CHICAGO - Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has informed the 30 MLB teams that effective 2010, the ball game's seventh inning will be eliminated.
Selig said that he has gotten thousands of complaints form fans who say that the seventh inning song and dance rituals have gotten way out of hand.
At first it was just the game announcer(s) singing the baseball classic that was written by Francis Scott Key "Take Me Out To The Ball Game."
He said that he knows that a lot of people like that song and back in 1966, Herman's Hermits version made it all the way to #17 on the Billboard Top 100 chart but enough is enough.
Selig pointed out that last week during the Dodgers - Astros game the announcer introduced the five starters of the World Champion NBA Los Angeles Lakers. They then proceeded to go one-on-one with the Dodgers groundskeeping crew for 48 minutes.
After trailing the Dodger groundskeepers for three quarters the Lakers managed to pull it out in the fourth quarter and win 101 to 79
Half of the fans loved it, the other half hated it. One irate fan Jordell Hopyard said, "Hey, it was ridiculous. I lives in Yucaipa and after the game it takes me two hours to drives home and I has to gets my (African-American) *ss ups at 4 am to be's at work by 6 a.m."
Another fan Jose Vergonzoso, of Hacienda Heights, said that he fell asleep when the seventh inning basketball game started and did not wake up until the baseball game was over.
He said it was the third time that it has happened. He went to the ticket office and asked for 3/9ths of his money back but the ticket clerk said "Sorry, no way Jose."
Commissioner Selig said that he has spoken to all 30 team owners. He said that 27 of the owners are in full agreement with doing away with the seventh inning altogether and just playing eight innings.
He said that the three team owners that are against his proposal are Kansas City Royals owner Corgi Sopchoppy who said that in Kansas City the seventh inning stretch ritual where Potawatomi Indian Chief Well Hung Bull comes out and does his ceremonial tribal dance to the gods of wheat harvesting has become, at times, more popular than the actual game itself.
The Tacon brothers, Hernando and Fernando owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers say that they are against doing away with the seventh inning because they will lose a lot of money since a lot of the fans come out to the games strictly because of the seventh inning celebrity concert.
Hernando Tacon said that for the month of September they have already scheduled Celine Dion; Lady GaGa; Mannheim Steamroller; a Bob Dylan - Snoop Dog duet; Kevin Skinner; Miley Cyrus; The Good Sisters of St. Aftershocks Church Choir; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; and Susan Boyle performing a duet with Donny Osmond.
Meanwhile Logan F. Fackler stated that the fans that come out to see his Detroit Tigers have really enjoyed being able to do the seventh inning wave, which they have affectionately dubbed, The Detroit Crime Wave.
Selig reportedly told all three owners that they have been out voted 27 to 3 so like President Obama once said to his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during their presidential campaign, "Tough titty said the kitty."
In other news. A Los Angeles Chippendale's' dancer, Oglethrope "The Rock of Gibraltar" Kettleton, has been arrested for allegedly rubbing his stimulus package against Ann Coulter's skinny-ass thighs and causing the GOP mouthpiece to faint hitting her head on her tripod.
