Fresh 2 U - Terry Pendleton

This, sadly, is the last Florida Agriculture Commission Braves card. While All-Stars get crummy raw broccoli (and Greg is an All-Star so all you haters can suck it) but MVPs get strawberries! And........ stuff. I do not know what is in that bowl. I do not WANT to know what is in that bowl. It's white, and chunky, and has enough density to support several large strawberries atop it. Could it be ice cream? Not in the hot Florida sun during a photo shoot it ain't. Could it be cottage cheese? Possibly, but more likely is that it was strawberries and cream which curdled into cheese in the 100 degree heat and 110% humidity. Could it be Elmer's Glue? I wouldn't put it past Commissioner Bob after he already handed out mutant tangerines and raw broccoli for this set. Whatever it is, Terry's not the least bit happy about it. Now, I'm not the biggest strawberry fan in the world, but no one makes a face like that when nibbling on one. Terry knows exactly what's in that bowl and he's not happy at ALL. I'm beginning to think this whole agriculture set has nothing to do with promoting nutrition and has EVERYTHING to do with MURDERING the Atlanta Braves with poisoned fruit! There are a lot of transplanted New Yorkers in Florida... how do we know Commissioner Bob isn't a... a... Mets fan?!? It all makes sense now! I knew it! Florida was evil the whole time! You can't fool a University of Georgia grad! Screw you Florida, and just watch as the Braves beat up on your Marlins this week!!!

Fresh 2 U - Greg Olson

Now we have Greg Olson eating broccoli on the 7th card from the Florida Agriculture set. Or pretending to eat broccoli more like it. There's no ranch dressing on that sucker and you can just see it in Greg's eyes that he really wants no part of this charade. Commissioner Bob was handing out the produce, got to Greg and hands him a stalk of raw broccoli. "Where's the ranch dressing?" Greg asked. "You don't get any" Bob replied. "You'll eat that broccoli and you'll like it, or else we'll sic Jeff's tangerines on you." So Greg takes the broccoli and smiles and fake nibbles on the thing while making yummy sounds while everyone else gets oranges and mutant tangerines and other yummy fruit. Ok, so Glavine got a carrot and didn't get any ranch dressing either, but at least he could do his Bugs Bunny impression and pick up chicks. Poor Greg has to fake gnaw on raw broccoli. The real tragedy here is that the card don't even mention broccoli anywhere on it. The logo on the top and the factoid on the back is all about watermelons. Juicy sweet, delicious watermelons. 65% of the nations watermelons are grown in Florida and Bob hands Greg a freakin' broccoli. With no dressing of any kind. Catchers get no respect. No respect at all. Someone give poor Greg an orange or something. Or at least steam the broccoli and put some butter or cheese on it. The guy's an All-Star, he deserves it.

Fresh 2 U - Sid Bream

Now if this were any other baseball player on the planet, I would be fairly certain that was a big honkin' screwdriver that Sid Bream was holding. This card would be more like a promotion for the Vodka Distillers of America then the Florida Agricultural Commission. But it's Sid Bream so I know for a fact that is 100% pure freshly squeezed orange juice made from oranges picked from a grove growing behind a quiet country church. No shenanigans occurred under Sid's watch, I assure you. Sid's one of those straight and narrow guys all the way. When you hassle him for an autograph while standing in line at Burger King, he's the type of guy who gladly signs, adds a bible verse or two to the signature, chats with you for a few minutes, buys you lunch and talks to the manager and convinces him to give you a job. The manager's job. Clean living all the way for Sid. You can't beat out a Barry Bonds throw to home plate if your head is all messed up from a stadium cup sized alcoholic beverage. Seriously, how big is that freakin' cup?? There's like three trees worth of oranges squeezed in that thing. Orange juice is good for you and all, but two gallons is a bit much. I'm beginning to wonder about these Florida Agriculture folks, I'm not sure their intentions are altogether good. I'm not worried about Sid though. He shared that OJ with the rest of the team, and even let the photographer have his portion because he looked hot and thirsty after shooting all day. That's just the kind of guy he is.

Fresh 2 U - Tom Glavine

Here's card number five of the Florida Agriculture set. I don't have any wacky conspiracy theories about this card because it's hard to blame the Illuminati for Tom Glavine looking like a total dork. I'm sure Tom was in the middle of a brilliant Bugs Bunny impression but when the photographer snapped the pic, he captured "goofball eating carrot" instead. Tom is the only player not obviously wearing any Braves gear either so it's entirely possible this photo was not posed but was instead Tom working his patented Looney Toons move to pick up a chick at a party. It's all rather silly, but significant in that the Fresh 2 U logo is the only one where the produce featured in the logo is not circular. You may think this fact is meaningless, but I shall be pondering it the next time I meditate on the Florida Agriculture Koan for sure. The back of Tom's card does not specifically mention carrots, but it does say that Florida farmers produce everything from avocados (which is misspelled as avacados) to zucchini. I'm glad now that I don't have the Marlins half of this set, because I really don't want to see any baseball players doing funny poses with a zucchini.

Fresh 2 U - Jeff Blauser

On card three of the Florida Agricultural Commission set we see Jeff Blauser holding up a top-secret experimental tangerine. A tangerine orchard just outside of Ocala was infected with a special strain of mold commissioned by the Department of Defense and then irrigated with tritium contaminated water for 8 months. The radioactivity caused the DNA of the two organisms to combine to create a highly suggestive symbiote that lived in the peel that would form messages at the urging of a gardener, farmer or Federal agent dressed in overalls. The 'official' story was that the fruit was to be used for innocuous advertising purposes, but the CIA saw them as a propaganda tool that could be sent in aid packages to unfriendly nations to promote anti-government sentiments through slogans written on the peels. Unfortunately Fidel Castro's cousin Jorge was employed as a migrant worker on the farm and was acting as a spy for the Cuban Government. Two weeks before the Orwellian citrus was scheduled to be sent to Guatemala, Jorge had convinced over three quarters of the orchard to become Marxists. The fruit rejected their capitalist propaganda and instead wrote socialist agitprop and portraits of Che Guevara on their skins. A particularly patriotic tree reported the traitors to the Feds and after a protracted battle where many agents were knocked senseless by falling fruit an airstrike had to be called in to quash the uprising. The orchard was razed, the project was canceled and the remaining loyal tangerines were transferred to Disney World where they were used as heads for the dolls in the "It's A Small World" ride and can be found smiling vapidly even today. Jeff never knew just how dangerous that innocent looking little tangerine that he was holding for this photo truly was.

Fresh 2 U - Steve Avery

Card Number two in the Florida Agriculture set is Steve Avery.

Steve is staring down the batter, about to send a message pitch high and inside with some deadly citrus. This is how Ave's career got messed up you know. The Florida Citrus Board saw this card and convinced him that he could improve on his strikeout rate by throwing grapefruits in the pen instead of baseballs. If you could get a big squishy grapefruit by the batter, you could certainly throw a baseball past him. They even sent him a truckload of grapefruit straight from Indian River to practice with. Problem is, Steve noticed that when the batters made contact they invariably hit a juicy grounder to an infielder for an out. Avery figured he had perfected a sinker, tried throwing them in games and got massacred. Leo wasn't able to dissuade Ave from throwing this new pitch because he was allergic to citric acid and broke out in hives whenever he came within 10 feet of Avery. Thus, a brilliant career was cut short by the evil, fruit peddling monsters on the Florida Agriculture Commission.

Ok, so maybe it didn't go exactly like that, but Florida is still evil, just ask any Bulldog fan.