Don’t look into the eye. You may become lost forever. Again, that would make you no good to me. Jasper here — that’s what I call him — helps me simultaneously coordinate the movement of all the players on the field. And with this Power Glove (he dons a lacrosse glove covered with thin wires and metal plates) I can make the nanobots that reside in your spittle fly into the bodily orifices of our opponents. Once there, I can make them do all sorts of naughty things. One time I made Zach Thomas bite off his own ring finger in a fumble pile. That was fun. I’ve also equipped them with very small cameras so that they can fly into our opponents’ eye sockets, turning them into unwitting double agents for our cause. I don’t spy on anyone. They spy on themselves. You should see the MILFs some of them bring home.
Anyway, glad you’re part of the team. From now on, all of your bodily movements will be recorded into the database back at CentComm and placed on a large visual graph. If you would like to see this graph, it will cost you 20 percent of your base salary. Sorry, that’s team policy. In the meantime, I wouldn’t walk through any airport metal detectors if I were you. The nanobots don’t like it.
Now run wind sprints until you vomit.
(You run wind sprints until you vomit.)
Good.
HEAR IT FROM A BASEBALL MANAGER!
Good job, everybody
by Joe Torre
(claps hands)
Good job, everybody. Nice job. Good job out there. Really nice job.
(pats you on the ass)
Good job. Way to hustle.
Want some sunflower seeds?
Attaboy. Good job.
“You’re like the more athletic, better son I never had.” A guide to your team owner.
There are ten things you need to know about your owner, and here they are.
1. HE IS RICHER THAN YOU ARE OR COULD EVER HOPE TO BE. Did you ever wonder where that $375,000 game check you get every week comes from? No, it didn’t come from the magic money pixie, as Rickey Henderson may have told you. Your owner is the megarich superfuck who deigns to pay you your little pittance every year. He’s got a yacht that’s worth six of you, and he owns gated compounds on each of the seven continents, along with a starter colony on Mars. Think the Pegasus is just a mythical creature? Wrong, bucko! He’s got a stable of them in Nepal. He may be watching you from the sky on his winged steed as you read this.
The average owner is at least a billionaire. Consider how rich that is. If your owner took a $1,000,000,000 check and put it into a regular savings account at a local bank at a lousy 2 percent annual interest rate, he’d have more than $800,000 a month to spend and still keep his billion dollars. Is that the very definition of fuck-you money? Why, yes, I believe it is.
Most of today’s owners earned their fortune by being pioneers of industry. Some, like Mark Cuban, earned it during the first dot-com boom. Others, like Home Depot founder Arthur Blank, realized that Americans crave an airplane hangar–sized warehouse of home improvement products with no store directory, a parking lot that resembles the third stage of Armageddon, and, from what I can tell, no store employees on hand at any time. Either way, the average owner has stockpiled the kind of cash that goes beyond obscene and makes the American Dream seem even further out of a normal man’s reach. It’s the kind of money that makes even millionaires feel inadequate and unhappy. It’s a nice place to be.
2. HE IS ECCENTRIC. You don’t become a billionaire and remain a normal person. It just doesn’t happen. I strongly urge you to avoid looking at your owner’s toenails, or asking him what he keeps in that turret sticking out of his mansion. You don’t want to know what he does with his spare time. He’s got a lot of it, and he’s got a lot of strange ideas that society wouldn’t approve of. Ever reanimate your dead father? One owner has. Stay away.
3. HE IS SHORT. Your owner didn’t become rich by being happy. By being 5'6" or shorter, he carries around a chip on his shoulder the size of Mama Cass. He hopes that the financial stature he has attained will compensate for the physical stature he has always lacked. But the hard truth is that nothing makes up for being pocket-sized. Your owner will always resent his pathetic, halfling physique. That’s why, as we speak, he is constructing a series of underground concentration camps, where he hopes to imprison and murder all the Tall Ones. By 2026, they’ll be dead, and he’ll be the tallest man on Earth! Who’s laughing now, huh? WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?
4. HE IS NOT BLACK. He is very white. He may blend in with the wall occasionally. So be aware. Don’t bad-mouth a guy who’s got a complexion perfectly suited to indoor camouflage.
5. YOU ARE HIS TOY. Remember that Richard Pryor movie? That’s you. The rich man pays you to run and jump. So run and jump, piss boy. And if he wants to put you in an inflatable Wonder Wheel and roll you down a steep hill, you let him. You’re his property now, so you’d better get used to it. Your owner may also ask you to attend a key party and give his wife the good, hard reaming she’s always begged for. It would be unwise to turn him down.