Twins at Baltimore. Orioles 3, Twins 0.
Justin Morneau just wasn't looking his normal self when he arrived at the park today. While the slugger has never been exactly effervescent, this afternoon he seemed unusually wan and lifeless. Even his curls were limp. Gardy noticed it right away.
"Hey, Shirley Temple," asked Gardy. "You okay?"
"Um," said Morneau, "I guess. I just didn't sleep well last night."
"Is something wrong? You did such a good job with Canadian Mother's Day…"
"I know, I know," said Morneau. "I just, well, I had the strangest dreams…."
""Okay, well, try to get yourself together. We've got a game to win."
"Oh, I will…"
But when Joe Mauer arrived at the Camden Yards visitors clubhouse, it was the same thing. The Chairman had big bags under his eyes and his sideburns looked strangely uneven.
"You okay?" asked Gardy.
"Yeah," said Mauer laconically. "Not a lot of sleep."
"Huh," said Gardy.
One by one, the players began to filter in looking listless and pale. By the time Shannon Stewart arrived in the clubhouse, six hours after he usually begins his pre-game warm-up, Gardy knew something was certainly up. Every player he asked complained of feeling tired, of strange dreams—with the exception of Terry Mulholland who said he had been sleeping like a baby ever since he cut all white food from his diet.
Gardy called Steve Liddle into his office and the two had a quick consultation.
"Did Lew have them up all night playing Doom again?" asked Liddle.
"I dunno," said Gardy.
"Did LeCroy fix them all some bad crawdads?" asked Liddle.
"I dunno," said Gardy.
"Did Radke loan out some bum styling gel?"
"I dunno," said Gardy.
The mystery deepened during batting practice, when the players could barely make contact with the ball. Suspecting something was seriously wrong, Liddle got the Camden Yards organist—a 104-year-old woman named Dolly Longbottom—to pitch some BP, but the players had no more success against her.
"You know," said Gardy, "I think there's something really strange going on here. Something…supernatural."
Liddle sighed. "Oh, Gardy," he said. "Not again."
"Open your mind up to extreme possibilities, Stevie," said Gardy. "Just because something is improbable doesn't make it impossible."
So, Gardy quickly called a team meeting. "Now, boys," he said, "It seems most of you had some trouble sleeping last night."
"Not me!" chirped Mulholland.
"But the rest of you," said Gardy. "Now, I'd like you guys to talk a little bit about your experiences—"
Suddenly, a gasp came from the corner of the clubhouse. Little Nicky Punto stood up quickly and pointed at Juan Castro. "YOU WERE THERE!" he said.
"What?" Gardy stood at attention. "Little Nicky Punto, what is it?"
"I dreamt that I was in a strange place," said Little Nicky Punto. "A dark room. It was very cold. And Juanie, he was there, too, he was—"
"LYING ON A BED!" said Jacque Jones. "He was lying on a bed!"
"Not a bed," said Torii Hunter. "A table. A metallic table. And I was on one too, and—"
"Mi tambien!" said Carlos Silva. "Y El Doctoro, y El Presidente, y Junior Spiffee, y Pequeno Nicky Punto!"
"You see?" Gardy turned to Liddle. "The boys were clearly abducted by aliens."
"But Gardy," Liddle sighed, "they're clearly suffering under some mass hysteria. This is very common. One person hears another person's dream and it influences his memory and soon you have a group of people thinking they've shared some sort of otherworldly experience when they're simply creating a collective delusion. You're looking for a supernatural explanation when maybe there was just something strange in the hotel flan."
"No," said Gardy. "I've seen trouble with flan before, and this ain't it."
Well, pretty soon it was game time and the Minnesota Twins, such as they were, readied themselves to play baseball. And in the first inning, it seemed they might be their normal selves—Shannon Stewart got a base hit to start off the game, then after an LNP strike out, Joe Mauer moved Stewie over to 2nd, then Doctor Morneau walked. But then, Torii Hunter grounded out to end the inning and Gardy let out a long sigh and turned to Liddle.
"Probably got an anal probe," he said.
After that, whatever had happened to the Twins the night before began to catch up with them. O's pitcher Daniel Cabrera, who had far better stuff than Dolly Longbottom (though Dolly is a far better organist than Mr. Cabrera) pitched a symphony of a game, forcing the Twins to strike out, pop out, ground out, or foul out depending which outcome seemed most aesthetically pleasing to him at the time.
It was in the seventh inning, after Cabrera put two on and then struck out the side swinging, that Little Nicky Punto remembered something else about his dream. As soon as the game was over, he went to tell Gardy.
"Daniel Cabrera," Little Nicky Punto whispered. "He was there, too. Last night."
"On the tables?" asked Gardy.
"No. He was walking around the room. He was wearing a surgeon's mask and talking to these other guys, I don't know who they were, but they were really weird. Sort of green looking, and not like the Doctor after he got hit in the head."
Gardy gasped. "I can't believe it!"
"It's true," said LNP.
"God, that makes me so mad!" said Gardy. "It's one thing to totally dominate my boys and shut them out for the first time in a year. It's another thing altogether to get aliens to kidnap them and give them anal probes."
"Gardy," said Liddle, "look, sometimes we just get beat. Cabrera, man, he was on fire! Those pitches, no one could hit those. It was like he was from outer space—"
"Exactly," Gardy said. "Exactly."