It was quiet in the visitor's clubhouse in Tiger Stadium, as the Oakland A's packed up their things and prepared for the long elephant march home.

"Man," muttered Marco Scuturo.

"Man," agreed Nick Swisher.

"We were so good," said Jason Kendall.

"So good," said Scuturo.

"And then—" said Eric Chavez.

"And then," agreed Swisher.

There was nothing left to do, then, nothing but shake their heads and continue to pack while Milton Bradley sat in a corner playing a quiet, meditative game of Yahtzee. No one really noticed Darth Thomas sitting in the showers scrubbing obsessively at his arms, until Barry Zito finally finished his exfoliating and walked by the burly DH.

"Hey, Darth, you okay?"

"I've got this stuff on me," said Thomas. "It's like a fungus. I keep scrubbing and scrubbing, but…Will these arms never be clean?"

"Oh," said Zito, backing away slowly. When he stepped into the clubhouse he took Chavez aside. "I think something's wrong with Darth," he whispered.

When he explained, Chavez's eyes grew wide and he ran into the showers. "Look," he proclaimed to Thomas, ripping off his left sleeve. "I have it too!"

"IT BURNS!" shouted Thomas.

It didn't take too long to discover that the fungus was all over the A's players. And when Bobby Kielty walked in after his regular postshower sticking his finger in a light socket, he found the clubhouse mood had gone from gloom to confusion and fear. And when the players showed him the cause, he grew pale.

"I know what that is," he whispered, eyes like moons. "I've seen it before."

Slowly, the A's gathered 'round Kielty as he shook his head like a man with a terrible tale to tell. "It's the Suck from the Twins!" he proclaimed in a deathly voice. "It will make you hit into double plays, field like blind monkeys, turn any good bat into an ass bat..."

"Oh, my god," said Scuturo.

"Oh, my god," agreed Swisher.

"IT BURNS," repeated Thomas.

"How did it get on us?" breathed Jason Kendall.

"I don't know," said Kielty. "It must have infested the stadium when they were there. I mean, that was a lot of suck."

"Yeah," said Kendall. "There's no way all that suck could be contained in the visitor's clubhouse."

As one, the players let out a tremendous sigh that shook the whole clubhouse, thinking about what might have been.

"At least…" said Chavez, "…at least we didn't suck as badly as they did…."

Silence for a moment, and then a slow grin spread across Kielty's face. Quietly, he began to chuckle. The other players looked at him, and then slowly they began to smile too, and soon they were all rolling around in laughter, all the pain of the past few days forgotten for one glorious moment.

"You got that right," agreed Swisher, wiping a happy tear away from his eye. "You got that right."

Posted by Batgirl at October 15, 2006 08:16 PM