Tempe, AZ; January 3, 2038: In what has become annual tradition in downtown Tempe over recent years, the bulldozers, earth movers, cranes, and architects moved in as the Apollos players and staff packed their belongings following another postseason-less campaign. With the latest in a series of expansions quickly underway, the Van Hauter Group began work on a new seating section above the right field grandstand which will push seating at GD Field over the 50,000 mark (just in time to see the moribund baseball club finally entering a hopeful stretch of competitive baseball).

But as the concrete pillars rose from the foundations of GD Field’s interior, rumors of repeated OSHA violations, workplace misconduct, and seemingly faulty construction began to emerge from the crews and management toiling away on the latest upgrades. The Tempe PD announced in a statement released today that three unidentified individuals have been apprehended and charged with public endangerment and wire fraud in relation to the ongoing construction delays and oversight failures at Gisolo-Duppa Field.

As reported in a November 2036 expose, rumors of a feud between Apollos management and those heading the Yuma Arroyos have been growing for some time and public records reveal that the three individuals arrested all hail from Yuma and its environs adding further fuel to growing speculation that the Arroyos organization is attempting to thwart the ongoing progress and expanding reputation of the Tempe baseball club.

Arroyos officials declined to provide an official statement for the story, but when reached by phone Arroyos Public Relations staffers noted that they found these “continuing reports to be both unproductive and unfounded.” Meanwhile, Apollos management, and specifically the team’s President of Baseball Operations, Lance Van Hauter, has only made the growing tension between the two clubs worse by engaging in what could be best described as inflammatory behavior in recent weeks.

Van Hauter is said to have urged Tempe faithful to engage in a spate of denial of service attacks against Yuma’s online ticket purchasing system, and some believe he may have been responsible for the recent flooding of Arroyos telephone networks by a series of Indian call centers, allegedly contracted to a “Taffy Mayberry of Aurora, Colorado”. Investigative journalists are said to be still uncovering the details of these contracts and have promised to reveal the results of their sleuthing in the coming weeks. More directly, Van Hauter has openly admitted that he ordered 250,000 gallons of Colorado river water from the Yuma organization and plans to refill the Mill River with the recycled and purified waters as an “open expression of support to Tempe’s neighbors to the west” in what many are claiming is a veiled swipe at the Yuma region.

The Tempe Bulletin will continue to provide details of this story as they emerge.