Demo Team Made "Honest Mistake"

The Fecund Gulch Zephyrs Class B Rookie Ball team was hoping to open the 2009 season today in the friendly confines of their new home, Steven Grippe Dental Practice Field. Unfortunately, a clerical goof-up by the team tasked with imploding the old stadium caused them instead to "bring down the house" on the new facility and not the stately old Fecund Gulch Sports Field and Flea Market, slated for demolition after the '08 season. The wacky mix-up is attributed to "poor data entry" and "organizational indifference," says a spokesman for Daryl Waltrip Rules Demolitin [sic] Company.

"We regret the mistake. You can't always trust Google maps," said the spokesman. Both stadiums were built side-by-side in the downtown Fun District and adjacent to the Rendering Plant District. Deputy Mayor Mark Fredking wants to give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt. "I think they probably weren't baseball fans, so they didn't know the score. Ha, score," said Fredking. Asked if he was laughing about the inadvertent pun he made, Fredking explained that "score means to have a little sex."

The funny mistake made foreman Allan Newlin laugh. "Too funny. I'm a huge Zephyrs fan and I really messed this one up something fierce."

All 630 charges were placed at strategic points in the newly-erected, state-of-the art facility over the past week while the team took batting and infield practice in preparation for their season opener against Losantiville. Officials for the team said they had assumed the workers were making last minute polishes on the stadium.

Ken Benway, team's equiptment manager had this to say: "I heard some guys talking about 'Oh, it's a shame we're blowing this thing up, it looks new' and 'Ok, so what's a safe distance to detonate and blow up this stadium from' and I said to myself, 'Hmm, very strange.' I assumed they had just gotten caught up in their work - or possibly the recent explosion-humor trend sweeping through town."

Workers and city officials have been planning the demolition since the end of last season and are simply flummoxed by this turn of events. "It's certainly a setback," Newlin said. "There's no way we make that mistake next time. That's how you learn." Some involved parties speculated that the detonator had simply been hooked up wrong, a fuse had misfired or someone mis-circled the wrong location on the map. "In baseball, that's called an error," Zephyrs GM Toland Springs said boredly.

"I'm thinking maybe someone accidentally tripped the self-destruct button on the new stadium. But I dunno, we spent a week arming the place with dynamite. I guess you can never really know. Unless someone recovers the black box," he went on to add. Springs, always a character, help build a team that has fed bullpen catching talent to the Pittburgh Pirates' double-AA affiliate, the Indianapolis Indians.

Zephyr players were surprised when the stadium started coming down around them - and even more surprised when star pitcher Otis Harnisch was knocked unconscious by a stray piece of rubble. Outfielders were largely unharmed, but clearly shaken up. Said right-fielder Dante Helms: "I didn't understand why they were all blowing up the stadium. It didn't make sense. I thought I was the weird one on the team." Helms is known for cutting up in the dugout between innings.

The unfortunate lapse in judgement means the Zephyrs will still be playing home games at the Sports Field and flea market, which means if they take more than two hours on Saturdays they will have to forfeit and yield the facility to vendors.

The Pap Tap: Amalgamated Travel Rods to Move to Fecund Gulch

Those of you who enjoy a post-prandial stroll before evening curfew might be surprised to see a new form of transportation making ‘inroads’ into Fecund Gulch’s traditional ‘San Francisco-style' trolleys and personal subway cars; I’m talking of course about the travel rod, a fiendishly clever device that combines the comfort of a metal harness with the ease and practicality of a rigid metal rod. It might be even more surprising to learn that the technology isn’t technically ‘new’ at all, and was in fact originally developed to allow President Roosevelt to glower at Hitler from full standing height. Said Roosevelt, “My only regret is that as a child I chose to contract Polio. If only there was a way to go back and warn myself not to do that, perhaps some kind of Time-Travel Rod?" This endorsement ran in Travel Rod aficionado for nearly two years before someone finally read it and had it cut.

The Travel Rod works by fitting steel harnesses to the waists of two willing participants and then connecting the two harnesses with an adjustable steel rod. One of the participants now continues his stroll while the other hovers inches above the ground, free to admire the view or even get in a quick 40 winks.

Amalgamated Travel Rods, the distributor, manufacturer and patent holder on all Travel Rod technology, was nearly dissolved several times, first in the 40s when the primary factory was stolen by Jazz enthusiasts looking for an easy ‘score’ and then again in the 60s when activists destroyed thousands of rods in a huge bonfire in order to make a point about ideas.

Cultural archivists and locomotion hobbyists kept the company alive during the lean years, and now ATR is hoping to transplant its center of operations to Fecund Gulch due to the ‘free sugar cookies for captains of industry’ tray at the Crust-Trench Grocery Co-Op, and secondarily, because of the town's complete absence of environmental restrictions ever since The Gulch was de-municipalized during the cold war.

Following a groundbreaking ceremony next week, construction will begin in earnest on the ATR HQ, which will be situated conveniently between the Farrakhan Living Memorial Carwash and the inexplicable pool of lava that grows a little bit every year but which will probably stop soon.