July 14th -- Major League Baseball announced that their officials had voted unanimously to allow the Detroit Tigers to use aluminum bats.

Commissioner Bud Selig said the bats would allow the Tigers to better compete with the other third-rate teams in the American League such as the Devil Rays and the Indians.

"We had to do something to help this horrible, horrible team. We flirted with the idea of allowing their pitchers to throw from 50 feet rather than the standard 60 feet 6 inches, but the cost to add the extra pitcher's mound to all the stadiums was too great, so we settled on the use of aluminum bats as a cost effective alternative," said Selig.

The greatest argument against allowing the use of aluminum bats has always been safety. The pitcher would become much more vulnerable on a ball hit back through the box due to the increased power and velocity that aluminum bats generate. Selig addressed these fears by saying, "Obviously the safety of our league's pitchers was our biggest concern when the idea of using aluminum bats first came up, but once we did some research and found out that as a team the Tigers had only hit three hard line drives all season, all of which were foul, we knew that our worries were unfounded."

Tigers Manager Alan Trammell, originally opposed to the idea of using the bats, has since changed his tune considerably. Trammell explained, "At first I saw it as a slap in the face to me and my ball club and to all the great Tigers of the past, but when Dave [GM Dave Dombrowski] told me that Sammy Sosa had immediately demanded that the Cubs trade him to us, I started to get really excited about the idea. This could be the biggest thing around here since Geronimo Berroa bobblehead doll night."