The BawlGame
By: Frank Diekmann
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As he watches his team lose yet another game, Cincinnati Soapsuds owner Geoffrey W. Furst is fed up. Fed up with being a professional baseball franchise, unable to compete with the richer kids in New York and Los Angeles, and fed up with multi-millionaire athletes who are compensated regardless of how they perform on the field. But Furst, proclaiming to the media he had been inspired by a perspiring hot dog vendor, has a plan to change all that. And not just change the game of baseball but change the very nature of professional sports. It’s a plan that comes down to three revolutionary words: “Pay-for-play.”
Furst’s plan is to sign a team made up of players who are paid for how they play, with contracts that compensate according to on-base percentage, fielding percentage, ERA, WHIP, and other modern-day metrics the owner doesn’t really understand. Instead, he gives an ultimatum to his reluctant General Manager to make pay-for-play a reality, and the GM succeeds in assembling a 25-man roster, 24 of whom have pay-for-play contracts even after their agents strongly protested against signing any such deal. It’s a roster of egomaniacs who can’t imagine anything less than an All Star season, and guys who can’t imagine not taking the deal, as their only other option was a recreational softball league.
The pay-for-play season begins gloriously—right up to the point the 25 players on the roster suddenly do the other math equation and realize that only 9 can play at any one time. All it takes is a few losses to turn cracks into chasms and in no time there is backstabbing, an attack using the Jugs pitching machine, all-bunt games, pitchers who refuse to come out of games, fake injuries, real injuries from attempting to be hit by pitches, on-field chaos, and one dead nun.
Frank J. Diekmann is a well-known reporter covering financial services who began his career as a sports writer. So who better to satirize the state of professional baseball, where the most important numbers are often those off the field.
Diekmann is also the author of “Cathode Ray’s,” the story of where classic TV characters go when they are no longer on the air—to Cathode Ray’s Bar & Grill. For info: www.cathoderaysbook.com.
Amazon: Download / Buy here
Smashwords: Download / Buy here
Barnes & Noble: Download / Buy here
Apple / iTunes: Download / Buy here
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