ST. PETERSBURG, Florida.  As the New York Yankees slipped into last place following a 5-2 loss to the first-place Tampa Bay Rays last night, Yankees’ senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said he would petition baseball commissioner Bud Selig to break up the Rays, a team he says is ruining the game through its dominance.

Steinbrenner:  “It’s getting out of hand.”

“Do we want to end up like one of those lopsided college football rivalries where Podunk State thinks it’s a big deal to beat Nebraska twice a century?” Steinbrenner asked as he kicked a stray dog and refused to sign an autograph for Timmy Salmon, a ten year-old Tampa Bay fan who dreams of working in sports management some day.  “I don’t think so, and I don’t think the American people think I think so either.”

Kazmir:  “The Yankees?  I get up for them by watching tapes of high school girls softball games.”

The Rays took three of four games from New York, causing Steinbrenner to call a team meeting at which he bit the head off a live squirrel to demonstrate the sort of toughness he expects from his squad, which has the highest payroll among major league baseball teams and Fortune 100 manufacturers.  “This place looks like the waiting room of a god-damned geriatric clinic,” Steinbrenner said, referring to the injuries that have crippled the Bronx Bombers in the early goings.  “If you can’t suck it up and get over your testicular anemia, maybe I’ll send you back down to Wilkes-Barre,” where New York’s Triple-A affiliate is located.

Selig:  “Dear Lord, please let the Brewers sweep the Red Sox in inter-league play.”

As commissioner of baseball, Selig has broad powers to take action he deems in the best interests of the game, subject to limits imposed by the collective bargaining agreement with players.  “He can require players to shoot up steroids out of view of fans, for example,” says sportswriter Neil Kinnel of the Bergen County Register, who covers the Yankees.  “Or he could make Bartolo Colon lay off the Twinkies.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

CLEVELAND.  Jerry Burke is a Massachusetts State Policeman who hasn’t played basketball since he was starting point guard for the St. Columbkill’s seventh-grade Gremlins in Brighton, a working-class neighborhood of Boston, yet he found himself accompanying the Boston Celtics, the holders of the best regular-season record in the NBA, as they made their way through Cleveland Hopkins International Airport this morning.

Jerry, second from left, in his prime.

“It’s a real thrill for me,” he says as boards the team’s chartered bus, “but I have to keep my mind on my job, so I can’t really savor the moment.”

Jerry, on the job

Jerry’s job is to protect the Celtics as they face Cleveland in game six of the Eastern Conference semifinals tonight, a task made tougher by the fact that Gloria James, mother of Cavaliers’ star LeBron, has been added to Cleveland’s playoff roster as a defensive “enforcer” assigned to inflict physical punishment on any opposing player who roughs up her son.

“Mom, don’t embarrass me!”

“Gloria is an essential part of our game plan,” says Cleveland coach Mike Brown, referring to the off-the-bench spark she added in game four, taking on Paul Pierce after a hard foul by the Celtics’ small forward on her son.  “You don’t come into a mother’s house and mess with her son, that’s all I’m saying.” 

“Momma–you got to rotate to the weak side!”

Mother-son tag-teams were permitted in the American Basketball Association along with multi-colored basketballs, but the NBA forced the ABA to drop the practice in much the same manner that the federal government forced Utah to abandon polygamy as a condition of statehood.

Marvin “Bad News” Barnes

The most famous maternal enforcer in the ABA was Toinette Barnes, mother of Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, who played with the Spirits of St. Louis.  She is credited with teaching her son the signature “tire iron” move he used on a Providence College teammate, an incident that resulted in Barnes’ suspension.  As he left the locker room in his street clothes, Barnes said “News be back ’cause his fans be demandin’ it,” a quotation sometimes incorrectly attributed to General Douglas MacArthur upon his recall from Korea by President Harry Truman.  What MacArthur actually said was “You can take the general out of Korea, but you can’t make him drink.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

WHARTON, Mass.  In this upscale suburb of Boston, attendance at the First Presbyterian Church had fallen off dramatically over time as old members died and their children scattered after graduating from the local high school.

First Presbyterian Church

“It got so bad that if someone called up and asked ‘What time’s the service?’ I’d say ‘What time can you get here?’” says Rev. Ian Fraser with a laugh he can allow himself after several years of what he calls “rebuilding”.

Fraser:  “I know my sermons are boring–I thought people liked them that way.”

After a good deal of soul-searching, Fraser decided to reach beyond his church’s traditional base of white Anglo-Saxons and seeks souls further afield to save.  “I was on vacation in Jamaica when I met a man with cow dung smeared in his hair,” Fraser says, recalling his first encounter with a Rastafarian wearing “dreadlocks”, the long matted style favored by members of the movement.  “I asked him whether he had ever tried Wildroot Cream Oil, which I use, and when he said ‘No, mon’, I knew I had a prospect.”

Dreadlocks and Wildroot Cream Oil

Fraser and Robbie Planno, the Rastafarian he met, returned to America determined to forge a new bond between Presbyterianism, a Protestant denomination based on strict Calvinist theology, and Rastafarianism, a Jamaican movement that worships Haile Selassie as god. 

Haile Selassie

“He give me Wildroot Cream Oil–smell much sweeter than cow ‘poop’,” says Planno, giggling a bit as he pronounces the Presbyterian code word for excrement.  “I give him some ganja, to try and purify his soul.”  Presbyterians use wine, which Rastafarians eschew, as part of the sacrament of Communion, while Rastafarians smoke marijuana as part of their Bible study.

“Mon, that was one righteous coffee hour you had after church today!”

The potent combination of alcohol and marijuana met with favor among Reverend Fraser’s parishioners, and after one church social at which both drugs were much in evidence, the New Englanders decided to become “Rasta-byterians”, mixing both the intoxicants and the moral codes of the two constituent groups.

“Honey, try some of the Rastas’ weed.  You’ll hurt their feelings if you don’t.”

Integrating the church’s new rituals into a community where alcohol is the stimulant of choice wasn’t easy, according to Howell Leonard, a member of the “second wave” of Rastafarians who have re-settled in New England.  “I get hassled by the High Sheriff of Norfolk County for smoking the herb, mon,” he says, lapsing into the high-flown speech cult members use.  “Whenever dot hoppens, I just put ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ on my CD player and he goes away.”

Ice cream social:  “Keep scooping.”

Long-time members of First Presbyterian have adjusted to the newcomers, says Linda Holcomb as she wields a scoop at a church ice cream social.  “Business has never been better,” she says as she pushes a stray strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand.  “For some reason, everyone’s got the munchies today.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

WAYNE, West Virginia.  Notorious for her late-life adoption of the New York Yankees as her favorite team in the heat of her first campaign for the Senate, Hillary Clinton today downplayed her years at Wellesley College and Yale Law School, telling a cheering crowd of supporters “them high-falutin’ schools didn’t larn me nothin’ I didn’t already know.”

“I know your sister Velma Jean!”

“We had one professor there at Wellesley that had a nose ring,” Clinton said.  “Now, I was just a good ol’ country gal who had never seen a nose ring before–’ceptin on a bull!” she added, and the crowd roared with approval.

“I took the nose ring out for this picture.”

Wellesley College, located in the western suburbs of Massachusetts, is one of the “Seven Sister” schools that historically provided Ivy League males with acceptable marriage prospects, but which turned towards a more professionally-oriented curriculum during the 1960’s.  “I don’t know where they get some of them ideas up there,” Clinton said as she placed a pinch of snuff between her cheek and gum.  “I say a woman’s place is in the home, and the White House is my home, dammit!”

“Senator Obama has no eyewitness who ever saw me attend Wellesley.”

Clinton’s top-tier academic credentials have never been viewed as a handicap before, but in an effort to broaden her appeal to blue collar voters she downed a “boilermaker”–a shot and a beer–during the Pennsylvania primary race, and impressed Ohio voters with her skills in demolition derby, in which drivers ram each other in a dirt arena with the last junk car still moving the winner. 

“She crushed me!”

“The demolition derby drivers of America are hurting,” Clinton said as she emerged from her vehicle, the “Democratic Destroyer.”  “That may be because I just hit them broadside at forty miles an hour.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

DAYTONA BEACH.  This city on Florida’s west coast has been the headquarters for NASCAR since the stock car racing giant was first formed in 1948.  “Some cities looked at us when we were startin’ out as just a bunch moonshine-runnin’ hillbillies,” says NASCAR spokesman Darnell Peters.  “Daytona Beach took the time to get to know us and realize we also do beer runs.”

“Do you know where I can get a bus transfer?”

But NASCAR’s incredible success is threatened by the same high gas prices that are pinching consumer wallets as the price of the special Sunoco 260 GTX unleaded fuel drivers use has now hit $6.25 a gallon.  “I was thinkin’ I was gonna have to cut back on the number of races I run this summer,” says Martin Truex, Jr.  “But I put a 4 x 6″ note card up in the pits, and me and Robby Gordon are gonna car pool for a while and see how that works out.”

“We’re gonna bump draft Tony Stewart all the way down the back stretch.”

Other drivers say they will use VOTRAN, Volusia County Public Transit System, to keep costs under control at Daytona Beach until gas prices recede.  “We will make scheduled stops every four blocks, the same as with our regular routes,” says Anna O’Neill, director of customer service for VOTRAN.  “NASCAR drivers will be able to jockey for position within the bus as long as they are seated or standing behind the yellow line when we start up again.”

Solar-powered Capri Sun #53 Sun Charger

Ultimately, NASCAR’s survival may depend on a shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, says Elise van der Hoef, an environmental activist who has never attended a stock car race but felt compelled to butt in anyway.  “They could switch to solar-powered cars, which have attained top speeds of 40 miles per hour on a straightaway,” she notes as she bites into a tofu and alfalfa sprout sandwich.  “That should be enough excitement for anybody.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

LOS ANGELES.  Progressive math instructors rushed to the defense of Paula Abdul, the pop singer and judge of “American Idol”, for miscounting the number of songs performed by contestant Jason Castro Tuesday night.

Castro:  Maybe his one song was so bad it seemed like two.

“She said two when he only sang one–big deal,” said Paul Baddour, a math instructor at Don Ameche Middle School in Chula Vista, California.  “The important thing is she felt good about her answer.”

Paula Abdul: “I can wrap my arms around my waist–can you?”

Abdul is a Grammy Award-winning singer, dancer, butcher, backer, candlestick-maker, choreographer, television personaltiy, doctor, lawyer and Indian chief who has been a judge on American Idol since 2000.  “Fuzzy math” refers to a pedagogical method that discourages memorization of algorithms, whatever they are, and encourages children to ”discover” principles of mathematics that have been known for centuries so that teachers can use ”professional” days to watch television or shop at outlet clothing stores.

Young Paula under pressure.

On Tuesday night’s show judges were asked for the first time in American Idol history to take notes and offer critiques at the end of a round, rather than delivering their appraisals immediately after a contestant finished his or her song.

“We’ve got so many contestants I need a calculator!”

“That was really unfair,” said Lynette Skinner, President of the Paula Abdul International Fan Club.  “Paula’s got a lot of things on her mind, like the words to ‘Straight Up’ and ‘Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow’.  A pop quiz like that would confuse an Einstein.”

Einstein:  “Paula may have better legs, but I’ve got a bodacious brain.”

Fuzzy math instructors encourage students to work in collaboration, and applauded the assistance that Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Ryan Seacrest gave Abdul when she became confused:

ABDUL:  That second song, I felt like your usual charm wasn’t–it was missing for me.  It kind of left me thinking about the Pythagorean theorem . . .

(smattering of audience laughter)

JACKSON:  I think you mean Euclidean geometry . . .

COWELL:  Or maybe trigonometric functions . . .

SEACREST:  We’re going to take a station break.

NEW YORK.  Concerned by the failure of their young pitchers to deliver this spring, New York Yankees’ manager Joe Girardi and pitching coach Dave Eiland have agreed on a novel therapy–romantic liaisons with teenage country singers of the sort that fueled the Hall of Fame career of hard-throwing right-hander Roger Clemens.

Mindy McCready:  Guaranteed to lower your ERA

“We checked with the Elias Sports Bureau,” said Eiland, whose young ace Phil Hughes is 0-4 on the season with a 9.00 earned run average.  “They have confirmed that an affair with a teenage country singer increases a pitcher’s ground-ball outs and first-pitch strikes, so we’re gonna go with that.”

Clemens:  “I know where you live, and I’m comin’ after your Shania Twain CD’s!”

Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, allegedly began an illicit sexual relationship with country singer Mindy McCready when he was 28 and she was 15.  McCready is a country singer whose biggest hit was “Guys Do It All the Time”, which Clemens interpreted as an overture upon hearing it on the clubhouse stereo system after a game against the Texas Rangers in 1996.

McCready:  “Okay, let’s get your running in, then some long toss, then a glass of white zinfandel with Mindy.”

Clemens had been declared to be in the “twilight of his career” by then-Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette at the end of the season, but he went on to win 162 games with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees and the Houston Astros.  “I may have confused ‘twilight’ with ‘dawn’ or maybe ‘high noon’,” Duquette later explained.

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

WASHINGTON, D.C.  As the race for the Democratic presidential nomination winds down in a bloody finish like the last rounds of an Ali-Frazier slugfest, Senator Joseph Biden is working quietly behind the scenes to position himself as a compromise candidate able to unite a deadlocked convention.

“I have a lot more hair plugs than any other candidate.”

“We’re here as an alternative for delegates who can’t make up their minds, or who have lost their minds,” says Biden senior advisor Wendell Hagerty.  “What with Clinton and Obama tearing each other’s hair out, isn’t it refreshing to have a candidate whose hair is held firmly in place by follicular micrografting?”

Sort of like a doll’s hair.

Biden dropped out of the race after failing to establish himself as a front-runner in the early primaries.  He has formed an exploratory committee to consider a run for the presidency of The Hair Club for Men, a non-governmental international body similar to the United Nations that sends wigs and hair transplants to war-torn areas of the globe.

Neil Kinnock

The 2008 campaign was Biden’s second attempt to win his party’s presidential nomination.  His first, in 1988, ended in embarassment when John Sasso, campaign manager for eventual nominee Michael Dukakis, released videotapes that caught Biden plagiarizing speeches by Neil Kinnock, a British politician who is largely bald.  “I don’t have a problem with Biden lifting phrases from me,” Kinnock said at the time, “as long as he doesn’t ask to borrow any of my hair.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

MALCZW, Freedonia.  In this land-locked, vowel-starved country, many residents have never even seen a lawyer, much less retained one.  “It is both a blessing and a curse,” says tribal chieftain Mzrz Glzorp.  “We do not have to listen to boring dweebzskis in wing tips, on the other hand I don’t understand the warranty on my glzblzxti,” a three-wheeled cart used to haul lumber and produce.

Mzrz Glzorp

When Matt Costro, a third-year associate at Lyle, Dewey LLP, a New York law firm, heard of the plight of the Freedonians, he decided to do something about it.  “I really challenged my firm,” he says with all the eagerness and optimism of the twenty-seven year-old that he is.  “I could sit here at my desk and just bill a bunch of hours, or I could try to make the world a better place.”

“We could do a leveraged buy-out for your cousin’s chickens . . .”

So Matt started Lawyers Without Borders, a non-profit modeled on Doctors Without Borders, the organization that sends physicians into remote and war-torn areas of the world to do good without regard to the national, cultural or political orientation of its patients.  “So many of these people are beyond the reach of regular pro bono activities,” Costro says, referring to legal services offered for free to the indigent.  “We had a chance to really distinguish ourselves.”

Victim of the “Evil Eye”

Matt and his colleague Bob Pernstein decided to take a two-month leave of absence to get the Freedonian program off the ground, going door-to-door in villages such as Malczw to find people with unmet legal needs.  “Hello,” Matt calls into a mud hut where tribal elders are smoking clay pipes while humming chlazrks, a type of folksong that combines tales of woe similar to African-American blues, but with a rapid beat that resembles a polka.  “Anybody need a leveraged buy-out in here?” says Pernstein, a corporate lawyer by trade.

Chmzzia, the guide and translator for the American lawyers, explains the transaction to the males within.  “It is a deal where you borrow a lot of money to buy a company, and you use the company’s assets as collateral for the loan to finance it,” he says, as several of the men nod in understanding.  One of the tribesmen speaks:  “So you double your money by folding it in half?” he says in his native tongue, and the others break out in hearty laughter while the two lawyers wait for the translation.  “Yes,” says Pernstein with a sheepish smile after the wisecrack is explained to him, “that about sums it up.”

Later Costro and Pernstein counsel a distraught widow who fears that a neighbor has put a curse–the “evil eye”–on her only daughter, Eliakrzi.  “You must protect her,” the old woman says.  “She is my only hope in this world.”  After a few hours of investigation and drafting, the two lawyers have put together a complaint for injunctive relief and have served the offender–a young woman who is competing for the attention of Zlkrstri Mzzlxkr, an eligible bachelor who owns twenty goats–with a temporary restraining order.  The suit throws the village into an uproar as families take sides for and against Eliakrzi and her rival, hurling insults and spitting at each other.

“Before the lawyers came, we were constantly running out of disputes.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” says Costro, reflecting on the strife they have brought to this formerly peaceful village.  “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Pernstein replies, “but this is a start.”

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman

CHICAGO.  Billy O’Coyne doesn’t usually following the Supreme Court, but yesterday’s 6-3 decision upholding Indiana’s voter ID law caught his attention.  “If the Supreme Court of the United States can make me produce a photo ID every time I exercise my right to vote,” he says angrily as he reads of the ruling in the Sun-Times, “I might as well go to Blockbuster, where the selection is better.”

“But how do I know you’re the Duchess of Windsor?”

Chicago is infamous for voter fraud, as are other older U.S. cities such as Boston, where Mayor James Michael Curley ran for office from jail and famously urged his supporters to “vote early and often.”  “I have a right to vote as many times as they’ll pay me to do so,” says Michael “Mickey” Farnam, who frequently serves as a “sign-holder” on “stand-outs” along busy streets, holding placards supporting various candidates for public office.  “At least at Blockbuster they have action films–all I ever get out of elections is comedy.”

The State Attorney General of Indiana persuaded the justices to uphold his state’s law by pointing to various commonplace transactions for which a photo ID was required, including movie rentals at Blockbuster:

INDIANA ATTORNEY GENERAL:  May it please the court–we should not elevate the right to rent a movie at Blockbuster Video over the sacred right to vote, enshrined in our Constitution . . .

JUSTICE SCALIA:  Councillor, if there are no more late fees at Blockbuster, why do they send you those annoying automated phone calls saying your movie is overdue?

ATTORNEY GENERAL:  Was it a two-day or a seven-day rental?

SCALIA:  Uh, let’s see.  It was “Prizzi’s Honor”, which has been out for a while.  Seven days I guess . .

ATTORNEY GENERAL:  Wasn’t Nicholson great in that?

JUSTICE GINSBURG:  I liked Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada”–

JUSTICE ROBERTS:  Oh, please–that was such a chick flick!

GINSBURG:  Uh, I am a woman.

ROBERTS:  The only one on the Court–and just barely.

GINSBURG:  You’re a stupid nimmy-not!

ROBERTS:  Am not!

GINSBURG:  Are too!

ATTORNEY GENERAL:  Late fees are a barbaric anachronism, a miscarriage of justice, a riddle wrapped up in an enigma and a slice of bacon.  Why don’t you just use Netflix?

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman