With Opening Day of major league baseball's 2009 regular season only three days away, commissioner Bud Selig has announced that a new award will be handed out to one lucky player in each league at the end of the season.
This award has been created, said Selig, to reward those who do shady things behind the scenes to become physical specimens and hit record amounts of home runs, ultimately providing obscene amounts of revenue for Selig and his once-great sport.
Since the commissioner of the sport is, and has been, so unwilling to crack down on these shady frauds, he decided it would only be fair to reward them.
The award, Selig went on to say, would be called the Silver Syringe Award.
The premise of the award is simple, according to Bud the Dud: One player in each league will be awarded with a trophy, commemorating a very fishy statistical bounce-back in each player's career.
The trophy, a replica syringe made of silver, like the Silver Slugger award, would be made the size of a baseball bat and would weigh roughly five to ten pounds.
Presented with the syringe would be a simple reminder that it is not an actual syringe.
Selig also outlined some basic criteria that would could make or break the candidates vying for this new award.
For hitters, here are the "preferable" qualities of a potential award-winner.
-33 years of age or older.
-At least 20 more home runs hit than in the previous season, preferably more than 35 home runs hit on the year.
-A season slugging percentage of .590 or greater.
-A season on-base percentage of .355 or lower.
For pitchers, the only immediate criteria Selig could present to reporters would be an increase of five miles per hour in velocity or more for a pitcher who is at least 33 years old.
"For those teams who can't stay in playoff contention to save their lives, this award may create an interesting race for players with no other motivation come July," Selig said.
"Dreams of October baseball in certain cities may be crushed like a baseball hit by Barry Bonds, but maybe those fans can enjoy watching chubby old men with massive, fake-looking muscles with veins sticking out like barbed wire swat baseballs 600 feet as they try to be the first player to hit 100 home runs in a season.
"In order to promote the award, we are going to do away with the steroid policy and let players do whatever they feel is right for their bodies. If they want their livers to shut down before they turn 50 so they can win a giant syringe, who am I, the commissioner of the sport, to tell them that they can't do it?"
Selig expects revenue for the MLB to double, maybe even triple, this year.
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