WULAD's Baseball Preview 2006!

Ah, April--when the cold, hard, molasses-filled ground of winter, with its useless sports such as curling, ice badminton, extreme ice badminton, and football, give way to the green fields of spring, and the return of “America’s Game”: Grand Theft Auto 4. And also, there’s baseball.

That’s right, baseball--with its nostalgically lazy pacing, its nostalgia-laden walks down the memory lanes of Small Town, U.S.A., where the nostalgia is so thick that you could cut it thickly and nostalgically with a magical nostalgia-knife, and weep with nostalgia as you bite into your juicy slice of nostalgia, and feel your tears of nostalgia slowly turn to sorrow as you realize that the slice cost eight dollars and it has a hair in it.

Well, friend--and note that I said “friend” and not “friends,” since I’m realistic about this site’s readership--you’ve come to the right place for all your baseball-addressing needs. We here at WULAD are perennial fans of the National Pastime--again, I’m talking about Grand Auto Theft 4, but we also enjoy baseball, so here, in handy itemized format, is an exclusive look at what's in store for this glorious game and also baseball in 2006...

• Japanese players returning to their American teams following their win in the inaugural World Baseball Classic will endlessly mock and berate their non-Japanese teammates, causing some of the more sensitive souls among them, such as Corbin Bernson and Robert Redford, to cry silently in the locker room corner. Tensions will hit a peak when Kenji Johjima of the Mariners offers Mike Piazza of the Padres a hot dog spiked with three tablespoons of wasabi during the All-Star Home Run Derby, then shouts, “If you can’t take the heat, you should have stayed out of the World Baseball Classic! Go Italy! Go Italy!”, as Piazza writhes in agony, desperately shoving handfuls of grass into his mouth. In retaliation, Piazza will offer Johjima’s wife a cannoli filled with Ben-Gay.
  
  
• Star outfielder and pharmaceutical industry-savior Barry Bonds will have another fine season, but will wear on the patience of fans due to his time-consuming league-imposed requirement to give a urine sample after each pitch of an at-bat (but only on days ending in a “y”). He will bear this burden with his characteristic cheerfulness and goodwill.
  
  
• In a controversial attempt to increase interest and distract fans from the steroid controversy, the San Francisco Giants will field an all-transsexual prostitute team for the first time since 1956, and will change its team colors from black and orange to transparent and gossamer. Many familiar faces from my old neighborhood will find their true callings on the diamond, and "Lady Ho-diva" will stun the establishment by becoming only the second she-male to win the National League Batting Title.
  
  
• My beloved New York Mets will beat the Oakland Athletics in a rematch of the 1973 World Series, bringing an end to the decades-long torment of Spiro Agnew, who became the notorious goat of ’73 when he let David Cassidy’s slow grounder trickle through his legs, allowing the A’s to score the winning run. This time, New York ace lefty Jerry Seinfeld will outpitch Gertrude Stein of Oakland for a win in the pivotal Game Five. I will be able to buy my ticket at the Coliseum box office twenty minutes before the game, after which I will be ritually murdered in the Oakland Coliseum parking lot after hubristically shouting “Raiders Suck” in celebration.
  
  
• Washington D.C. fans will be dismayed when President Bush calls up the Nationals to active duty in order to make up for reduced Army recruitment. However, tears will turn to cheers when Livan Hernandez captures Osama Bin Laden and forces him to parade naked through the streets of our nation’s capital with Hernandez’s jockstrap on his head. In recognition, Bush announces that he will reverse the result of this year’s World Baseball Classic, naming the Nationals honorary world champions instead of Japan. This causes Japan to immediately declare war on the United States, but Bush reassures the public that they will be able to visit Japanese-born baseball stars such as Ichiro and Hideki Matsui in their spacious new semi-permanent spring training camps in the California desert.
  
  
• And now,as they say in the big leagues... Play Grand Theft Auto 4! I mean ball!