Sal Solemnly Addresses His Fans

Here's the straight talk comin': Four weeks and seven days ago our GM brought forth, upon this maple syrup-eatin' city, a new catcher, conceived in benchwarmin' and dedicated to the proposition that "all mustaches are not created equal."

Now Sal is engaged in a great designation of assignment, testing whether that maple syrup-eatin' city, or any city so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great ballfield of that designation of assignment. Sal has come to kiss goodbye a portion of it, as a final restin' place for the call-up that died here, that the maple syrup-eatin' city might live. This we may, in all pissed-offness, do. But in a larger sense, we cannot benchwarm, we cannot let balls pass, we cannot bat .045, on this ground. The brave players, livin' and traded, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above Sal's poor power to the gap. The baseball world will little note, nor long remember what Sal says here; while it can never forget the fu manchu Sal grew here.

It is rather for Sal, the designated for assignment, that he here be dedicated to the great task remainin' before him--that from these honored players we take increased devotion to takin' extra battin' practice--that Sal here highly resolve that these 25 men shall not have lost tons of games in vain, that this maple syrup-eatin' city shall have a new birth of winnin', and that baseball of the bluebirds, by the bluebirds, for the bluebirds shall not perish from the earth.