A-Rod quits Yankees

NEW YORK, NY — Alex Rodriguez quit the Yankees today after realizing that the stadium the team has designed for the 2009 season will not be a Frank Gehry-designed palace made of chocolate, as he’d previously hoped.

“It is with great regret that I announce my retirement from baseball, effective immediately,” Alex Rodriguez said in a statement released to the media. “This is due to the fact that I have signed a ten-year, binding agreement with a team that misled me. I will never play for the Yankees again, and since the Yankees control my rights, I’ll never play baseball again. I am disappointed that I will not be able to realize many of my dreams, including winning a World Series title and becoming the all-time home run champ. But I am happy to know that I will leave baseball with my dignity fully intact.”

The confusion apparently arose when Yankees brass gave Rodriguez a pamphlet describing the new stadium as a “palace that fulfilled all of his wildest fantasies, a wonderful place for a man to play a boy’s games, where dreams can be chased and captured.”

“Yeah, exactly. I got that pamphlet, and I sat down with it and I read that stuff, and it sounded great,” Rodriguez said. “So I spent a few days thinking about what all of my wildest fantasies are, and I realized that what I have always most wanted to do is play baseball on a chocolate field, in a giant chocolate stadium designed by Frank Gehry. So I just assumed that that’s what they were gonna build for us – after all, what A-Rod wants, A-Rod gets… Right?”

A-Rod went on to say that in his vision, the infield dirt would be a finely grated milk chocolate, and that the bases would be white chocolate truffles. The warning track would be Crunch bars, and the outfield grass would be hand-crafted blades of dark chocolate, planted in a base of peanut butter and caramel.

“I spent the last four months thinking about diving for a grounder, and coming up short, but having that taste of chocolate powder flowing in and out of my nose for the next two hours,” Rodriguez said. “It would be glorious. And can you imagine all the cool things that Frank Gehry would be able to do with a chocolate medium? It’s almost one of those moments where you wonder how an organization could not do something like that.”

A-Rod said he’ll consider sticking with the Yankees, but only if they immediately address his concerns.

“I want a chocolate stadium,” Rodriguez said. “This is important to me. They made a promise, and they better damn well keep it. Oh yeah, and one more thing – it gets hot as hell in the Bronx in August, and that thing better not melt.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!