Virtual Baseball: Amazing Reappearances! Miraculous Coincidences! Incredible Concatenations!

By HoraceClarke66

 

It happened in the middle of Ma Boone’s pregame speech to the Yankees. He had sat the whole team down, and started to talk to them in a low, sad voice.

 

“Well, boys, you’ve played a great season—and now your general manager says it’s over. I guess we can’t expect to win ’em all,” Boone told them. “But now I’m going to tell you about somebody most of you never saw on a ballfield. How many of you ever heard of Giancarlo Stanton?”

 

Most of the Yankees shook their heads, and looked at the floor. One or two tentatively, doubtfully, raised a hand.

 

“I know. It was before your time, most of you. But you know what a tradition he’s become here at the Stadium.”

 

There was a gentle, faraway look in his eyes.

 

“But you know, the last thing Stanton said to me before he went on the DL for 345 days…or maybe it was that time he insisted on being on the playoff roster even though he couldn’t play…or I guess it was when that mysterious cyclone swept him away in Iowa,” Boone recalled.  “But whenever it was, the last thing Stanton said to me—besides ‘Please God, help me!’—was ‘Boonie, sometime when the team is up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Giancarlo.’”

 

Just as Boone finished, a familiar silhouette appeared in the doorway of the Yankees’ clubhouse. 

 

“Why is it…could it be…Is it…???”

 

“It’s me, of course, why you just saw me show up unexpectedly at the clubhouse in Toronto last week,” said John Sterling. “But I brought a certain someone with me, a Yankee man of knowledge!”

 

Out from behind him, stepped Giancarlo Stanton.

 

“Geez, what kind of story is this that has unknown silhouettes appearing in a doorway every few days?” asked backup first baseman Mike Ford, though he was quickly silenced by cries of “Shut up, Princeton!”

 

“I won’t be playing right away. Or maybe, you know, ever,” Stanton told his teammates, to audible exhalations of relief. “But I want you to go out there and win one for, well, me.”

 

In the epic, ensuing battle of anonymous relievers versus anonymous relievers, beginning with Yankees “opener” Johnny Lasagna, and ending with Aroldis Chapman in the ninth, the Yankees managed to edge the TB Rays, 5-4, and cut the Tampa Bay lead to just 1 game with only 2 remaining. 

 

The winning blow was a gigantic home run to dead center field by Gary Sanchez in the bottom of the eighth, following home runs by Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier earlier in the wild, back-and-forth contest.

 

The unmitigated joy over the Yankees’ stunning win was only mitigated by the fact that the Pangolin House restaurant in the centerfield cube remained closed for the second straight game. Rumors abounded that the New York Department of Health was avidly searching for all the Wall Street executives who attended a large party there early in the week.

 

While stories spread about food poisoning and worse, Yankees spokesman Lonn Trost issued a statement assuring the public that, “Contrary to rumor, nobody has died—directly—from anything they ate—or inhaled, or touched—at Pangolin House.  At least as far as we know.”