One of the biggest stories this off-season has been the teaming up of mercurial former White Sox manager, Ozzie Guillen, and loony former Cubs pitcher, Carlos Zambrano, on the Miami Marlins. Now the front office of the Marlins is making sure this story remains front page news throughout the regular season by hiring a team of Austrian psychiatrists from the University of Vienna to study the behavior of the two “crazies.” The psychiatrists, headed by Dr. Franz VanHammerschmidt, is eagerly looking forward to his study.

“From what I’ve heard from you Americans, it’ll be like putting an alligator and a tiger in the same cage together,” said Dr. VanHammerschmidt, a psychiatrist renowned for his studies of spoiled, petulant professional athletes. “My team and I have taken bets because surely, one of them will end up dead. After seeing what Mr. Zambrano did to his catcher a few years ago, my Euros are on Ozzie.”

Warned not to get too close to the action, each doctor will be armed with two cans of mace and a stun gun should things get too crazy. It sounds extreme, but the volatile nature of Guillen and Zambrano require extreme caution.

The team of psychiatrists will be traveling with the players, watching their every move. Any hint of hostility will be recorded. The few brief meetings between the doctors, Guillen and Zambrano are already spewing results.

Zambrano failed miserably during his Rorschach Ink Blot test, saying the majority of the images looked like “clowns on fire running for their lives.” Meanwhile, a therapy session with Guillen revealed a deep insecurity towards Kenny Williams.

“He likes to talk about how he was responsible for the World Series in 2005, not the ‘@#$%ing idiot with the giant head,’” said Dr. VanHammerschmidt. “I think if he were taller, he would be much more secure with himself.”

Michael Kloempken