[WARNING! The following news account seems to have appeared out of some recent and previously unidentified dimensional wormhole. The depicted accounts are not to be taken as fact from our reality. - Ed.]

...

Arlington, Texas (NMYP)

A birthday celebration for Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield nearly ended in tragedy when his hotel room caught fire.

"It was Rickey's job to light the candles," said Sox outfielder Rickey Henderson. "But Wake was the one who put them on the cake. They were all over the place, stickin' out at funny angles. Rickey kept missing with the matches, and before he knew it, Rickey had torched the curtains."

Although the initial mishap was not serious, matters worsened when relief pitchers Frank Castillo and Rolando Arrojo attempted to combat the blaze.

"I don't even know where they found it," Wakefield, who turns 36 today, sighed, "but Frankie and Arrojo tried to put the fire out by dousing it with gasoline. We almost lost our eyebrows in there."

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed. Closer Ugueth Urbina, after stopping to cook a couple of S'mores, managed to contain the burn until fire fighters arrived on the scene. Only catcher Jason Varitek needed medical attention for smoke inhalation. It is unclear how he sustained the injury, however, since he wasn't even in the hotel at the time. Between gasps, Varitek attributed his inexplicable circumstances to "knuckleball weirdness."