RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 22
Here we go again—another whirl with the Rubbery Shrubbery (RS) blog. This is your periodic catch-up of Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)—as they acquire a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats (“Where nature happens every day”), please go to this page or go to GoYachats.
Many of the world’s best writers are yearning to contribute posts to the RS blog. Today’s lucky author will be Dr. Isaac Squibley, whose recent best seller, Living with Quantum Entanglement, has made his name a common household word. Here he describes a scheme whereby Yachats might slide safely into a major league franchise.
The Up, Down, and Up of the Stadium Committee
by Dr. Isaac Squibley
Squelched hope’s disheartening. Dashed expectation’s even worse.
Brassica Chin did her civic duty, pointing out to the Stadium Committee that the triple-decked prefabricated stadium pitched by slick saleslady, Bonnie McQuiver, was not a wise purchase. Subsequently, Ms. McQuiver, outgunned, left for greener pastures and audiences.
But that left the Stadium Committee flumfluxed from struggling with rapid limbic perturbations. Like a bunch of kids ready to go skinny-dipping in the local swimming hole only to discover leaches. Brassica needed to find them a different pond.
She had no idea where to look for even a puddle. Drooping on all sides, each committee member began to trudge toward home. All Brassica could do was commiserate.
But as luck would have it (luck always gets its way), just then Wumpy Mugwump happened by, wearing his customary chlorophyll-stained gardening garments and devil-may-care smile. (Recall that Wumpy became a Yachatian folk hero two days earlier when he admitted to once attending a major league baseball game.)
“You sure are a wretched group. Why so glum?” Wumpy asked everyone en masse just before they crossed the leftfield foul line.
The committee answered him en masse with sighs, sobs, blubberings, and wimperings. “I see,” Wumpy said. “Well, Brassica was probably right. No need to buy a new stadium…celebrity bachelorette bashes, did you say?” He paused to run some trial bash visions through his mind.
“You see,” said Brassica with a slight quaver in her voice, “they’re afraid that Ms. McQuiver is right. Maybe we do need a baubles-and-bangles facility to lure a major league franchise to Yachats.”
Wumpy snickered compassionately. “No, not at all. Let me tell you a story.” Everyone leaned forward, even Wumpy, because everyone loves a story.
“Once upon a time, many decades ago,” Wumpy began, “there was a beautiful, modern city, very much like ours in that it wanted a major league baseball team in the worst way.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. Wanting a major league baseball team in the worst way definitely sounded Yachatian.
So Wumpy went on with his story:
This city thought it would need an expensive new stadium to attract a team, but it didn’t have much money. Rather than just sit around moping, the citizens figured they might as well give it their best shot and see what happens. The old stadium they had wasn’t much better than what we have in Yachats, but they went to work, spraying, scraping, installing a modern outhouse, making the concession stand almost rat-proof.
Then they said to Major League Baseball, ‘Okay, we’re ready for the big time,’ and the team owners, a soft-hearted bunch of great guys, saw how badly this town wanted a team, and despite them not having much of a ballpark or money, said, ‘Aw, sure, folks, a ball team you shall have. Since no team wants to move to your city, we’ll create a brand new franchise just for you.*’
Wumpy paused to light an imaginary pipe (see Fig. 1) while his audience did giddybops in anticipation of the future of his story. When the time was just right, Wumpy stuck the pipe in his pocket and continued:
And that very next baseball season the Seattle Pilots made their debut in the American League. All that hard work and sincere wanting paid off—Seattle had very nearly a major league team of their own.
Figure 1. A photo of a painting of Wumpy’s imaginary pipe. **
* MLB even used the old Statue-of-Liberty trick to get them their cast of players, giving them the tired, the poor, the decrepit and infirm.
** “The Treachery of Images” by Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The script reads “This is not a pipe.”
Next time: Will the Stadium Committee catch the parallels of the Seattle situation with their own conundrum? Or will the committee fall to squabbling about the significance of an imaginary pipe and miss all of the story’s implications?
NOTE: We’ve asked you several times whether you happen to know a brainy celebrity who would be itching to write one or more postings of the RS blog. We would prefer a quality celebrity such as Katie Goodman or Garrison Keillor or Geena Davis. If you know these personages personally or anyone similar, please tell us at the bottom of this page.
NOTE AGAIN: Eric Sallee and Dave Baldwin are considering contributing to future posts of the Rubbery Shrubbery blog.