Bottom of the ninth, bases not yet loaded, 2 outs, 3-2 pitch, the Albuquerque Lymph Glands have already won the game but the umpire is letting them play on for fun. The pitcher for the Wildcat City Cougars winds up, the wind up, the wind up, the cracking because it's been wound too far, the pitch. It's a rocket ...oh no, it's a baseball, but it's travelling fast, not as fast as a rocket, but certainly fast for a baseball. It looks more baseball shaped than rocket shaped, it's far too small to be a rocket, it's not fast enough, and rockets don't usually fly from the pitcher's hand in a baseball game; I'm not sure quite how the confusion arose. Babyface 'I've Grown A Beard Since' Smilefrog, the Lymph Glands' powerful right fielder quickly nominates the location of his hit, then swings. Crack. His bat breaks in half, his wrist shatters in sympathy, the ball screams (although on quick recollection, the screaming didn't occur) straight and low, the Cougars' pitcher doesn't duck in time, and the ball buries itself in his face, mushing his nose as if it were just cartilage.
Premonition O'Ballintheface, the local lad come good from Wildcat City, the star pitcher, the fans' favourite, the one who throws better than the rest of the team, is quickly coming to terms with having a baseball smashed deep and hard into his face. His life flashes before his eyes - it hardly seems possible that he's seen that many ruptured corneas. His body's natural defence mechanisms take over before he tries to cure the ball in his face with aromatherapy: he falls backward. Such was the power of Babyface Smilefrog's hit that Premonition O'Ballintheface continues to fall backwards, tipping from back to head to front to legs to back to head to front to legs, tumbling over and over, careening out of control towards second base.
The exclusive world of pitching has many secrets, but the only one they don't tell everyone is whether or not their special pitching shoes have spikes. When you've been pitching for three years you get a sew-on patch and are told yay or nay to spikes; O'Ballintheface had been pitching for nearly four years, but the exclusive world of pitching doesn't have the bureaucracy it needs to provide an efficient service. Throughout his career he had plumped for yes, and ensured they were mighty sharp in case he was ever kidnapped and tied up without a knife in his back pocket. These sharp spikes were tumbling, still attached to the equally tumbling pitcher, cutting through the grass and air, bearing down rapidly on the poor blind second baseman. He got sliced good.
It was now that events took on an unbelievable air: the layout of the pitcher's spikes meant that although most of the slices of Unspecified Pronoun, the poor blind second baseman mentioned two sentences previously, fell on the base in a bloody mush with O'Ballintheface and the ball in his face, two slices of Unspecified Pronoun broke free, and began a tipping journey at right angles to the tipping pitcher. (I do apologise for the multitude of clauses, but if you don't understand it's your fault for not having a brain that's good enough). The head coach of the Wildcat City Cougars, one Acluck Tooey-Clukruck, considered himself more of a tactician than a man-manager, and had been playing with a novel formation on the field. The first and third basemen were playing a fair bit back from their respective bases, and the left and right fielders were playing a fair bit infield. Each baseman had an wide outfielder to hug close to, to try and absorb into his body, to try and inhabit the same space as, and each wide outfielder had a baseman whom he could treat likewise. These four were, as if you couldn't guess, in a nice straight line with the second basemen, the line which two slices of second baseman were tipping along. (The centre fielder was always a different person every game, someone from the local hospice who could be relied upon to die before the end of the fourth inning. Today he was a tough old coot, and had held on until right about... now). These tactics meant that one area of the park was heavily defended against baseballs. The Cougars' opponents throughout the year had all managed to find the weakness in these tactics, managed to find the gaping spaces on the field, but Tooey-Clukruck stuck with his tactics certain that all his players needed was more time to adapt.
These nameless four were dangerously allergic to being headbutted in the cheek by a cascading slice of the second baseman. These nameless four were headbutted in the cheek by a cascading slice of the second baseman. These nameless four had their windpipes swell shut. These nameless four didn't die because they were super killer robot rabbit baseball players who didn't need oxygen, but who turned off for 3 minutes in the event of an incident which would render a super killer non-robot rabbit baseball player dead. As he ran past the shortstop, Babyface Smilefrog gave him a threatening glance which reduced him to tears, suicide. As he slid into home, Babyface Smilefrog slid right through the catcher, popping his liver and one of his kidneys. That was death too. The carnage, the horror. The fans didn't know whether to cry or cheer. "Yerrrrrrrrrrrr out," screamed the fat clichéd umpire. "As you waded through the second base mush you touched the ball in Premonition's face," he explained to a menacingly advancing Babyface Smilefrog.
"Ah, monkeys in a nutsack."