Yuman Operatives Nabbed Attempting to Sabotage Construction

[Apollos]

Tempe, AZ; January 3, 2038: In what has become annual tradition in downtown Tempe over recent years, the bulldozers, earth movers, cranes, and architects moved in as the Apollos players and staff packed their belongings following another postseason-less campaign. With the latest in a series of expansions quickly underway, the Van Hauter Group began work on a new seating section above the right field grandstand which will push seating at GD Field over the 50,000 mark (just in time to see the moribund baseball club finally entering a hopeful stretch of competitive baseball).

But as the concrete pillars rose from the foundations of GD Field’s interior, rumors of repeated OSHA violations, workplace misconduct, and seemingly faulty construction began to emerge from the crews and management toiling away on the latest upgrades. The Tempe PD announced in a statement released today that three unidentified individuals have been apprehended and charged with public endangerment and wire fraud in relation to the ongoing construction delays and oversight failures at Gisolo-Duppa Field.

As reported in a November 2036, rumors of a feud between Apollos management and those heading the Yuma Arroyos have been growing for some time and public records reveal that the three individuals arrested all hail from Yuma and its environs adding further fuel to growing speculation that the Arroyos organization is attempting to thwart the ongoing progress and expanding reputation of the Tempe baseball club.

Arroyos officials declined to provide an official statement for the story, but when reached by phone Arroyos Public Relations staffers noted that they found these “continuing reports to be both unproductive and unfounded.” Meanwhile, Apollos management, and specifically the team’s President of Baseball Operations, Lance Van Hauter, has only made the growing tension between the two clubs worse by engaging in what could be best described as inflammatory behavior in recent weeks.

Van Hauter is said to have urged Tempe faithful to engage in a spate of denial of service attacks against Yuma’s online ticket purchasing system, and some believe he may have been responsible for the recent flooding of Arroyos telephone networks by a series of Indian call centers, allegedly contracted to a “Taffy Mayberry of Aurora, Colorado”. Investigative journalists are said to be still uncovering the details of these contracts and have promised to reveal the results of their sleuthing in the coming weeks. More directly, Van Hauter has openly admitted that he ordered 250,000 gallons of Colorado river water from the Yuma organization and plans to refill the Mill River with the recycled and purified waters as an “open expression of support to Tempe’s neighbors to the west” in what many are claiming is a veiled swipe at the Yuma region.

The Tempe Bulletin will continue to provide details of this story as they emerge.

[Arroyos]

OPEN LETTER TO BRIAN HAZELWOOD OF THE TEMPE APOLLOS

Mr. Hazelwood,

Please cease and desist in your unfounded allegations about the Yuma Arroyos. We have never tried to “thwart” the development of the Apollos except on the ball field, where for years your club has outshined us. Your continued insinuations about our team’s efforts to undermine your club are neither warranted nor appreciated. We have endeavored to ignore the rumors and misinformation you have published about us until this most recent act of libel. Your January 3d attack, “Yuman Operatives Nabbed Attempting to Sabotage Construction,” tries to smear our organization with the outrageous behavior and criminal acts of “three unidentified individuals.”

The fact that those three miscreants all “hail from Yuma” in no way implicates our club. Roughly 11,000 people “hail from Yuma” but are not employed by our club. We are not responsible for the behavior of the entire citizenry of Yuma.

If that were the only misinformation in the article, we would have ignored it, as we did the earlier assault on our reputation, the November 12, 2036 article implicating Arroyo owner Taffy Slummings in a protest against your ball club. Those allegations were so outrageous they deserved no response. But since your campaign against the Arroyos persists, allow us to point out that in November of 2036 Mr. Slummings was being held for observation in the Camarillo State Hospital, in California. So he wasn’t in Tempe and he couldn’t have been the individual your article cites who was later committed to a mental facility in Texas. A little background fact searching on your part would have avoided this error.

As the January 3d article states, “Arroyos officials declined” to respond to your latest allegations. And we would have kept our mouths shut and not further embarrassed you except that, once again, you felt compelled to drag the reputation of both our club and Mr. Slummings through the mud of your lies. The article goes on to quote unnamed “Arroyos Public Relations staffers”—but we have no such personnel! Our is a small office: we have an Acting GM, an office manager, two full-time office staff, several part-time office staff and NO public relations personnel. (And no legal staff at present, but should you persist, we will hire a team-full.) Whoever gave you that quote was conning you. Who and why, we will try to find out.

Furthermore, your attempts to damage Mr. Slummings’ reputation by association are ludicrous. Whether a Taffy Mayberry of Aurora, Colorado exists or not, we don’t know. But we do know that whoever that may be has neither familial nor personal contact with our Taffy Slummings of Yuma, Arizona.

Finally, should your team wish to make a purchase of Colorado River Water, we would be happy to process the request the same way we process all the requests from PEBA ball clubs. You can be certain the water will be as pure and healthy as it is when it comes out of the Colorado River. That is our guarantee.

In the hopes that this letter brings to an end your insinuations about a Yuma conspiracy to undermine the Apollos, I am …

Sincerely yours,

Roberta Tipitina
Acting GM
Yuma Arroyos Baseball Club

PS—The photo of the pallets of bottled water included in the article gave everyone in the Yuma Front Office a good laugh. Those bottles aren’t ours. Colorado River Water is packaged in green bottles with labels in the same color as our team logo. Nice try.

[Sandgnats]

[Borealis]

read the front page version

A ‘roach in the Bottle
written by Blattella germanica, the common cockroach

Sometime early in the New Year…

The brown creature had no name – had no need for a name, the creature that scuttled across the floor in search for orts on a cold winter day. Antennae flicking to and fro as it searched, this nameless critter that you could call if you Blattella germanica wanted – but would you. It’s multi-faceted eyes scanned the room it was in, not understanding the meaning of things – the arrangement of furnishings, not that it had a desire to furnish anything – it was, after all, just a cockroach; nor did the brightly colored objects on the walls that represented something to the lone figure sitting at the desk – a figure who represented nothing but risk or reward for our little blattid friend: would he represent death or provide an unwitting feast? You, on the other hand might recognize the middle-aged man as ‘Harry’ Castle – you may even know who he was, though many would not. The small cockroach hid in the shadows, mandibles glistening as the large organism before him lifted what you’d salivate over - a Cubano sandwich, to his mouth and took a bite. Crumbs and a bit of ham fell to his shirt, from where he flicked it off with his hand – sending it tumbling to the ground.

Antennae doing a whirling 360º, the small insect raced to the floor and snatched the bit of ham and devoured it. Then, there was a loud noise – a banging on a door as you would know – our friend knows not of doors, and the man you know as the Commissioner of the PEBA put his sandwich down and went to the door. The Blattella germanica wasted no time.

Up the leg of the desk it ran to a large plateau. Across papers with emblems that meant nothing to this singular German cockroach, but the words had meaning to the man who abandoned a partially consumed Cubano sandwich – words such as ‘endeavored to ignore the rumors and misinformation you have published about us until this most recent act of libel’ and ‘your attempts to damage Mr. Slummings’ reputation by association are ludicrous’. To the ‘roach, anything in this moment other than the nutritional value of the monumentous sandwich was ludicrous.
First it was crumbs he came upon, and his instinctual behavior – it would not know of instinctual behavior, of course, it just acted – made it stop, made it sense, with antennae moving as if they were doing pushups – something that would never be in the blattid’s repitore. Then it sensed the prize, and raced for it, across another decorated paper with words spoken in a language the ‘roach would never understand. ‘engage in a spate of denial of service attacks’ or ‘Taffy Mayberry of Aurora, Colorado’ or ‘continuing reports to be both unproductive and unfounded’. No, the blattid made a bee-line, if I may mix my arthropodian metaphors – it knows not of a metaphor, either, just metathorax – for the glistening ham and cheese before it.

Then the door that is not known and will forever be to the blattid just an unfound door, slammed shut and with that forceful vibration that traveled across the room to the ‘roach, it scattered and flew off the table, landing on the floor. The large human known as ‘Harry’ made large, guttural sounds that the ‘roach did know – anger - and slammed his hand and some papers to the desk and grabbed a glass that was partially filled with an amber liquid. With a swift motion ‘Harry’ consumed the liquid in one gulp, placed it on the table and with one fluid motion slid his hand across his desk, sending everything on it flying as he let out a scream. Then he sat, reached for his phone and began speaking – something the ‘roach will never be able to do.

But our friend the ‘roach was having a lucky day, for landing near him was the sandwich – still glistening, still sending his antennae into orbits, grease dripping from the sandwich onto the sheet of paper that Harold Castle – as his mother may have called him, something the blattid would never experience – had just received. The sandwich was more than enough to sate the blattid as it stared across the sheet with the beautiful script that it would never be able to read. Instead it scuttled over to a bottle that had fallen to the ground with everything else – a bottle that had remenents of a brown, sticky liquid, and as it lapped up the brown sweetness – sweet being a word that it only instinctually understood, it gazed at words that, if it could understand, would have looked like:

To: Commissioner Castle
From: Nurse P…

The rest, obscured by the unfinished Cubano sandwich, which by the nights end would feed an army of Lasius niger, not to mention another blattid or two.

[Arroyos]

It's brilliant, Mike! Hilarious and mysterious at one and the same time. Bravo! Encore!

(PS--What the hell is Nurse Peters doing writing the Commish? Is she trying to get Slummings or the GM re-committed? Oh man, I'm gonna have to find some way to bug your office and read that letter.)

[Borealis]

I just pass the baton...

[Sandgnats]

woah... this drama...

[Borealis]

woah... this drama...

I don't know if Harry knows that he may have been pushed under the bus by a cockroach...

[Arroyos]

woah... this drama...

I don't know if Harry knows that he may have been pushed under the bus by a cockroach...

He may find out, soon!