November 20, 2010: Kalamazoo, MI – After a lengthy stay in the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital, Bobby Fuhrman has been deemed fit to return to the outside world.  In a strange turn of events, Fuhrman is going back to the same place where he, well, lost it.  He’s been hired yet again to put together a winning Badgers ballclub while much mystery still surrounds the disappearing act he pulled a few years back.

All that is known is that Fuhrman took over the Badgers late in 2009 when the club was already out of the race, and by the middle of the 2010 season he stopped showing up for work.  By August of 2010, he was committed to the largest mental institution in the state of Michigan: the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital.  Today we’re going to shed some light on exactly what happened.

It all started with a harmless marketing idea to have a Badgers petting zoo outside the stadium for Sunday afternoon games as the centerpiece of Kids’ Days.  Wait, petting a badger is harmless?  What?!?!  But independent consultants had confirmed that the Badgers had been tamed and were as friendly as your golden retriever that’s always being petted by kids in the neighborhood.  In an exclusive interview with FSN-ZOO (Fox Sports Net, Kalamazoo) Fuhrman revealed, “Those little guys really were friendly.  It was a great draw for kids, attendance was up on Sundays, kids were really begging their parents to take them to the park, and we were receiving a boatload of money from the sponsor of the petting zoo (Creative Science Solutions, Inc).”

Interest in Badgers baseball was starting to rebound after consecutive lackluster seasons and the career-ending injury to George Crocker.  It was really starting to seem that the Badgers were getting back on track.  Fuhrman explained, “When George went down, it really put this franchise in a downward spiral.  He was the franchise; we built the club around him and all of a sudden he was done.  We were shocked, as were our fans.  It was really hard to pitch to the fans that we could have a playoff run without George after the previous year’s disappointment when he was in the lineup.  That’s why we had to start thinking outside the box, and this petting zoo was really paying huge dividends.”

On a sunny summer Sunday, the Badgers took down Aurora in extras in front of a sellout crowd.  The city was buzzing as the Badgers were hovering around .500 and proving that they could hold their own with the best in the PEBA.  And then it all came crashing down the next morning.

Clearly in anguish over the events, Fuhrman’s voice cracked as he explained, “It was a great day.  We had Fargo coming in for a series followed by a trip to Bakersfield, and I was really excited that we could make up some ground in the standings and make a push at the wild card.  As I got out of my car and walked towards the clubhouse entrance, I heard some rustling over in the badger’s pen, so I walked over to check it out.  That’s when… something… darted through a hole in the bottom of the cage and leapt up at me.  It bit my shin before I could fight it off.  It definitely wasn’t a badger.  I opened the cage, assured that all of them were in good condition and accounted for, and made sure maintenance fixed the hole in the cage that had never been there before.  Embarrassed, I cleaned out the wound in the locker room and bandaged it myself.  I thought about going to a doctor, but whatever… it was so small and it looked like I had been scratched by a cat.  I was macho Bobby Fuhrman and I didn’t need the press.  The team was back on track, I just wanted to focus on baseball.”

Coming Soon – Part II – The Mental Breakdown