NEW YORK -- Faced with flagging national support for his "Yankees Are the Official Team of America's War on Terrorism" campaign, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani held a pep rally Wednesday at which he announced evidence linking the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
Flanked by Yankees Manager Joe Torre, New York fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen, Cardinal Edward Egan and love machine Derek Jeter, Giuliani showed grainy satellite photos of a gangly, beak-nosed child, presumably Craig Counsell, meeting with bin Laden in a camp near Kabul, Afghanistan, in early September.
"We already know that buying Yankee merchandise associates the wearer of said product with everything good and martyred and sexy in America," Giuliani said. "We just didn't know until now what the opposing team stood for."
Giuliani then played what he alleged to be a terrorist training tape in which a bin Ladenish-looking figure, holding an AK-47 and a Curt Schilling bobblehead doll, explains why cadet terrorists should love the Diamondbacks.
"We are snakes, they are snakes, 'nuff said. Praise Allah," the grainy bearded figure says.
When questioned by a reporter about the authenticity of the tape and the ethics of linking a city baseball team's fortunes to a national tragedy, Giuliani returned to his pre-tragedy demeanor:
"Whoa, punk, look at my polls! There ain't no reproaching King Rudy post 9-11-01!"
In an e-mailed statement to al-Jazeera, bin Laden denied any ties to the Diamondbacks organization.
"Although I praise their efforts in the jihad, I cannot claim credit for their heroic use of pinch hitters," bin Laden said.
Letter found to contain traces of sickening substance
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control confirmed Wednesday that an anonymous letter found outside the offices of Arizona Senator John McCain tested positive for "Yankee Mystique."
Scientists say the intangible pinstriped substance will be easy to trace. They said it can only be manufactured in the dank, filthy climates of the Bronx, where it is grown by throwing gobs of cash into a massive hopper of pompous, rat-brained sociopaths whose ignorance of geography is surpassed only by the arrogance of their belief that geographic ignorance is cosmopolitan.
"It's the same microclimate that creates those huge sewer gators," a scientist said. "It's not something you find in Kansas City."
Luckily, scientists said, the strain found near McCain's office is a more modern, less virulent strain -- what scientists refer to as "Large Spore Yankee Mystique."
Only the weakest segments of society are at risk. And it is easily treated:
"All you need is a big unit and some small ball, baby!" the scientist whooped.
Pool to be installed at Yankee Stadium
Impressed by the bevy of half-naked babes in the right-field swimming pool in Phoenix's Bank One Ballpark, Derek Jeter has demanded in contract negotiations that a pool be installed between second and third base of Yankee Stadium.
Afraid of losing Jeter's "exquisitely lovely eyes," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has agreed to the pool. However, Steinbrenner said, any infield pool in New York "must reflect the city in which the half-naked babes are bouncing around all slippery wet."
To that end, instead of crystal blue water, the Yankees pool will be filled with genuine East River water, or, to be more specific, mercury mixed with puréed human feces and the liquefied entrails of slain union bosses.
The pool, tentatively named "East River West," will be reserved for heroin-chic waifs from nearby modeling agencies who will frolic with large rubber pool toys shaped like syringes. The syringes, Steinbrenner said, will "eject fluids of varying origins, contents and viscosity," or, more specifically, Hudson River water.
Sprinklers will be installed, he said, in case the water catches fire.
"I have no idea where the sprinkler water will come from," he said.
Without being asked, Steinbrenner continued:
"This will be the first swimming pool ever built in a sports venue. We're first. You know why we're first? Because this is New York and I just said we're first and that makes it true."
Koran condemns designated hitter
In a show of solidarity with the world's other great religions, cultures and centers of intellectual activity and baseball purity, Muslim clerics from around the world came out against the American League's designated hitter rule.
Reading from the Koran, a senior cleric stated Tuesday: "He who swings the bat yet does not field the ball shall be considered unholy in the eyes of Allah."
"Besides," the cleric continued, "it's cheating and makes managing about as tough as riding a pony at a kiddy carnival."
The announcement was heralded worldwide.
"I swing a bat better than Andy Pettitte," said Nobel laureate Stephen Hawking. "And if he hadn't been pitching in Bank One Ballpark, the world would never have known how bad this guy sucks at a fundamental of the game."
"The DH is the creationism of baseball," he added.
I feel your pain, Hillary says
Wearing a Yankees cap and Jewel's American flag halter top, U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) offered solace Tuesday to Yankee fans trying to cope with the October 27 and 28 tragedies. "Let me make this clear, we New Yorkers will not waver in our arrogance, ignorance and thuggery," the former First Lady said at a Yankee pep rally. "We all have been New Yorkers far too long to cower in petty decency."
Clinton urged Yankee fans to continue with their daily lives of heckling, taunting, spitting and snide parochialism in the midst of what most baseball fans would realize is utter humiliation. "God bless our little rock of Manhattan," she read haltingly from a TelePrompTer.
Simpson sends aid to New York
In a related story, O.J. Simpson, saying "New Yorkers don't know jack about victimhood," has sent Manhattanites 1,000 copies of his new video, How to Sound Nice When You're Not. In his video, Simpson gives tips to accused murderers and Yankee fans for using psychobabble to help rack up what he called "sympathy bonus miles."
"When getting heckled with your team down 9-1 or 4-0," Simpson says, "look pensive and say, 'You know, a decent closer would be nice, but what I really need is closure.'"
Simpson also suggested lines such as "Ouch, this 'new normal' is really hurting my feelings," or, "Please, sir, stop poking me in my coping mechanism."
If those don't work, he suggested New Yorkers mix in some traditional hostility. "Perhaps something like: 'Give me my f-ing catharsis right now or I'll slit your throat!'" Simpson says.
