Mission to Ghetto Cub a Success

Battles to goal pay off
By Nick / Mockball Madness

Mockball pitchers Braden Looper and Bronson Arroyo and Sass third base coach Lew Ford were given what seemed like a simple task. Nick, Beth, and Dawn asked them to buy some balloons from Ghetto Cub for the party to welcome the three new Sass players. This task turned into a quagmire, though, as the three couldn’t find the craptacular grocery store for several hours.

Nick thought that everyone knew where Ghetto Cub was, but Lew wasn’t sure and asked before he left. Nick couldn’t remember precisely on which street it was, but he told Lew that it was somewhere near “Hamline and University.”

Lew, alas, apparently did not hear the conjunction in Nick’s directions. The group’s first stop was Hamline University, where Lew knew that the defending national Doom 3 champion was a student. “He sucked it up at worlds, though, and was eliminated in the preliminary rounds,” Lew explained to Looper and Arroyo as the three arrived at the campus, renowned for terrible football.

Looper and Arroyo asked Hamline students if they were at Ghetto Cub, and got some very strange looks. Luckily, after several students had responded in confused and/or perturbed manners, the three happened upon Nick’s former roommate, a Hamline alum, who was on campus for an event for former music majors. She giggled when asked about Ghetto Cub, and told them that it was on Hamline AND University, and that these were street names that were, coincidentally, not on the campus of Hamline University. She told them how to get there, and giggled some more as she walked away.

Lew and Looper walked back to their car. “Man, Nick didn’t give us very good directions,” complained Looper. “Yeah,” said Lew, “and if you’re going to the ghetto, you want good directions. But Hamline doesn’t seem like a ghetto. It’s actually kind of nice.”

In their confusion, the two failed to notice that Arroyo had wandered into the music event and was showing off his mad skills to a group of music majors. Impressed by both his music and looks, the Piper students knew that Arroyo was not one of them, but they didn’t care.

Looper and Lew had driven almost a mile before they realized that Arroyo, who had been playing guitar in the back seat on the way to Hamline, was no longer with them. The two made the realization simultaneously, but reasoned that they needed to get the balloons quickly because the party was to start in less than an hour. Arroyo wasn’t pitching, they realized, so they could find him later.

As Looper and Lew drove down Snelling Avenue, they noticed a Target logo on a building. “This must be it!” said Lew. “The girl at Hamline said it was right next to Ghetto Target.” Unfortunately for Lew, this was the wrong ghetto Target.

The two got out, and Looper could find no indication of a Cub, or even a cub. He said that the two should start driving again, but Lew was confident. “I’ll just go in and ask,” Lew said, “and you wait out here and see if you can figure things out.”

Lew walked into the store and was drawn, seemingly magnetically, to the electronics section. He spotted a PlayStation 2 set up to allow shoppers to try out MVP Baseball 2006. Lew thought about it, and knew that he didn’t have time for such frivolity. But he had to just try it. Just for a minute.

A minute quickly turned into fifteen as Lew hacked into the game and changed his video game alter ego’s settings so that the video game Lew was a Jedi who wielded a BatSaber that made him invincible. “Sweet!!” he yelped as he smashed a homerun through the Harmon Killebrew banner in the Metrodome.

Meanwhile, Looper couldn’t figure out what to do. He had walked around Target after Lew didn’t come out, but couldn’t find him. He didn’t want to leave behind the Sass’s third base coach, but didn’t feel like he had a choice. He had to find Ghetto Cub, and he had a hunch as to where it was.

Looper jumped back into the car and took a left on University Ave. He then saw a big sign for Cub Foods. “That’s it!” he said to himself. He ran into the store and into the balloon section. “I’m here for the Sass!” he told the woman at the desk.

“Ah, you made it just in time!” she said. “Our balloons are in such demand that we almost sold yours to some guy named R. Johnson who claims he’s a pitcher in the BFL. One more minute, and I would’ve sold them to him.”

Looper raced back to Sass Stadium in Minneapolis, getting there just minutes before the party was to start. With Dawn and Beth’s help, he managed to get everything set up just in time. Though Lew and Bronson were later reached by cell phone, the teams had to play without their third base coach and a pitcher, respectively. Luckily, Mockball third base coach M. Brent Abernathy volunteered to be the third base coach for Sass for a day.

Nick, Dawn, and Beth picked up Lew and Bronson after Sunday’s game ended. They’re still not quite sure what to think.