Pittsburgh Pirates Lobby MLB
For Permission To Punt – CoverUps.com
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The Pittsburgh Pirates -- the worst professional sports franchise in North America -- are lobbying MLB to be able to “punt” in baseball, just as it is done in Pro Football. Pirates management is not sure if their proposal will pass muster with sullen Pittsburgh fans, but believe it's the only way to drum up support for a team that has suffered 15 losing seasons in a row. |
By "Scratch" De Reno
CoverUps.com InvestigatorPITTSBURGH, PA – The Pittsburgh Pirates are so woefully bad they are petitioning the commissioner of Major League Baseball (MLB), Bud Selig, to allow them to punt -- even though punting has traditionally been reserved for the sport of football and has, to the best of our knowledge, never been attempted in baseball.
“We really think we should be able to punt,” said David Littlefield, the manager of the train-wreck Pirates team. “We need to do something -- anything -- to draw more fans to our game. Plus, if you think about it -- punting makes the game go faster. When we think we're pinned down deep in the late innings of the game, it would be nice if we could just kick the baseball.”
In football, punting is a tactic in which the offensive team, if it is pinned down deep in enemy territory on the football field, abandons any attempt to advance the ball forward; instead they snap it to the guy whose job it is to kick the bejesus out of it all the way downfield. Possession of the football thus passes to the other team.
Legal researchers hired by CoverUps.com were unable to find any sports law statutes that specify punting is or should be an act exclusive to football. In that sense, the Pirates may have a tiny slivver of hope that Bud Selig will go along with the idea. A catastrophic lapse of judgment by Selig wouldn't hurt either.
Littlefield said he came up with his idea last year during a team meeting in Florida, when he was
day-dreamingconferring with scouts over future draft picks.“I thought if you can punt a football, you can punt a baseball. I mean it's smaller isn’t it? No-one's gonna get hurt or anything.”
The Pirates' executive management agreed with Littlefield that a baseball is indeed smaller than a football. However, they and sports analysts remain confounded by the punting proposal.
“The Pittsburgh Pirates understand little about the game of baseball, and this utter lack of knowledge seems to come from the top,” said respected baseball analyst Peter Gammons of ESPN. “That a baseball is smaller than a football is beyond dispute. I think we can assure the Pirates they are right on that point. So, maybe they just want to be right about something. Which makes sense, I guess, considering they've pretty much been wrong about damn near everything else for fifteen freaking years.”
In submitting his proposal to other team owners, Littlefield received help from an unlikely source: Theo Epstein, General Manger of the Boston Red Sox:
“Well, I called them (the Pirates) and suggested we could get on board with his proposal. But only if they trade away all their best minor and major league talent.”
Littlefield readily agreed. He said it was a small price to pay.
“We have no talent whatsoever to give,” he laughed, kicking a paper football off a conference room table. “Take 'em all! I don't care! Just as long as we get to punt. See you in the World Series, suckers!"
But observers have their doubts.
“This is a team (the Pirates) that scouts their opponents by playing their roster on an X-Box 360 the night before a game," Gammons said. "What does that tell you?”
(Scratch DeReno can be reached at Scratch@CoverUps.com)
