Duluth to Cut Salary?

[Bill]

by Leslie Edwards, beat writer, Duluth Explorer

Thursday, December 11, 2008

With a starting pitching staff as old and porous as the Queen of England's hips and an outfield as expensive as replacing said ball-and-socket joints would be, Duluth appears poised for that most onerous of baseball traditions: a government buyout. Members of both parties worked well into the night trying to iron out a plan to save the floundering franchise that is currently nearly $12,000,000 beneath its cash goal. "We're optimistic that we can reach our long-term goals," said team source Joel Dobney under the condition of anonymity. "Bi-partisan efforts have been the capstone of Washington for centuries, and I'm sure that will continue."

The Duluth bailout plan would use taxpayer money to make up for the bad decisions made by Warriors front office members, thereby helping them avoid being – God forbid – held accountable for their boneheaded moves. "I built a bad team badly," Dobney ruminated. "My pitching staff has been a total shambles and we can't score enough runs to even win 40% of our games. The bottom line is that I gave the wrong people money. Why should I have to suffer for that?"

Why indeed? But the innate disparity of life is such that, despite it being a problem of his own device, Dobney is now left to clean up the mess. If the bailout is voted down, Duluth may be left needing to sell off its most expensive assets to gain capital. If that is the case, Yoshino Miyata, Andrés López and anyone else in a Duluth uniform getting paid in American dollars will be on sale for prospects and draft picks at the winter meetings. Stay tuned for an important message from Sarah Palin regarding the bailout…