points his finger at anybody, he’d better be sure he knows his balls from his strikes.