Spurious News: New York Yankees receive approval for four-digit uniform numbers!
NEW YORK CITY (Spurious News Network) -- On Wednesday, the New York Yankees announced they are going to retire the number 52 worn by Hall of Fame-inducted left-handed pitcher CC Sabathia on September 26. He will be the 24th Yankee to have his number retired and his number will be the 23rd number retired by the team; Yogi Berra and Bill Dickey both wore number 8 and the number was retired for both players on July 22, 1972.
This announcement revives one of the greatest debates in the sporting world: how long is it going to be until the Yankees retire so many numbers they can't play baseball anymore? Fortunately for The Bronx, Major League Baseball has created a solution.
"We have approved a petition by the New York Yankees to allow them to issue four-digit uniform numbers to their players," said Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred at a press conference in New York City. "I fucking dare those assholes to retire ten thousand numbers."
The Yankees may be up to the task.
"The New York Yankees have decided to create two levels of number retirement," said Hal Steinbrenner, CEO of the limited liability company that owns the team. "The first, we are going to call Routine Retirement. We have numbers that have been worn by dozens of Yankees over the decades. Now that we have ten thousand unique numbers to work with, we have the ability to use a number only once, which will especially help us with merchandise sales since we don't wear our names on our jerseys. Above that is Hallowed Retirement; a player whose number has undergone Hallowed Retirement will have it placed in Monument Park. Everyone who has ever donned Yankee Pinstripes is a special player, but only a few rise to immortality."
This news did not upset Commissioner Manfred. "The Yankees have existed for 123 years and have employed less than 3000 players, coaches and managers. We did the numbers and we think the Yankees will go another 300 years before they need to come in and petition us for more numbers. By the time they run out of numbers again they'll be a pain in the ass to someone else."
The other 29 teams in Major League Baseball are united in their belief the Yankees have retired too many numbers. According to Tony Vitello, manager of the San Francisco Giants, "The Giants are older than the Yankees and have retired half as many numbers." According to Dan Wilson, manager of the Seattle Mariners, "the Yankees, unlike the Mariners, have no rules about what you have to do to get your number retired. Here in Seattle we think that means if you get your name in the paper often enough they do it." Two-way player Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers says, "when the Yankees were negotiating to try to get me to come to New York I asked them what number I'd wear if I came east. They offered me number zero. I asked them if that meant they didn't think I was a worthy player, and they said it meant they didn't have any other numbers."
= new reply since forum marked as read
