1. Former major leaguer Manny Ramirez, instead of accepting his $20 million payment from the bankrupt Los Angeles Dodgers, bought said Dodgers and instituted a Steroid-For-Every-Player policy with the profits going to his Just Say I Know initiative for financial planning for ex billionaire major league owners. He will then trade Vin Scully to FOX so that the network will have two announcers, (Joe Buck and Scully), who refuse to talk about anything baseball related during the FOX Saturday baseball broadcasts.
2. The Pittsburgh Pirates, after seeing their final two catchers injured for the season, asked for and received league permission to install a temporary brick wall right behind home plate. The Pittsburgh Parrot has been charged with retrieving the ball and opposition base runners will be allowed no more than two bases at one time.
GM Neal Huntington then traded all seven catchers to the American League thus saving the Pirates enough money to coax Manny Sanguillen out of retirement. Manny, however, will play first base and Lyle Overbay will be sent to Panama.
3. The Chicago Cubs swung a multi player deal with the Baltimore Orioles. The Cubs, looking to increase their already formidable lead in strikeouts, traded Starlin Castro, Darwin Barney and Jeff Baker for Mark Reynolds, Luke Scott, Derrek Lee and Vlad Guerrero.
This gives them a chance to set an all time record for strikeouts in one season and the potential to lead the league in errors and base running mistakes. Guerrero is installed in centre field to mentor Alfonso Soriano on defense and Derrek Lee returns to first base ensuring any ground ball hit to the right side will get through for a hit. Carlos Zambrano again enters anger management.
4. The Atlanta Braves, deciding that they don’t have enough fleet footed center fielders who can’t hit traded for B.J. Upton. They sent Martin Prado and Marvin Freeman to Tampa Bay for Upton and two players who can’t hit to be named later. They now have an outfield who hit .220 collectively with no power. Defense and pitching is everything and Chipper Jones promises that even with all his knee problems, he can still hit more homeruns than the rest of the team combined. Atlanta have a pitching rich farm system which promises never to allow a run for the rest of the season. Their deal with the Houston Astros for Hunter Pence fell through (in this universe) as they realized that he may hit above .220 and might hit for power.
5. The Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets traded owners as the financial success of Boston is proving to be an embarrassment to major league baseball. Sox owner John Henry became fatigued with the burden of having too much money and fan support and asked new owner Fred Wilpon for investment advice. They exchanged investment adviser information and Wilpon promised to sign aging players with attitude problems for exorbitant contracts. Commissioner Bud Selig declared the deal in the best interests of baseball and hired Jeffrey Loria as special negotiator for baseball in order to avoid non issues in the current labor negotiations. Loria promised to give baseball another strike in renegotiating the basic player agreement to include a maximum player salary of $20,000. Selig invoked the “best interests of baseball” clause citing the current economic crisis in Greece.