Human Beings or Human Beans?
Baseball 2008: A New Season, A New Crop

Like most sports enthusiasts, I have enjoyed watching “March Madness” this past month, relishing the opportunity to see college basketball stars perform in the NCAA Tournament before they turn pro. And it’s hard to believe that three months have already passed since the New Year’s Day foot-Bowl games provided a glimpse of future NFL stars in action in their final college performance before a nationwide audience. But where do big league Baseball players come from? Have you EVER tuned in on a Saturday afternoon to watch Notre Dame and Gonzaga in a pitchers duel for college baseball’s highest honor?

How DO baseball players get from Little League to the Big Leagues?

I have confidential information from reliable sources suggesting that professional baseball players are not human at all; they are actually synthetic beings organically grown in the heartland of America. In Top Secret parcels of land, each year hundreds of new ballplayers are planted, nourished, and harvested. Every March, I pick up the newspaper and read articles about a new “crop” of talent that has just come up from the Indians “Farm System.” You’ve never seen or heard of them – they just kind of “appear” in Spring Training. Then, these “human-beans” are paid millions of dollars to stand in the “field,” either the “in-field” or “out-field” – can you name any other sport where professionals play in the dirt? And isn’t it odd that they put both pitchers AND crops in a “rotation,” and they warm up in the “bullpen?”

Suddenly it makes sense that baseball players are the only pro athletes using chewing tobacco (and why Bonds needed flaxseed oil). And how else do you explain why the original baseball town – Boston – is called “Bean Town,” when a player is hit by a pitch it’s called a “Bean Ball,” and why they always refer to the 162 games played as a “Season.” Further, is it any wonder that the most famous baseball film of all time was called “Field of Dreams,” (they almost gave away the secret, which is why it was never released on DVD) and that the greatest baseball player of all time was Ty COBB; until he was “supplanted” by Pete ROSE.

Still don’t believe me? If you look closely, the on-deck circles are actually crop circles, and have you ever seen a farmer NOT wearing a baseball hat? Hey, they don’t call it a “League of Their Own” for nothing.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Douglas J. O’Bryon dougobryonATjuno.com
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