"Israel is a murderous arm of the Yankee empire"

From Ma'an:

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez branded Israel a murderous extension of US power on Wednesday during a visit by Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We know what the state of Israel stands for - a murderous arm of the Yankee empire," Chavez told joint a news conference, according to Reuters. "What the president of Israel said, we take as a threat."

Venezuela is of course a baseball-mad country. Yet out of 205 Venezuelan baseball players in major league history, only 3 have belonged to the Yankees, a clear statistical imbalance that indicates a deep hatred of Venezuela by the Yankees organization.

The seething hatred between the genocidal dictatorship and the depraved empire may be dated back to 1996, when the Yankees beat out other teams to sign a 16-year old phenomenon from Venezuela named Jackson Melian. Melian never lived up to his potential, and is still banging around the minor leagues, representing a typical failure of the Yankee organization to build up talent from within and instead forcing them to spend gigabucks to buy players developed by other organizations.

The Yankee/Israel conspiracy is less well known. The Israel baseball League collapsed after only one season, but it was known to have a couple of Dominican players, and the Dominican Republic is a major rival to Venezuela in the Caribbean Series.

I hope that others can take this story and dig up more detailed information about this under-reported conspiracy.