Before "American Idol," before "America's Got Talent," before "Dancing With the Stars," heck, even before cable, there was "The Gong Show." An unabashedly sleazy, proudly classless talent competition with zero pretensions to quality, it gave us, among its several dubious contributions to the pop zeitgeist, the sleaziest of the D-list judges, Rex Reed. His pouty whine, "I don't know... where do you take an act like that?" preceding the striking of the gong became a cultural meme on the order of "You're Fired!" back before anyone even knew what a meme was. I'm not ready to strike the gong on this story, yet, but Reed's question does suggest itself.

One place that comes to mind is SNL. It has much in common with your standard, generic SNL sketch (which seems to be the only kind they know how to write), including an inability to develop a great idea and find an ending for it. (And don't get me started on third acts.) Unlike SNL skits, this actually made me laugh, many times, often while I was simultaneously castigating myself for getting suckered by such cheap jokes. Which brings us full circle back to The Gong Show. Cheap laughs. Hey, if it works, why not?

One reason might be that you're better than that. Which means that you're just lazy. You're also a fine writer, and there's no reason this exercise in TV sit-com punchlines couldn't be turned into a first-rate story, the kind that could definitely attract a good deal of attention. Of course, if you go the sit-com route you'll make scads of money and all you'll have to deal with is the spiritual angst that naturally accompanies selling out. But apparently you've already worked your way though that bit of unpleasantness, yes?

Here's where I think you've gone wrong (and YES, this is just my opinion, you're under no obligation to pay attention, yadda yadda yadda, blah, blah, blah, BS, BS, BS—my opinion is precisely what you asked for, so suck it up.) The SNL comparison is valid. You've come up with a clever idea, but instead of using it as the starting point to build a story, you simply vamp on it over and over. By the fifth paragraph, we got it. By the sixth, it's already worn out its welcome. Another apt comparison to SNL: You've resorted to many jokes, the excising of any of which would detract from the actual story not one bit and would result in a smoother narrative flow. Yeah, okay, I laughed at many of them, but by paragraph four we realize that your priority is cheap laughs over story structure and so we lower our expectations accordingly. A writer with your chops should be forcing your readers to raise their expectations, make them struggle to keep up. And, last but not least, you mistakenly believe that technical virtuosity can hide the fact that you couldn't close the deal on a real story. That's where you depart from SNL, by the way—that technical virtuosity stuff.

I might point out that many of your laughs are decidedly not cheap; they're organically fused to the events and the characters and would definitely be missed were they removed. And while the extended metaphor of the MLB funeral is nothing short of inspired, to keep it funny, less would without question be more. When you force your reader to suspend disbelief to such an extent, you make it difficult, if not impossible, to then inject real-world characters into the mix.

All of which once again brings me back to Rex Reed: where do you want to take this? If the surreal and fantastic is what you're going for, what can I say but continuez? You have a surreal fantasy cooking here. It's a limited niche but you'll find someone to publish it. You'll have an easier time finding a place for it, however, if you actually write the story you're nibbling at now. Find some humor in their interaction, rather than resorting to jokes grafted on from unrelated dimensions. Figure out why this line,

Most of the family was there, already seated, and a few of them shot me looks which I translated as, “You’re still driving the Pinto, aren’t you?

or this exchange:

“What are you doing when this is over?”

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

“I’m going back to my pad to cook some steaks and watch a movie…maybe play dress-up with a midget.”

“Sounds like fun.”

are infinitely more memorable than the whole baseball metaphor. Which is not to say that you shouldn't use it. But for us to really respond to the humor, we need to retain a connection to the real world that's being lampooned. There's a line between exaggeration and cartoon, and while each has their place, the humor here that works remains on this side of the reality divide.

And even if you insist on the cheap laughs and the cartoon setup, you're not absolved from the task of writing a story. So come up with a third act, and give these people an ending. It's the least you can do to pay your respects to the departed Uncle Don.