Monday MADness!

Welcome to a new feature here on Tom’s MAD Blog called “Monday MADness”. This will be a weekly (duh) post to break up your usual Monday doldrums with something (hopefully) funny having to do with MAD Magazine. It might be something I did for them from some past issue, some news or something new, a “behind the scenes” story or a link to something they have up over on their website. It may be my only post for the day or I may do a more usual post as well. Regardless, this is the inaugural Monday MADness (cue sound of crickets chirping in the dead of night)!

Being April Fool’s Day it’s also the officially recognized birthday of Alfred E. Neuman, so it’s even more appropriate to debut today.

The Major League Baseball season kicked off officially last night, but most teams start today including my Minnesota Twins! They’ll be playing in what will be the coldest opening day temperature in their 52 year history in this state (31 degrees for a high temp today), which will still be considerably less cold and bleak than their starting pitching rotation looks. Ba-dum-bum… tsssh! In honor of the new MLB season, here’s “Conclusive Evidence of the Ever-Widening Gap Between Baseball’s Small and Large Market Teams” from MAD #421, Sept 2002, written by Scott Lieberman:

Small Market Teams:

Although eager to search the Far East for undiscovered Asian phenoms like other teams do, the almost-broke Minnesota Twins can only afford to send their top talent scout as far east as Peoria, Illinois.

the cash-poor Kansas Cty Royals have announced they will take a forfeit rather than incur the expense of flying all the way to New York to lose to the Yankees.

Unable to pay for a photographer, the impoverished Pittsburgh Pirates official team photo is their entire 40-man roster crammed into one of those “Photos-4-fun” vending booths.

On Bat Day, fans of the strapped-for-funds San Diego Padres are now expected to bring bats to give to the players.

The near-bankrupt Tampa Bay Rays have so many scoreboard light bulbs burnt out that it looks like everything’s in Hebrew.

Large Market Teams:

The swimming-in-dough New York Met’s releivers are now carried from the bullpen to the pitcher’s mound in the tradition of ancient Babylonian kings..

The filthy rich San Fransisco Giants no longer bother to gather at the mound for a meeting…they just whip out their 3G video cellphones and Skype.

In Los Angeles the overflowing-with-moolah Dodgers now hire the seat-fillers from the Academy Awards to sit in fan’s chairs whenever they get up to use the restroom..

At their new state-of-the-art home field, the obscenely wealthy Arizona Diamondbacks have replaced their On-Deck circle with an On-Deck jacuzzi.

The disgustingly-well-off Atlanta Braves sign away the Houston Astros’ third baseman by offering him a 3-year, $12 million contract to be their bat boy.