Sanó-bashing caravan disappears

A caravan dedicated to hating and bashing Minnesota Twins third baseman Miguel Sano had quickly disappeared over the weekend after Sanó started climbing out of his recent slump at the plate. Many local residents reported a convoy of recreational vehicles, campers, semi-trucks, and a conglomerate of SUVs staked out at the parking lot of the now-shuttered K-Mart in Anoka.

At the time of this writing, there had been only one recreational vehicle remaining in the parking lot, a 1970s Winnebago which was shades of sun-baked brown, tan, and yellow. This reporter took a chance and knocked on the door to see if anyone would answer some questions for this article. After knocking and waiting a few moments to see if anyone would emerge from the heap of metal, an occupant opened the door. He was a man that looked to be in his mid-30s with a mullet and a receding hairline, wearing a worn-out and stained white tank top with blue plaid pajama bottoms. The occupant shaded his eyes from the bright morning sun. “Oh [expletive],” the man said. “Babe, we slept through our alarms again.”

When asked if he was part of the caravan, he said he was but that they were supposed to leave earlier that morning. “Oh yeah, man, once we heard he broke that 0-14 slump, we knew we had to get out and move on to someone else,” the man, who would not provide his name, mentioned. “Once he hit that second homer in two days, we know we were done. Wanna come in, man? Babe’s got some coffee going.”

Reluctantly, this reporter stepped inside RV and joined the couple for a cup of coffee. Asked about the caravan, the man explained who made up the caravan and what they did for a living. “Well, the NHL and NBA just finished up their seasons, man, so we started taking a look at some hot takes in the MLB,” he started. “We don’t know anything about these teams, really. We just find any newspaper, radio station, and blog that covers the team, man, choose a player who’s in a slump, and just flood their comments section with random stats that don’t matter at the time, man.”

“It’s funny, man,” the man continued, “I was part of the [Joe] Mauer group ever since he signed that mega-contract. After he announced his retirement, man, we were distraught. We lived and fed off of that for years... YEARS!” He slammed his fist on the table. His co-inhabitant put her hand on his shoulder, “It’s okay, hon. Things gotta change sometime,” as she put a cup of coffee in front of him. “That’s where we met, actually,” she mentioned. “It’s hard, but we’re going to have to take down those pictures of Jim [Souhan] and Patrick [Reusse] sometime, though.” The man shook his head. “Never.”

When asked where the caravan was going next, they said they think they were heading to Chicago to prepare for someone on the Cubs or White Sox, he couldn’t remember. “But we’re making our way out to New York eventually, man,” he said. “Some Yankees player is choking at some point, right, man?”