Hey, I’m Mike Piazza, and I’d like to talk to you about Jade Helm 15.

You might have heard some chatter about Jade Helm 15 in the last few weeks. See, there’s an awful lot of crazy talk lately about how the government is using some “military exercises” to enact martial law and threaten the sanctity of this great nation. Sure sounds far-fetched, right?

“P,” you might be saying to yourself, “these folks have their jocks in a twist. This is all the usual cockamamie fear and rumor-mongering. Texas? They’re gonna take out Texas?! Everybody knows that if you mess with the bull, you better get ready for the horns.”

On the Jade Helm 15 documents, you can plainly see that Texas is marked as “hostile territory.” Last time I was there, they sure seemed like awful nice folks. What gives?

Well, let me tell you something about these so-called conspiracy nuts polluting the air with their pissant little theories: they’re half right. The real meaning of the exercise is staring you right in your own dumb little faces, if you’ll only WAKE UP, SHEEPLE:

Kevin Millar’s batting helmet.

Let me explain. You remember Millar, right? Mr. Cowboy Up, certified red-ass. Nowadays Millar makes bank as the host of “Intentional Talk” on the MLB Network. Don’t watch it? Hell, neither do I. Well, one thing you don’t know about that good ol’ boy is that he lives in a big mansion in Austin, TX nowadays. When he isn’t doing his studio show in Jersey, he’ll do it from his well-equipped compound in the Hill Country. They call it “Studio 1-5.”

Starting to ring a bell?

Or maybe you remember him from his days as a Florida Marlin, where he wore a teal batting helmet. In other words, a jade helm. And his old uniform number?

15.

I wish I was making this stuff up.

FACT: Recently, a bunch of Wal-Marts in Texas closed in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. Some people think they’re going to be used as staging centers for Chinese troops hell-bent on seizing American guns. Some people think they’ve already built a system of tunnels from place to place, the better to run resupplies along the NAFTA highway.

If you overlay the locations of those Wal-Marts on the Jade Helm 15 map and triangulate those tunnels, all roads lead to Austin. AKA Kevin Millar’s driveway. And sooner than you can say, “Ni hao, dear leader Millar!” we’ll be marching to the beat of a pinko drummer.

FACT: According to Jade Helm 15, there’s an upcoming “JOAX event” scheduled for right around Austin. Think that means “joint operational access exercise?” More like jerkin’ over Americans, xtremely.

FACT: I recently wound up spending the night in the Hicksville IKEA with two-thirds of Generation K after an autograph signing at the Broadway Mall went, well, “awry,” let’s just say. Some people might chalk it up to the case of Lime-a-Ritas I split with Paul Wilson in the parking garage. I like to think the good people of Long Island just didn’t want to hear me jack truth bombs the way I jacked 40 dingers in ’99. Point is, I’ve seen Bill Pulsipher turning 360s on one of those pallet jacks until he puked green slop all over Småland. So I know a few things about what kinds of crap you can get up to in a big empty department store. I can only imagine what’ll happen when they erect the FEMA domes over those Wal-Marts in Texas.

FACT: I have documents, held securely in escrow in the event of the unspeakable, that will conclusively prove that the Miami Marlins organization and its Manchurian dirt dog, Kevin Millar, are in on this whole conspiracy.

FACT: I spent eight days in the Marlins organization in 1998. They couldn’t get the jade helm on ol’ Mike, believe me. Kevin Millar was a scab player. He’d do *anything* to play major league baseball. Makes you wonder, huh?

Is Kevin Millar using his bully pulpit on the MLB Network to transmit secret signals that’ll activate sleeper cells from coast to coast? I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. But the next time you hear him yell “Got HEEEEM!” ask yourself: who talks like that anyway?

Don’t believe me? Remember the owner of those old Marlins: Wayne Huizenga, billionaire head of Blockbuster Video. Think Wayne knows a thing or two about closing stores?

What do you suppose they did with all those old empty Blockbuster Videos, anyhow? Miniature internment camps? Propaganda production centers? Secretly tainting the nation’s supply of Goobers and Sno-Caps with fertility-sapping Masonic fluoride? Those VHS copies of “The Big Lebowski” with all the F-words taken out – yet another by-product of our sorry nanny state, by the way – aren’t going to recycle themselves. This nation could use a few more Walter Sobchaks, if you get my drift.

And when *was* the last time you saw Wayne Huizenga out in public without his motorcade of jackbooted morality enforcers? Maybe it was when he was jet-setting off to Davos to meet with the rest of the secretive global elite and sign off on this sinister plot to take down the America we love.

I guess this really must be what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps.

I’m Mike Piazza, and I approve this message.

Mike Piazza

Mike Piazza retired in 2008 with a career slash-line of .308/.377/.545, and currently holds the MLB record for most career home runs hit as a catcher (427). In 2015, Piazza received 69.9% of the vote from the National Baseball Hall of Fame electorate, failing to qualify for enshrinement for the 3rd consecutive year.