Cruising at great heights, the initial descent wasn’t too alarming. As they kept losing altitude, the players started to tighten up. Jayce barked directions to the pilot despite having never flown a plane at the major league level. Tension caused the team to grow quiet: the silence of the cabin punctured only by the rhythmic smacking from Hos chewing on an enormous wad of bubble gum. Then an engine blew and panic started to set in. The plane went into a nose-dive. Jake closed his eyes and tried to think happy thoughts about the late spring when they were 14 games above .500.
They crash landed on a sandy beach, bats and balls were strewn everywhere.
The survivors stumbled aimlessly until a shrill trumpeting sound broke the silence. Squinting into the distance they saw Manny blowing into a conch shell. Curious they assembled around him.
Manny spoke: “We’re not sure what happened. The flight was going smoothly but somehow the wings came off in the second half.”
Hos grabbed the conch. “I’ve got 4 gold gloves.” he said, fumbling the conch. “Only the holder of the conch can speak.”
Blake asked for the conch and expounded on the ‘drip’ of the upcoming city connect jerseys for 20 minutes before Hos finally demanded the conch back. “If we’re gonna survive we need food. Wil, Joe, go catch us some shrimp scampi yo.”
Wil hustled off down the beach but came up lame and limped back to the group clutching his knee. Joe wandered off but got lost and sat down. His belly rumbled and he ate some berries from a nearby bush. “They looked vaguely like coffee beans” he thought as he slipped off into a cold sleep.
Yu said he was going for help and swam off into the horizon. “I’m coming with you!” Victor shouted and swam off after him.
Hos ordered the rest of the players to split up into two groups of 6, the littluns and the bigguns. He broke a bat in half, picking up the sharp ends, told the bigguns “let’s go hunt us some short ribs”
Manny and the littluns started collecting driftwood for a signal fire. But Jurickson just stood there, sweating profusely. Suddenly he grabbed a stack of bats, 5 game bats and one fungo, and dropped them into an equipment bag. Exposing only the bat handles, he demanded the remaining littluns pick one, screaming “Mankind is always only 9 meals away from murder!” Trent and Ha Seong wrestled Jurickson to the ground and gently subdued him.
In San Diego the team was overdue and A.J. knew something was wrong. He spent the morning furiously working the phones to put together an air rescue. By the early afternoon Jim Bowden tweeted that A.J. had reached an agreement with the Coast Guard for a fleet of twin-engine Sikorsky Jayhawks and the deal was inches away! But a half an hour later the Jayhawks were redirected to Los Angeles to rescue a billionaire’s Peterbald stuck in a moderately sized tree. A.J. settled for a used Grumman cropduster from the Ventura County Agricultural Inspector, which crashed into the Pacific ocean shortly after takeoff.
Jake awoke in a cold sweat. Bleary eyed he looked around. The plane was still in the air. Was it all a dream? Fernando sat next to him holding an issue of Cycle World with “The Ecstacy and Rush of Going to 12 O’Clock” blazoned on the cover. He looked to the front of the cabin. Jayce wasn’t there. Instead, Bob slept peacefully, the cabin lights glinting off the glasses that had slipped down his nose.
“You ok Jake?” CJ asked from across the aisle. Jake stared at CJ and let his imagination wander, the young face slowly transforming until, just for a moment, Jake saw the famous visage. “Juan…” he whispered to himself. The stewardess rolled a drink cart down the aisle and Jake’s thoughts were interrupted when Mackenzie let out a loud yelp, the drink cart hitting him in the left elbow. Jake stared wistfully out the window at the ground. Did it suddenly seem a lot closer?
He had a profound sense of Deja Vu.
The captain’s voice came over the speakers “We’re now flying over the Colorado Rockies. Expect turbulence ahead.”
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