News Flash: 10/18/07

Holiday will not play World Series due to injury sustained during postgame celebration

Matt Holiday, who was named Most Valuable Player of Baseball’s National League Championship series will be unable to play in his team’s first ever World Series due to an injury sustained during his team’s wild postgame celebration. Holiday, an outfielder for the Colorado Rockies, was wildly shaking a bottle of champagne and screaming at the top of his lungs when he pulled a key muscle in his lower back.

Team mates and witnesses to the incident say Holiday fell on the ground and began writhing; a move many thought was an unorthodox but acceptable form of celebration. It wasn’t until Holiday began shouting “my back, you fools! My back!” that the injury was attended.

The Rockies, who had been sustaining a Cinderella type playoff run and had won 21 of their last 22 games, will have to find another left fielder for the World Series.

Torre considers run at high political office

In the wake of his team’s elimination from playoff contention, New York Yankees manager Joe Torre says he may throw his hat into the ring of Presidential hopefuls and challenge fellow New Yorkers Rudy Guliani and Hillary Clinton in their bid for the Oval Office.

“I want to try my hand at managing the nation,” Torre told a group of beat journalists outside the Yankee’s front office. “If I can’t lead this team to another World Series, maybe I can balance the budget.”

Torre also said he felt working with the opposition party might be easier than negotiating with Alex Rodriguez.

Halo 3 Easter Eggs Discovered

A significant collection of easter eggs (hidden parts of the game that can be unlocked by strange player behavior) were laid bare yesterday by Cody Miller, the current world record holder for speed-running Halo 2 on Legendary without dying (he pulled it off in 3 and a half hours). Miller's latest discoveries include how Master Chief has used the bathroom without taking off his suit for the last few decades (he holds it), where the pistol from Halo 1 went (to Louis Wu), where the Flood come from (they teleported in from Doom), and why vehicles never run out of ammo (it's complicated). Perhaps most significant, he dug up a rare cut scene showing the true identity of the Chief. It shows a brief tiff between Master Chief and Cortana, in which the Chief removes his helmet to reveal that he is actually Samus Aran.

United States declares war on Qatar

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way, but it did.

US forces “accidentally” fired a high powered missile at an unpopulated farm in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar. Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to inquiry from the Qatar embassy by issuing a declaration of war. No apologies were made for the incident, other than to say that “these things aren’t supposed to happen, but it did, so we’ll have to live with it.” A press release from military brass added that “it’s about time we got Qatar out of the way.”

Arab news source, Al Jazeera responded by broadcasting the exact location of the base where the missile was fired.

President Bush has yet to be informed of the declaration.