Recipe for Early Season Disaster

OK, so you're looking to prepare some nice early season disaster for your favorite team, but you're not quite sure where to start.  Fear not!  Here at Twinkie Town Kitchens, we have just the recipe for you!

First of all, you'll want to gather the following ingredients:

- 1 first baseman recovering from potentially career-ending injury
- 1 superstar catcher with knee issues
- 2 new starting middle infielders
- 1-2 language/culture barriers
- a dash of GetAfterIt
- 1 closer recovering from potentially career-ending injury/surgery
- 1 reconstructed roster of unproven middle relievers
- a crappy schedule
- 1 bearded man
- 3 buckets of uncontrollable force

OK, now that you have all of your ingredients, it's time to get cooking:

1. First, throw out your bearded man.  A lot of people say that you should save your bearded man for later, but I say, go ahead and use him right away.  If you can use him on a player who's moustache brings good luck, even better.  See?  You've eliminated a source of good mojo and created fan confusion at the same time.  Nobody is comfortable saying "Pavbeard."  That's a good base.

2. Make sure you are constantly adding your first baseman's injury recovery issues throughout the whole cooking process.  Don't actually add your first baseman until later, however.  -That way he won't have as much time to prepare, and the team will have to deal with his absence and recovery as a constant distraction.  Also make sure to hold out your superstar catcher and use his knee issues for the same effect.

3. Throw your new starting infielders in together along with the language/culture barriers.  Watch your manager try to talk 3 languages at once.  Give said manager the dash of GetAfterIt, and watch his frustration when he can't give it to one new starting infielder and the other one thinks it's something called "Tofu battle."

4. Stir in your closer recovering from potentially career-ending injury/surgery and your reconstructed roster of unproven middle relievers as the spring moves along so that people have the idea of optimism because of the returning closer and forget about the questions on who will pitch anytime before the 8th inning.  Also, make sure you don't add any proven relievers who were overwhelmingly available in the offseason and thus would have been cheaper than normal.  They might put out a key hit-parade fire.  Then what have you got?  Disaster averted.  No one wants that.

5. Now, in a completely different pot, you should be bringing your uncontrollable force to a boil...  Just as you break camp, you need to throw in your crappy schedule.  Try to start with like 10 games in 10 days and maybe a road trip against a couple of teams that you never can seem to beat.

6. Finally, right as the first inning of the first game is underway, say the bottom of the inning when your notoriously troublesome opponent is batting, dump in your uncontrollable force.

Boom!  Early season disaster that will last at least a week!  Well done.  Now just sit back and listen to the Pavbeard cackle...