All the Senior Vice-President's Nincompoops

 

"Follow the money," I heard a familiar, cigarette-grated voice rasp as I walked into the Concourse Plaza Parking Garage.

"Deep? Deep Throat, is that you? Damn, you scared the hell out of me. Where you been all these years?"

"Here and there," the voice came back, chary as ever but sounding a little smug. "Let's just say that a whole new generation knows me as...'Q'"

"That was you? Eww! How could you do such a thing?"

"Hey! The insider leak business ain't what it used to be, okay? Sometimes you gotta generate a little business!"

"Okay, okay! So whattaya want with me?"

"I see how you and that superannuated bunch of juvenile delinquents you hang out with on the Sterling blog are all going around with your hair on fire these days about the Yankees—"

"You read It Is High—?"

"Like I said. Business has been slow since 1974. Anyway, I just thought you'd want to know: 'Follow the money.'"

"What does that mean? HAL Steinbrenner has all the money. And he wants more."

 D.T. shook his head, stomped out a butt, lit up a fresh coffin nail, and coughed for the next ten minutes.

"You know you really should ease up on those. In fact, I thought you had died—"

"Quiet! You think that was the real Deep Throat they put in the coffin?" he smirked—then continued coughing for a while more. "Listen up: you're missing the gold bars for the dollar bills."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean HAL doesn't want the Yankees to win. It messes with the real play here."

"Which is what?"

"Soccer, my friend. Fútbol, as it's known around half the world. Le football, de Fussball, il calcio, Zúqiú, Futtobōru—"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Soccer. What about it?"

"That's what's up here, ace. They want to wreck baseball. It's the only way they can make enough room in the zeitgeist for soccer, at least here in America. Make baseball a complete bore. A playoff-time crapshoot. Make the game itself as dull as possible. They call it, Five True Outliers—"

"Don't you mean, 'Three True Outcomes'?"

"Whatever! Listen up, chum: that's their plan."

"Whose plan? Rob Manfred? MLB?"

"Nah, they're just the front men! The real mastermind has been implanted in the Yankees' front office. They call him, 'The Evil Weasel'—"

"Oh, you mean Brian Cashman? Yeah, I could see that."

"Really? Damn, I need better secret intel! I knew that guy down in Florida was conning me when he let me look through all those boxes—"

"You mean—"

"Never mind what I mean! Look, can't you see how it's all connected? The Steinbrenner Family is making its move into soccer. Buying into that I-talian team. Think it's coincidence that the only Steinbrenner-owned team to win anything in 13 years was NYCFC?"

"Nyke Fuck? What's that?"

"New York City Football Club! The champions of the MLS!"

"What kind of name is that for a team?"

"It's supposed to evoke English football clubs."

"Is it 'invoke' or 'evoke'? I never remember the difference—"

"It's fucking 'evoke'!"

"Don't they have a team nickname? You know, like 'Yankees'?"

"It's supposed to evolve organically. From the fans."

"Has it?"

"They call them the 'Blues.' Or sometimes, 'the Pigeons.'"

"The Pigeons? New York has a championship team called, 'the Pigeons'?"

"Get back on the fucking track! Look, point is, pally, HAL has been pushing for years to build 'Soccer City' for his team. You remember—big luxury housing complex, combined with a stadium at the Harlem River Yards? It's a nice, sweet payoff—if you like soccer."

"Why is every crazy building project in New York now built on 'the yards'?"

"Because we tragically neglect our rail needs in this country, and build over the old yards. But that's not the point! Steinbrenner has been pushing this for years!"

"It does look very cool at night, at least in the architectural model."

"What architectural model doesn't look cool, am I right?"

"True that."

"Anyway—point is, the son-of-a-bitch wants to wreck the Yankees and wreck baseball."

"He does?"

He dropped another butt to the floor and was starting to get a new cigarette out when I stopped him. 

"Really? Have you read the latest reports on secondhand smoke?"

"Look, snowflake, it's not so much what HAL wants, it's what they want!"

"Who are 'they'?"

"Why the Illuminati, of course! Who else would be behind a plot so colossal?"

"The Illuminati are trying to kill baseball?"

"Oh, don't kid yourself, kiddo! They've been at this for a long time. How do you think the Steinbrenner Family made all its money in the first place?"

"White slavery? Drug deals? The Children's Crusade?"

"Hank the First married into the top shipping family on the Great Lakes. Then, one lovely afternoon in 1892, all of his in-laws are out on a boating excursion. A squall comes up, sinks the boat. They all drown."*

"Well, squalls do that."

"Yeah. Especially if there are fifty holes drilled in the bottom of the boat."

"Are you claiming—"

"I ain't claiming anything. I'm telling you what happened!"

"Never mind about the squall for a minute. You're saying that 130 years ago, a secret, mythological society of super-geniuses deliberately drowned an innocent family on Lake Erie, so that almost 80 years later, their great-grandson would start destroying the game of baseball."

"That's right."

"Okay, fine, makes sense. But why should the Illuminati want to get rid of baseball?"

"Overhead, for one thing."

"Overhead."

"Too much of it. Cuts into the profit margins. Why do you think basketball and soccer have taken off, worldwide? They're cheap games. One ball, a couple goals. No protective padding, no bats or helmets."

"Then what accounts for the popularity of American football?"

He shrugged and looked down.

"Hey, who doesn't want to see men that big run into each other? Even the Illuminati got addicted to it. But that's not the whole story."

"No?"

"No. Think about what all that hitting a soccer ball with your head does."

"What?"

"Serious brain damage, moron! Think of it: a whole world full of brain-damaged people! How better for the Illuminati to control them?"

"That sounds pretty far-fetched—"

"Look at all the stupid crap over the last century! Starting a world war because some idiot plugged a fat archduke? Fascism? Communism? The Kardashians??"

"You have a point. But is there any proof?"

He snorted, then started ripping apart the next cigarette and swallowing the raw tobacco.

"Proof! You need proof? Look, it's all there. It's all connected. George Steinbrenner, turned out he actually liked baseball. They had to bring him under control. How do you think he got tangled up in Watergate? Or the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald? What was that?"

"Um, what was it?"

"A warning, that's what! Can't you see how it all ties together? Right now, the Yankees have guys on the team named Oswald and Oswaldo. More than coincidence??? When they sign somebody named Jack Ruby, it is go time, young son!"

"Stop calling me dated, semi-pejorative names! And what do you want from me?"

"Aren't you still with the Washington Post?"

"Uh, try the Bronx Penny Pincher Weekly.** Hey, you think the inside leak business is bad, you should see journalism."

He pulled out another cigarette, and lit it disgustedly.

"Just remember what I told you," he said before he walked away. "Follow the money: it leads to a big, glowing soccer city by the river."

* True story!

** Actual newspaper name!