Somewhere Deep Beneath Tampa

August 9th, 2019—I think.

By my calculations—scratching marks on the wall—it has now been 1 year, 9 months, and 19 days since the world ended.  Since that day when all the alarms first sounded around the Yanks' Permanent Rehab Complex, and the trainers and massage boys came running over to rush me into the End of the World Emergency Bunker beneath the field.

Who even knew the Yankees HAD an End of the World Emergency Bunker?  These guys think of everything.  They said it was an idea of old George's, right after he first got squirrely. Thank God it was there.

I'll never forget that day.  It started off as a day like any other day in rehab.  Picked up at the hotel by the physical therapists, who lifted me into the chair and wheeled me to the limo.  Then the usual, exhausting grind of whirlpool baths, massages, cooling health drinks, special Emeril Rehab meals, and saunas.  Followed by a relaxing dip in the pool, rubdown, and manual erotic stimulation, with some warm milk and a nap before bedtime.

Our trainer-in-chief was just calculating how many decades it might be until I was ready for "baseball activities," when the started to wail.  The next thing I knew, I was in a small, cell-like room deep beneath Legends Field, with single cot, a chair, an X-box, and a television.

Hey, I'm not complaining.  It feels like heaven, compared to what's going on...OUT THERE.

They never did tell me just what it was that happened.  Some combination of nuclear exchange, biological warfare, zombie apocalypse, alien invasion, the End of Days, and The Shining.  

The accounts of those who serve as my beloved guards and helpers are never very coherent.  Often, while trying to explain it, they burst into hysterical giggles as people do, I know, when trying to talk about witnessing something so awful it has burned a permanent hole in their brains.

I have an idea of it, at least.  The TV doesn't pick up much, but every now and then some staticky, wavering images on the news come through.

...that insane blonde woman, whoever she is, riding around on a giant, mutated, flying lizard that spews fire on helpless, screaming people...Marianne Williamson running for president—my God, think of how many people must have died before THAT could happen!

In any case, my helpers keep me safe and secure.  They bring me whatever food they can scavenge, and tell me that I must never, ever open the door, lest I be exposed to the penis-shrinking radiation, giant centipedes, and invisible strains of Super Ebola just outside.

Whenever I ask them about my beloved teammates they just shake their heads and look very sad.

But...maybe, just maybe, there is at least one fellow survivor from the Yankees' Permanent Rehab Complex.

The other day, I heard a faint tapping coming through the concrete walls of my cell.  A tapping that sounded like so many dots and dashes, so much so that I could only surmise that it must be Morse Code.

I listened for a little while longer.  Then, clearing my throat, I shouted at the top of my lungs:  "DUDE!  Like everybody else born after 1960 I don't know fucking Morse code, a'right?"

After that, the tapping stopped.  Which was good, so I could get some sleep.  But then I swore I could hear a dim voice, as if from very far away or coming through a series of concrete walls, trying to communicate.

I swear, it was trying to tell me a name.  It sounded like, "Gi-an-car-lo!"

Which is weird, since the only dude I know in baseball named THAT is that guy on the Marlins who keeps hurtin' himself swingin' on pitches in the dirt.  Why would the Yankees ever pick up HIM?

But hey, I'm just lucky to be alive.  I know that now, and it's funny, but most of my old injuries seem to have healed up.  I tell myself, Jacoby, you're one lucky dude, hombre, even if you do have to spend your whole life in a tiny room eating hot dogs with rat turds on them and playing this WAY out of date X-box.

Though I have noticed lately that my plantar fasciitis has begun to act up.  Don't know how it happened, just some way I twisted when I was blasting aliens on the box the other day.

If only that whirlpool had made it through the missile strike...