Virtual Baseball: Cole Train Runs Down the Rays. Weird Atmospheric Configurations Frighten Fans.

Virtual Gerrit Cole pitched his league-leading, third complete game of the season tonight, topping the Tampa Bay Annoyance Rays, 5-2.

After an upper-deck home run by Luke Voit, and an inside-the-park job by Aaron Hicks, the winning shot was a titanic, three-run dinger by Clint Frazier, in the bottom of the ninth.

But the real highlight for many of the fans—or rather, "fright-light"—was the dry thunder storm that filled the air above the Stadium with forks of blue lightning, and assorted apparitions.  One fan swore that he saw the bronzed face of George Steinbrenner, from his Monument Park plaque, hovering over the field, and dripping red tears of blood.

Others were certain that they could hear, above the echoing thunder, the voice of John Sterling, still in his medically induced coma at the Hebrew Home for the Aged, decrying, "There's no predicting bizarre aerial portents!"

And at the very height of the storm, Challenger, the Yankees' patriotic pander-eagle, broke loose from his cage somewhere in the depths of the Stadium and soared back and forth above the infield.

Some players on the field were certain it was crying out, "Didi!" though others thought it might just be squawking, "Feed me!"  In any case, general manager Brian Cashman covered his Eagle Protection Helmet with his black cloak, and fled in terror.

"It is the part of men to fear and tremble when the most mighty gods by tokens send such dreadful heralds to astonish us," explained Dr. Egon Spengler of Hudson University, just back in New York after his fruitless search for Giancarlo Stanton in the rubble of the "Field of Screams" in Iowa.

"But such portents as these?  They generally appear only when two worlds run close together," Dr. Spengler explained.  "When there is a confluence of this earth with other Yankees worlds unknown to us, and where we can only shudder to think of the horrors that might lie therein—such as the Rays winning."

In this world, at least, New York were tied for first again, after taking the win.