by ALEXANDER BIGGS-TUFTS-MANN, Alternate Reality News Service Sports Writer
Reggie Roadkill, beloved mascot of the Hinchon Dynamos of the Online Street Hockey League, has been put down.
"I've never seen anything quite like it," exclaimed famed sports veterinarian Aldo Chunk. "Reggie's coat had become waxy, the tire tracks on his back had faded and his internal organs had become all...pink and...and soft. It was only a matter of time before he ran out the clock. As F. Scott Fitzgerald truly said, 'There are no overtimes in the lives of sports mascots.'
"So, it was with a heavy heart that I put Reggie to sleep."
To commemorate Reggie Roadkill's life, the 30,000 OSHL fans at Samsung Stadium observed a minute of silence. Then, they observed three hours of silence as they watched their team get thrashed by the Toronto Maple Loafs 22-3. (The game took three hours - a long time for the sport - because there was an unusually large number of stoppages of play for cars.)
"No one can replace Reggie Roadkill," said Butch Viggorish, owner, coach and virtual skate sharpener of the Hinchon Dynamos. "When he got up on what we can only assume were his hind paws - he was roadkill, okay? It was kind of hard to tell what kind of an animal he had started out as - well, he could rouse a crowd like no other mascot I've ever seen!
"But, now that we've had time to mourn, I'd like to introduce our fans to the team's new mascot, Noooooooooooorm Nematode!"
Reggie Roadkill is not the first mascot that has had to be put down. Two months ago, Reuven Rattlesnake, the mascot of the OSHL's Wall Street Raiders, was also found to have a terminal illness.
"Reuven's rattle had become a sad whisper of its former self," doctor Chunk explained. "It couldn't scare a three month old or Don Knotts in his prime. Reuven's scales were dry and looked like they were about to fall off, and his insides had gone all squishy and pink just like - hey, you don't think there's a connection, do you?"
Online street hockey is not the only sport in which mascots have become so ill that they had to be put down. Pyrenees Platypus, mascot of the Houston Energy Corporation of the International Rollerball Association, died about five months ago.
"To be fair," doctor Chunk stated, "platypussies are not the most active animals in the menagerie. Still, when Pyrenees collapsed before a crucial match with the Tokyo Electronics, I was called in and, after a preliminary examination, there was no doubt in my mind that he could not be saved."
"I was heartbroken when I was told that Pyrenees had to be...you know...put to...you know," said Jonathan E, captain of the Houston Energy Corporation. "That was one hell of a charismatic platypus, let me tell you. Whenever I started dragging my ass and wondering if maybe retirement wasn't such a bad option, Pyrenees would raise my spirits by doing something silly in the pit, and that would be enough to keep me going. So, when we took the rink to play Tokyo, I had only one thought in mind: I'm going to win this one for the platypus!"
Three deaths in less than six months seems like more than a coincidence. Could it be that some kind of disease is sweeping through the community of sports mascots?
"Sweeping may be overstating the case," doctor Chunk answered. "Gently rubbing the community with a wet chamois may be closer to the truth. Still, we have to consider that a serious possibility. The way mascots travel with their teams, they could easily spread a disease throughout their world very quickly. Still, it's too early to say that there is a mascot epidemic."
Did we say there was an epidemic?
"Exactly," doctor Chunk agreed.
Not everybody has accepted doctor Chunk's diagnosis.
"Oh, my god, they killed Kenny!" Hinchon Dynamos fan Aaron Zai-Batts-Sue shouted.
"You bastards!" his girlfriend Ariel Bellatrix added.
The pair claimed that Reggie Roadkill was not an animal, that he was, in fact, a teenager named Kenneth Crang who was paid by the team to wear an animal costume to fire up the crowd during lulls in play.
"He was not an animal!" Zai-Batts-Sue loudly insisted. "He was a...hu-man...be-ing!"
"Oh, tosh," Chunk responded. "Are you going to believe a pair of amateurs? I mean, really - who is the doctor, here?"
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sports Mascots refused to comment on the situation because it was busy getting its nails done.