Virtual Off-Day: GIANCARLO FOUND! Traveled Through Desert with Nameless Nag. Clint Frazier's Job Reported in Jeopardy.

In a stunning turn of events even in what has been one of the Virtual New York Yankees' most extraordinary seasons off the field, long-lost slugger Giancarlo Stanton stumbled into a desert fracking station today, badly parched and burned by his long exposure to the sun, and wearing the shreds of his Yankees road uniform wrapped around his gaunt body.

Interviewed in the National Guard camp near the Mexican border where he was taken, Stanton appeared weary but surprisingly animated after he'd had a bath and a meal.  He was eager to answer reporters' questions about his long sojourn in the New Mexico desert, though he often seemed annoyed at their inability to comprehend his answers.

Many of the these questions involved the whereabouts of the horse that Stanton had reportedly been riding through much of his journey.

"I tell you, man:  it felt good to be out of the rain," Giancarlo informed the press.  "In the desert, you can remember your name, cause there's nobody out there for to give you no pain."

Asked if could remember the name of the horse he was on, Stanton shrugged the question off.

"I don't know the horse's name.  I tell you, though:  two days out in desert sun, my skin was red."

"You didn't know the horse's name?  What did you call it?  'Horse?' "

"C'mon, man!  Listen: after three days, I was lookin' at this river bed—"

"How did you feel about that, Giancarlo?"

"Felt bad, man.  I thought of the story it told of a river that flowed, and I was sad to see it was dead."

"Giancarlo, did you eat that horse—"

"Will you get off the fucking horse, man?  Look, maybe nine days after I was out there, I let the horse run free, because the desert had turned to sea.  You know what?  The ocean is a desert with its life underground, and the perfect disguise above.  Under the cities lies a heart made of ground, but you dickheads in the media won't give it no love."

Stanton subsequently admitted that he had survived in good part by eating small, spineless cacti he was able to discover out in the desert.  Soon after he devoured the first one, he was guided through the sands by a number of verbose, oversized animals, including a coyote and a crow.

He also described meeting "a man of knowledge," who would suddenly appear and disappear.  Stanton described this individual as a jolly, rotund figure, "both black and white," who might suddenly materialize right in front of him or on the top of a distant mountain.

At all times, though, Stanton recalled that this "man of knowledge" had a beer in one hand, a ham hock in the other, and two beautiful women wrapped around him.

"He taught me many things," the slugger related.  "Things about the game I never knew or understood before.  He opened up my whole mind.  He talked about hitting to the opposite field, and taking pitches, and playing the outfield, and even bunting.

"I asked what all this was, and he just threw back his head and laughed.  He said...he said...it was a Yanqui way of knowledge—"

At that moment, Stanton, whose travails had reduced him to a mere 125 pounds, collapsed into the arms of his doctors.  They later assured reporters that he would be fine, after a few more days of rest and rehydration.

The story of Stanton's reappearance was immediately conveyed to Yankees GM Brian Cashman in the darkened, bird-fortified bunker he is now residing in under Yankee Stadium, after an unfortunate, Opening Day lizard misrecognition episode.

Cashmere's eyes reportedly glowed with delight when he heard the news, and he had to blink back tears of joy.

"Now-now I can trade Frazier at last!" he was headed to cry out.  "Now I got that red-headed bastard right where I want him!  Bwahahahahahah!"