by Hank Hanson, Yuma Sun

October 30, 2011: Yuma, AZ — The new GM of the Yuma Bulldozers, Bob Swanfeld, gave his first press conference today and brazenly predicted that his team will win next year’s Rodriguez Cup!  The announcement caught the PEBA world off guard, and reporters scrambled to ask questions of the brash new GM.

Q: The Bulldozers lost 134 games last year.  What makes you think they can become winners next season?

A: Ya gotta have heart.  It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.  Lady Luck is with us.  We’ll take it one game at a time.  Stranger things have happened.

Q: What changes will you be making to the team?

A: This club has got the horses; they just need to believe in them.

Q: Do you anticipate personnel changes to the pitching staff?

A: Don’t know.  Just took over the team.  But I’ll let you in on one secret: we’re teaching them all to throw spitters.

Q: That’s an illegal pitch.

A: Tell that to Gaylord Perry.

Q: But how are you going to improve a staff that ranked 12^th out of 12 teams in the Sovereign League last year?

A: We were only 11^th in bases on balls.  There’s hope there!  Build on strengths!  Accentuate the positive!

Q: Okay, we get it; you expect enthusiasm to lift the Bulldozers out of the cellar.  What about the hitting?  Any changes you plan to make in the lineup?

A: You betcha.  We got that rookie first baseman… what’s his name?

Q: Carlos Guerera?

A: That’s him.  Won some sort of rookie award, I hear.

Q: Four-time winner of the PEBA SL Rookie of the Month Award.  Shoe-in for SL Wunderkind.  Why don’t you know this?

A: On a need-to-know basis.  I’m new.  Cut me some slack.

Q: So you have one outstanding offensive player.  One player doesn’t a team make.

A: See, that’s where you’re wrong.  This is the 21^st century, and one player does in fact a team make.  I got an announcement, boys.  Listen up!

As of April 1^st, 2010, the Yuma Bulldozers have contracted the Molecular Cloning Labs right next door in our neighbor state of California to do the voodoo they do.  They got a name for it.  What is it?  I wrote it down.  Ah, here it is:  “DNA sequencing” – whatever the hell that is.  But it’s gonna mean the Rodriguez Cup for our darling ‘Dozers.

Q: You’re cloning Guerera?

A: They already started their sequencing thing.  Come Spring Training, we’ll have us a diamond full of Guereras.  Whatta ya think of that?

The press conference dissolved in utter disbelief shortly thereafter, with reporters heading to the local distilleries and the new GM proudly climbing into his DeLorean and traveling back to wherever he came from.

Apparently, rumors of a German entrepreneur taking over the Bulldozers reported in the Sun back on October 4^th were just that: rumors.  Efforts to contact the middle-aged German industrialist failed, but this reporter won’t sleep until he has all the answers.