Getting the A’s is simply not enough
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If you’re against reading more than one of my articles a week, you might not have caught the big news coming out of rumorland Wednesday.
According to radio reports and a dude I ran into at Safeway, the Oakland Athletics are moving to San Benito County.
Oh, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen. You heard me correctly.
The Oakland Athletics are moving to Santa Clara County.
Or was it Contra Costa County? Oh wait, maybe it was Vegas.
I don’t know – it was one of them. Pretty sure it was the first one. But hey, who’s going to let mere details get in the way of big dreams?
Not I, my friends. I dream big … and so should you.
A Major League Baseball team would be nice, but that shouldn’t satisfy us here in South Valley. We’re bigger than that.
We gave the world Jeff Garcia, Colonel Hollister, Jimmy Vasser, Berkland the Earthquake Predictor, Cade McNown and that guy that won a bunch of money on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” And I think we invented garlic or something.
So let’s think of some other big things we can attract, just by the off chance that this whole A’s thing doesn’t work out.
For starters …
A Major League Baseball team not named the A’s. I mean, seriously, we can do a whole lot better. Have you seen what’s happened to this team lately? They just traded away their best two pitchers and got Jose Canseco and a fungo bat in return. They are a joke.
It’s Red Sox or bust, people. We can’t afford to lose all our players to those “big-market” franchises fortunate enough to play in a county with more than 60,000 people. That would NOT be cool.
In addition to pursuing a Major League Baseball franchise not named the A’s, I think it would also be wise to invest in an NFL franchise – preferably one not named the 49ers.
This isn’t so unreasonable, my fellow Gillister Hill residents.
As a matter of fact, we’ve already got a local investor signed up. It’s that gazillionaire garlic guy from Gilroy, Don Christopher. Granted, I haven’t told him anything about my big dreams. But I’m sure he’ll be just fine with them.
Nice guy, that Don. He donates his gazillions to everything, from the arts center to that new high school they’re going to name after him when it’s finally built. There’s just no stopping this man’s philanthropic tendencies. And there’s no need to, either.
Once Mr. Christopher buys the naming rights to the city, which I’m pretty sure is close to happening, this will all work out just perfectly.
We’ll just buy out some sad-sack franchise like the Pittsburgh Steelers, move them to Christopher and then change their nickname just to make the traditionalists angry. I think that would be fun.
Just for kicks, we’ll name our new team the Christopher Columbuses. Maybe not the most politically correct name in the world, but we can work around that. If the PC police become too much of an annoyance, we’ll just name them the Redskins. That one seems safe enough.
We can’t stop there, though. These new teams have to have new stadiums. Morgan Hill seems to build something every other day, so we’ll let them construct the new home of the Columbuses.
In the interim, our NFL boys can be the first team to play on that synthetic stuff over at Gilroy High. In addition to hosting the Mannings and Favres of the world, this would also provide the perfect opening to install a Jumbotron scoreboard at Mustang Stadium, something I’ve long advocated to AD Jack Daley.
The baseball palace, of course, has to be located in San Benito County. Seeing that Gilroy and Morgan Hill are just a juiced-up Barry Bonds home run away from San Francisco, those cities are clearly within the team’s designated territory.
For a temporary home, though, we’ll get MLB to approve the current site of the Gilroy High softball stadium, which has a new fence in case you haven’t heard. If we can just get off our butts and sell some cupcakes, we’ll raise the funds to install an MLB-caliber backstop, too.
And to satisfy Bud Selig and Title IX, I’ve been told GUSD is willing to kick in an additional 42,000 bleacher seats.
So that’s a start, folks.
There’s also several smaller-scale projects we could work on, including the formation of the Carmella DeCesare Karate Club, featuring some of the world’s top black belts and Playboy Bunnys.
But for now, we need to think big. And we shouldn’t let trivial things like facts and reality bog us down. I’m talking Super Bowl. I’m talking World Series of Poker. I’m even talking of taking this thing international.
The 2020 Gilroy Games, anyone?
– Brett Edgerton is a columnist for South Valley Newspapers. He can be reached at
be*******@gi************.com
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