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.