Why I Used to Like Baseball

Here is a dream that I almost had when living in Phoenix. I was walking on a Saturday through the shiny downtown area trying to think of a way to wax poetic about the heat. Do my sweat drops turn into seeds of social change? Do my shoes begin to melt and leave tracks so that people in their cars will follow in my footsteps and walk instead? I was trying not to judge the family eating brunch at Hooters(1) when suddenly everybody's peculiar weekend routines were aggressively interfered with. With a painfully sharp cross of light, a hovering spacecraft appeared over Chase Field. Since real life imitates movies and my dreams imitate real life, communication was established very quickly. They had a bone to pick with us, and the preliminary negotiations were broadcast over every TV in the world, and probably translated into every language, though my dream didn't have the mental budget to show a bunch of ethnic people in cities hovering around shop windows to look at the TV's. Honestly I've never seen TVs in urban shop windows; the real-world practice of this probably ceased when shop owners noticed the correlation between piles of TV sets in the window and break-ins. Anyhow! Their demands were simple. They said, "We are tired of the god damned Yankees. Either establish a salary cap in baseball or we will vaporize your entire planet(2)." Then they proved their capabilities by quickly vaporizing the last three seasons of Friends. Everybody was grateful, but also in a panic because they were actually going into arbitration about the issue.

Acting commissioner Bud Selig assured the public that there was nothing to worry about, that the negotiations were really just a formality, and that they intend to appease the aliens but they had to at least put up a fight because if they caved too easily the aliens might feel like they could just hold the earth hostage and make demands whenever they needed something. The highlights of the proceedings were broadcast, the main outcome was that the aliens traded two dozen members of their safety squad for last year's American League All-star team. This of course meant that the negotiations would continue, but then the aliens reminded us that they still have the Ultramagnet and could vaporize us at anytime with no harm whatsoever to their race and surprisingly little remorse.

The players who were traded to the aliens used their influence to buy some time while the aliens who were traded to the MLB described to their new teammates what "vaporize" means and how quick "instantaneously" is. The players decided that they would settle for the cap as long as they aren't making less than the "Dancing With the Stars" people. The aliens didn't want to accept, but with some persuasion came to a compromise. The deal was that the players would have no salary cap, but they would only be allowed to continue playing in biospheres on the aliens' home planet, which will take three Earth years to construct. At the conclusion of the three years, all MLB coaches and players will be safely transported to this new planet, while Earth and it's remaining inhabitants will be vaporized.

According to a recent candid Sunday afternoon interview with all-star first basement Tucker "Big Tuck" Tuckleton, he thinks that the fans will eventually come around to forgiving them in the afterlife. "We figure that since there is no time in the afterlife, their eventual forgiveness will be like instantaneous forgiveness for Major League Baseball players, who will be the only people left alive and experiencing time. For now I'm just going to keep doing what I always do. It's business as usual." The interview is conducted in his backyard while his 8-year-old son practices with their pitching machine. When asked what he thinks of his son's future, Big Tuck said, "Well I haven't told Little Tuck that he will be vaporized if he isn't a professional baseball player by the time he is 11, but I try to encourage him as much as I can. It's a fine balance, I don't want to pressure him but I also don't want to give him any false hope and set him up for disappointment."





(1) When I was a kid, I knew that Hooters was basically a tame strip club. I never understood why in their commercials they suggested you have your birthday party there. This was because I didn't think anybody past the age of 18 still had "birthday parties".

(2) it would put a limit on the total salary of a baseball team. In other words, rich teams like the Yankees couldn't just keep buying all the best players and thus always being one of the best teams. There's a complicated history to this, you should google it.