Virtual Off-Day: Slugger Vanishes From First-Place Yankees (Again). Dazed Judge to DL. Yanks Scoot Back East.

Rescue crews looking over the tornado-strewn ruins of the cornfield and All-Star Ballpark Heaven found no trace of Virtual Yankees' slugger and man of knowledge, Giancarlo Stanton.  The loss of Stanton was considered a major blow to the Yanks, as New York's man of knowledge was hitting .348 on the season, with 16 home runs, in limited action. 

Stanton had revamped his game, and changed the team's entire philosophical approach to the game, after a life- and mind-altering experience in the desert earlier this year.  The Bombers' front office had no idea what might have become of him, but the team has already filed for payment of the $300-million accidental death policy it kept on Stanton with Lloyd's of London.

"Why, he could've been lifted up by the twister to a magical land where the roads are paved with gold, and demented midgets frolic about with giant lollilops," cackled GM Brian Cashman.  "Or probably not."

The twisters seemed to appear almost out of nowhere, defying all weather forecasts.  

"What you saw here was a massive, psychic disturbance in the atmosphere, caused by too many currents of imposed whimsy," explained Dr. Egon Spengler, chairman of Hudson University's Department of Paranormal Inquiry.  "You take this highly sentimental book, transform it into a Kevin Costner film fairly dripping with schmaltz—using not only a random doctor but even an actual hero of the civil rights movement as props, no less—then thoroughly corporatize what is essentially a movie set, shake well, add souvenirs, and play an actual major-league ballgame here, all in a supposed quest for lost innocence."

"Where is any sense of perspective?" asked Dr. Spengler.  "Where is there any admission that modern baseball's roots aren't in some Iowa field, but a bunch of vacant lots in New York City?  With all of this psychic hypocrisy and denial roiling the atmosphere of a country already engulfed in conspiracy theories and eager to bolt as the first sign of reality, well, you were just asking for an atmospheric explosion of this magnitude.

"In other words," said Spengler, "we were all just too full of it for something like this not to happen."