An actual photo of the freak burst tide that hammered the western shore of Lake Ontario on May 11th as John Lackey's ERA increased by 15% in nearby Toronto,

In a stunning turn events, just as the Chicago Cubs had agreed to take John Lackey as compensation for signing Theo Epstein away from the Red Sox to be their new GM the Environmental Protection Agency has intervened and filed suit to prevent the transaction. The EPA lawsuit requests an extensive environmental impact study before John Lackey is permitted to suit up for the Cubs.

A spokesman for the US Army Corps of Engineers—Detroit District informed us, “We’ve been part of a joint investigation, along with the Meteorological Service of Canada, of a strange burst tide that did considerable damage to the western shore of Lake Ontario last May 11th. We were completely at a loss until a scientist at the MSC read the story about John Lackey’s ERA, and sure enough it turns out that on May 11th he was pitching in Toronto.”

Susan Hedman, Regional Administrator for the Great Lakes Region explained the EPA’s position. “The US Army Corps of Engineers came to us with the analysis of the May 11th event, the science seems indisputable. At this point there’s no way we can let John Lackey make 14-18 starts a year on the shores of Lake Michigan.

“People need to understand that the Great Lakes Megalopolis is a $4.5 trillion economy whose lifeblood is shipping. We can’t allow outside factors to interfere with that, the consequences of regular Lacktides are potentially catastrophic.”

When asked about the term Lacktide she replied, “That was the name of the analysis that we got from the Meteorological Service of Canada, Lacktides: The impact of local gravitational fields on tidal events.”

A spokesman from the MSC explained, “One of our scientists read the research paper from MIT’s Peter Fisher about the effect of John Lackey’s rapidly expanding ERA, and then fed that data into a simulator. Apparently Lackey’s ERA expanded so rapidly on May 11th that its velocity generated a short term gravitational burst that wrecked havoc with Lake Ontario’s tides. We’ve already filed suit here in Canada to prevent Lackey from starting in Toronto again. The impact of his starting half his games on a Great Lake city like Chicago, Milwaukee, or Detroit is potentially catastrophic. Especially a bandbox like Wrigley Field. This could potentially lead to another 20 Gordon Lightfoot songs about shipwrecks, which is clearly a human rights violation.”

The lawsuit has apparently wrecked the hopes of Boston fans that the Red Sox could unload Lackey on the Cubs with little pain. A spokesman for Tom Ricketts said, “This has been a weight off our shoulders, I can tell you. Their (the Red Sox) position from the start was that the only way we weren’t getting stuck with Lackey was if we gave them Starlin Castro, which was a non-starter. So the EPA’s lawsuit has been a godsend.”