TLFC Breaking News Alert: Milton Bradley Suspension An Elaborate PR Stunt

In an early morning report filed by Ted Lilly Fan Club's crack investigative squad (nicknamed "CSI: Ted"), it turns out that Milton Bradley’s “suspension” for the remainder of the season is, in fact, fictitious. In reality, the whole situation (including Milton's interview with the Daily Herald and subsequent comments from Hendry and Sweet Lou) is a PR stunt ultimately designed to promote an upcoming special edition of the board game “Sorry!” from Milton Bradley’s board game empire.

Realizing that baseball greatness is fleeting ('fleeting' defined as the year 2008) and that board games are eternal, Milton focused his energies on ensuring that "Sorry!" will live on long after he is playing right field for the cubs ('long after' defined as next season when he gets released).

Unnamed sources have provided the TLFC with company memos, sales projections and marketing abstracts on the game launch including a 52-page report, entitled Operation Crazy Town. Dated January 6, 2009, the report details a nine-month plan of attack with individual highlighted sections including “prime powder keg to explode by throwing ball in stands with only two outs”, “grossly underperform during pennant race” and “bribe fan in bleachers to pour beer on a Hawaiian center-fielder”.

Sadly, when the TLFC investigated this, we found that there were other layers to the onion. In fact, like a plot from a Dan Brown novel, many of history's most notorious scandals, crisis situations and events are in fact tied to the Bradley Family's powerful board game empire.

A few examples:

• "Battleship": A MB marketing exec was seen in the South Pacific talking to both US and Japanese envoys directly before the famous Battle of Midway offering them free booze, blue jeans and 5% on back-end sales of the soon-to-luanch game if they went at it for a few days.


• Mall Madness: We have learned that Milton Bradley was behind the rise of several 1980s/1990s pop singers like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany as an excuse to promote in-mall concerts which, in turn, would create in-mall madness.


• Twister: While the game has always been a success, Milton Bradley Corporation did realize that they would eventually experience a dramatic lull in sales as people started playing video games and stopped playing Twister. So, in the early 1920s, during a trip to Europe, they created an arrangement with a German fitness expert to develop a form of exercise that, after a beta test period of around 60 years, would create an army of consumers who were ready-made to carry Twister into the 21st century. The result? Pilates.


• Go To The Head Of The Class: Orginally released in 1940, this game was MB's first attempt to control the growing medium of television. While it took forty years, they were successful in the form of a co-branding effort that took the form of the ABC sitcom, "Head of the Class" featuring "WKPR" veteran Howard Hessermen and Robin Givens

While we were initially shocked and appalled, we ultimately were not surprised by this. After all, this modern-day Keyser Soze was able to convince Cubs management to pay him $30 million over three years so why couldn't he affect world events?