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SFGAdv's Pendulum Departure Boosts Career of Montreal Expos Outfielder

Tim Black, the eccentric General Manager holding the reins behind Six Flags Great Adventure, is widely known for his lucrative business deals that don't really, technically speaking, create any value for the company's stockholders. Known better as Great Adventure's "Crazy Uncle Who No One Invites to Dinner," Tim Black is continuing his trend of trading away his newly purchased flat-rides for small, insignificant objects, and this time Pendulum (a Huss Frisbee) is the one on the line.

Pendulum, which operated next to Great Adventure's popular LIM-launched coaster, Batman and Robin: The Chiller (which doesn't operate all that often next to Pendulum), was one of the several new flat-rides installed for the 1999 season. Still in its teething years, Pendulum just finished being disassembled and packaged for freight transport across the border. According to reliable sources, Tim Black traded the Huss flat in exchange for a near-mint Matt Cepicky baseball card with a 10-year-old Mexican boy in a transaction conducted entirely in a suburban New Jersey McDonald's restroom.

Regarding comitting a business deal with a child, Black insists that the boy made an offer he couldn't refuse, especially under the pretenses of the negotiation. "He was a fast talker. I wasn't too sure what he was saying since I mostly slept through Spanish in high school, but I could tell that he knew the score. Like most boys his age, I knew he went into that McDonald's bathroom with the intent of leaving with ownership of a Huss Frisbee." As for his half of the deal, Black reports that he is "quite pleased with the baseball card" and that he has "been meaning to start collecting those things."

Matt Cepicky, the Montreal Expos outfielder whose baseball card was involved in this bathroom transaction, says that this is the sort of thing that is going to give his career a kick in the right direction: towards the field. Matt hopes that the spread of his baseball card will give his bosses the incentive to allow him to play a few games in the 2004 season. Matt says that "this is the sort of thing that can make a guy a hall-of-famer."

Manual Ortega, the 10-year-old-boy who traded away his baseball card to Tim Black, plans to properly staff the ride in his backyard with operators and maintence personel.

Ortega is being considered to replace Black as Great Adventure's General Manager for the 2004 season.

--DLS