Roberta Umor, Yuma Sun

20 September 2020: Yuma, AZ — The sleepy desert community of Yuma, Arizona burst into flames Saturday night when news of the Bulldozers’ defeat reached fans who’d been expecting the worst for several weeks. Riots ensued, fires broke out, reports of looting filled the media airwaves, and three young men jumped to their deaths from the bridge over the Colorado River.

Black Saturday, they’re calling it. The day the Yuma Bulldozers fell out of first place.

Local officials anticipated some sort of public display of disappointment would accompany the eventual demise of the Dozers, but the intensity and variety of the violence surprised even the most veteran officers on the force.

“We’ve had riots before, even an arson or two, but nothing like this,” said newly appointed Police Chief Virginia Beatrice. “It looked like the end of the world.”

In Kalamazoo late Saturday night, Yuma lost to the Badgers 5-4 in the bottom of the twelfth. Ten minutes later, rioting broke out two thousand miles away, in the Arizona home of the Dozers. Young people stormed the downtown streets, broke shop windows, looted local businesses and eventually set fire to several recycling bins in the downtown area.

When police, in their controversial new riot gear, organized to disperse the rioters, the youngsters fled into the back alleys of Old Town where they set fire to a wooden structure used by the Dozer ball club to sell tickets on game days. Fire spread quickly to an abandoned building next door, which had housed Anna’s Mexican Food prior to the closure of that business.

Three young men pursued by the police as the potential arsonists responsible for the fires in Old Town hid out until

the early hours of Sunday morning on the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” the former McPhaul Bridge that once spanned the Colorado River, but now rises above nothing but sand since the river was diverted back in 1968. The infamous bridge has become a local hangout for dopers and skinheads. Two homeless men, who sleep in the shadow of the bridge during the long, hot months of summer, saw the young men leap from the bridge to their deaths in the sand. Police confirmed the cause of death and await toxicology reports to explain the young men’s strange suicides. Two of the three deceased youngsters wore Yuma Bulldozer baseball caps. The third wore an old, tattered cap with the letter A on it. Police are investigating the significance of the third young man’s cap.

But perhaps most unsettling was the report police received in the early hours of the morning that Yuma bench coach and former infielder David Goode had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom. In an unusual and outrageous set of demands, the kidnappers called for the resignation of manager Ken Legere, the refund of all ticket sales, and the return of Bob Mayberry to his former post as General Manager of the Yuma club. Mayberry has spent the entire 2020 season in the Camarillo State Hospital.

Emma Span, spokeswoman and member of the Dozers’ consortium of owners, responded to the kidnappers’ demands in a brief press conference from her home in New York. “Under no circumstances will we meet the illegal and immoral demands of kidnappers. They are terrorists and we will treat them as such. Effective immediately, the Yuma Bulldozer owners have made official the appointment of Pam Postema as the new, permanent GM. Former GM Mayberry’s ties with the organization have been officially severed.”

Mayberry could not be reached for comment, but one of the cooks at the state hospital and a friend of the former GM said, “It’s sad, really, that those folks in Yuma have cut this man off from the one meaningful activity in his entire life. They have no idea what this will do to him.”

While hospital staff discuss the best way to break the bad news to Mayberry, the city of Yuma mourns the death of three of its children and the demise of its baseball club. The Bulldozers began the 2020 season by winning 12 of their first 13 games, but have struggled to play .500 since then. The loss on Saturday was their seventh loss in a row, causing the Dozers to sink into second place in the Sovereign League for the first time in 2020.