Minaya Mistakes District 9 For Documentary, Heads to South Africa

With last nights game looking like a washout after 5 innings, we were hoping to get a good night's sleep.  That is until the phone rang.  One of our sources had informed us that Omar Minaya had left Citi Field in a rush during the 5th inning and was heading to the airport.  Time being of the essence, the Apple rushed to JFK to try and catch up with Minaya.

We arrived in time but we were immediately stopped by a Mets staffer before we could get to Omar.  We were told we could speak to Minaya as long as we smiled and nodded at everything he said.  We agreed.  Minaya was clearly excited and happy to see us.

"I guess the cat is out of the bag.", said Minaya, motioning for us to join him.  "I can't wait to get a look at these guys.  If they pick up the game as fast as I suspect, we will have a real advantage."

We assumed he was talking about South Africans, though baseball is not new there, but he explained further. Apparently, Minaya had watched the movie District 9 earlier that day and was convinced it was a documentary.  Minaya was so touched by the "documentary" that he set out immediately for South Africa with hopes of setting up a baseball academy in Johannesburg and teaching Prawns our national pastime.

"These Prawns...can I call them that?  Well anyway they have it all.  Speed, defense, lasers! These guys can beat you in so many ways.  And they will play for cat food!"

We smiled, nodded and were soon on our way.  We were stopped again by the staffer who was now handing us a phone.  Mets VP Dave Howard was on the other end.

"Sorry you had to see that.  This happens quite a bit.", Howard explained.

Howard went on to tell us that Minaya is often fooled by movies and rather than have to explain fiction to him they simply find it easier to let him find out on his own.

"He gets to have an adventure and it keeps him out of our hair for awhile.  It's a win-win."

Howard describes another incident this past off-season when, after watching the movie Sugar, Minaya spent a month roaming the streets of the Bronx in an attempt to coax Miguel "Sugar" Santos back to baseball.  As it turns out, he found 648 guys named Miguel Santos but could not locate the fictional Dominican pitcher.

"In retrospect, that was a mistake.", Howard admits.  "We missed out on several key free agents while he was out looking for Sugar.  I guess we dropped the ball on that one."

All articles featured on The Apple are fictitious. No Mets were harmed in the writing of this story.

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