Practical jokes about baseball?

[baseballdude]

A baseball prank that some pals and I played years ago. You know any good baseball pranks to share?


I grew up in Kansas City and in the late 60s, as I was finishing college, I was working as an electronics tech and inspector for a mid-size firm. There were about 150 employees and like any American city, KC had a casual city-league slow pitch softball “championship” for companies and other orgs to play in. Our company had a team.


I’ve only been modestly athletic but I still volunteered to join the team, helping with bats, ball, and mostly, beer. Occasionally I’d pinch hit. Anyway, we played a very laid back type of ball, typical non-competitive stuff, some players in the field even carrying a cup of beer in their hands, glove in the other. Loser team bought the winning team beers afterward and so on. You know the drill. We lost most our games but we had fun, which was the objective.


Anyway, we had a new guy join our company, a young and very brash fella, worked in receiving & inspection, essentially a glorified shipping clerk. He saw that we had a softball team and joined. And he also volunteered to be the manager. Now this meant more work, lugging stuff around, getting scoresheets turned in to the city, and nobody really wanted the job, so my pal Phil sat aside and let this new guy, we’ll call him “Eddie”, take the manager’s job. Our mistake.


Well, the next warmup Eddie came out wearing a whistle and carrying a clipboard. He acted like he was a hotshot MLB manager, yelled at everyone and told the players to “take a lap” and “drop and give me ten” which was of course first met with surprise, then rude laughter. But Eddie kept at it and started feuds with the other teams as if the World Series were in peril. Our team quickly developed a reputation as a team nobody wanted to play, not because we started winning (we didn’t) but because of the abrasive and gung-ho manager. For a city league soft pitch softball team, for Pete’s sake. Eddie was athletic, I’ll give him that, and he played a fine second base for an amateur (managers also played in the city league).


It was a couple years earlier that the traitor Charlie Finley stole the Athletics and moved them to Oakland. And it was this year that KC was forming the new expansion Royals. The new ownership promised (and kept to it) that this would be Kansas City’s team. They even offered interviews with local semi-pro players and hired a couple for their farm teams.


At the time a good pal of mine was working for the Kansas City Star newspaper as a sports reporter. And “magically” (heh heh) a letter showed up at Eddie’s home. It was printed on official Royals’ stationery and enclosed in a Royals’ letterhead envelope. And inside, an offer letter.


The letter said that the Royals had scouts everywhere, and that they’d noticed Eddie’s hot play in the city league, and they were very impressed at his talent. But especially, his spirit and energy, how he was surrounded by failures and those who were jealous of his skills, and this set him far above the poor talent otherwise seen locally. And would he be able to come to the Royals’ office next Tuesday morning to discuss a contract? Now the Royals couldn’t promise him a starting slot on the team but after a year in triple-A, very likely they’d call him up. And the letter laid it on thick.


Now understand, this is equivalent to scouts for Ferrari noting me zooming around town in my Mini-Cooper and asking if I wanted to join Enzo for the upcoming F1 season. In other words, pure BS. But boy, did Eddie bite!


Showed up at work that Friday, waving his letter under our noses. “Now you SOBs, you’ll be sorry for all the headaches you gave me! I tried to whip you jerks into a good team and you threw it back into my face. So read it and weep!” On and on.


So we all said, “Oh, wow, Eddie, at least promise us some tickets on opening day?” To which Eddie sneered. Then he went to his boss and quit. I learned backdoor that the boss, a good guy, suspected something was not straight, told Eddie that he’d been a good employee and his job would be held open for him for at least a week.


Now Eddie’s girlfriend worked in the soldering assembly area, and her mom was a supervisor just down the hall. Later she told folks about the visit to the Royals’ head office, because yes, Eddie took both his girlfriend and her mom with him!


And Eddie was ready, too. He showed up carrying his glove and cleats and flip-down sunglasses, the whole deal. They sat there for about an hour while the head office looked over his “offer” letter. Then the general manager came out, welcomed the three visitors into his office.


He said, “Son, someone’s played a joke on you.” He admitted that yes, the stationery was real, and that was the manager’s real name, but the signature was nothing like the real one. And of course, no scouts were overlooking the city softball league, Eddie should know that, huh. The GM, a nice guy, asked about Eddie’s baseball experience. Eddie had played in high school but never any pro ball. The GM was very polite and told Eddie that he would ensure Eddie a fair tryout if he came back with a couple years of minor league ball under his belt. And he promised them some free box tickets to upcoming games, gave them a poster and other souvenirs.


Naturally, next day, Eddie phone his boss, got his job back, and he showed up. And he stormed into the break room where we were all having coffee prior to starting work, and cursed at us vehemently. My buddy Jim calmly said “Hey, Eddie, when’s opening day?” and everyone laughed.


Occasionally, a copy of Eddie’s “offer” letter would show up on the employee bulletin board, and Eddie would rip it down and tear it to shreds.


The moral to the story? Don’t be a jerk among your pals, and don’t be too full of yourself.

[Tobywan]

I am glad he got his job back, yeah, he might have been a jerk, but it sounds like he was in the right company. I would think once people realized he thought it was real they would have save him from the complete humiliation by telling him before he had to be told by the GM. I guess this is a guy thing.

[baseballdude]

Telling the guy it was a joke was debated but when he showed up sneering and jazzing up everyone that morning, he'd put himself into the loser's role. Hey, if you got a letter from ESPN telling you that you'd been checked out via your postings in the baseball forum and because of your incisive writing skills, they wanted to offer you a job as a sports journalist, would you quit you current job and fly to NYC to accept? No, because you're not vain and a gullible jerk. He was.

[baseballdude]

When I was in college there was this monthly newsletter put out for the scholarship hall where I lived. I'd been a writer for most of my life and I offered to write for the newsletter. I put out a newsy column and it chatted about what was going on, known in the biz as a "dot column" -- and I made some jokes about the current college admin, and the editor of the newsletter cut out any criticism (what I said was not filthy or illegal, just sarcastically critical) and yeah it was his right to delete the column, but then he wrote this long editorial where he slammed me personally, said that I wasn't fit to be a writer nor a student in the university (a major college). He personally insulted me by calling me names.

About a month later, he got a letter on letterhead stationery from the nearby major newspaper (one of the largest newspapers in the USA) and the letter said that he'd been awarded the "J. Hubert Wainwright Award" for responsible independent journalism. Old Wainwright, former editor in chief, had begun the annual award. This newsletter guy was praised for his forthright journalism and his solid defense of the university officials in the face of rude and cruel attacks, and so on. The award, a plaque, would be given to him next Sunday afternoon, that a reporter and photographer from the newspaper would be at the college and the award would be presented my Wainwright's widow, and the event would be written up in the paper, of course.

Naturally, the guy wrote and printed a "special edition" of the newsletter, bragging about how his editorial writing was to be rewarded, and he went on and on about his work. And typically, his newsletter was full of typos and such. However, everyone of course patted him on the back. I congratulated him and he told me "See? I was right and you were wrong."

Well, the fateful Sunday arrived, and he was sitting in the lobby of the scholarship hall, waiting for arrival of the newspaper team. The guy was all dressed up, suit & tie, and with him was his mom and dad, and his girlfriend, and the college even sent an associate dean to witness. The people waited. And waited.

Finally they phoned the newspaper to find out why the delay. Eventually someone at the paper told him it was a prank. There had never been an editor named Wainwright.

Pride goeth before a fall.