“I’m gonna be great at this whole baseball thing,” said one writer. “I’ve already nailed my opening pitch.”
Photo by Jacob King and Maria Dhilla
Shortly after the Writers Guild of America announced a strike, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred had a “mound meeting” with the league’s owners. After this meeting, the MLB opened jobs to the striking writers to help make the game more interesting. “When I heard that the guild was going on strike, I realized the league was in a unique position to capitalize on the 0-1 count,” said Manfred. “Then I did some more digging and realized that the writers have actually gone on strike six other times, meaning they were definitely out and looking for new work.”
Manfred’s plan to hire the striking writers was successful, with 6,118 writers leaving their old jobs for positions at MLB headquarters. “When I heard Manfred’s pitch, I knew I could hit it right out of the park,” said long-time Grey’s Anatomy writer Penn Anpaper. “Making the sport more entertaining was going to be easier than coming up with original ideas for the twentieth season of a show about doctors. There’s only so many disease names you can make up.”
The first addition to the game was the celebrity pitch. “As you can tell from viewership spikes on guest-starring episodes, there’s nothing TV viewers love more than celebrities,” explained Anpaper. “So now, instead of having the celebrity throw a ceremonial pitch before the game, when no one was watching, we decided to up the stakes. Each team now gets to choose one at bat per game where the celebrity will replace the opposing team’s pitcher for a surefire injection of offense and celebrity charm.”
However, not everyone has appreciated the MLB’s new direction. “How dare they tamper with my sacred sport!” exclaimed self-described “Padres superfan” Houmuran Kanpekina Geemu Sanshin. “Every day, I go to work for 12 hours in the bismuth mines to put food on the table, then I come home and relax by watching the Padres games and ignoring my family. Now my stupid kids won’t stop bothering me during games. ‘Who’s that, Papa?’ Obviously it’s god-among-men himself, Juan Soto — how stupid can you be! ‘Why isn’t Zendaya pitching right now? I want to see Zendaya!’ We all want to see Zendaya, you cretin, but why would they waste the celebrity pitch on the third out of the second inning with no one on the bases and Brett Sullivan up to bat? Even Zendaya could strike him out. Thanks to Rob Manfred, I have to talk to my kids now. Baseball should go back to its boring roots, back when I could watch the game in peace while my wife took care of our six kids.”
Despite complaints from some older fans, the MLB announced further changes. “When I joined the MLB team, I brought some ideas from my old job,” explained former America’s Got Talent writer Rigs McGee. “But for some reason, they wouldn’t let us decide the winner ahead of time, so I went with my second-best idea: a talent show. Like they say: if you can’t do yo-yo tricks standing on one leg, you have no place in professional baseball.” The talent show will be held after the fifth inning, with two players from each team showing off a hidden talent. The player with the most fan votes will be placed on second base to start the sixth inning, and the player with the least votes will be demoted to the minor leagues.
“I loved watching the talent show,” said Era Poppufurai Guraundoauto Sanshin, one of the Padres’ newest fans. “When Manny Machado sang ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, I fell in love. Sadly, not all the Padres are talented. When Fernando Tatis Jr. dropped that flaming baton for the fifth time, he was lucky all we did was send him to the minors. My dad was so mad, he threw a brick of bismuth through the TV. I don’t understand why. It opens more space on the roster for a real talent, maybe someone who can do impressions or walk a tightrope!”
