They’re gone.

Vanished into thin air.

Vaporized.

The ones who wore the interlocking N-Y on their caps during tonight’s terrifyingly boring 4-0 loss to the Braves – the men who bore striking physical resemblances to Jeter, A-Rod, Posada, etc. – were not the real Yankees; they were impostors.

How did this happen? She-Fan has learned that at some point during the series at Fenway, aliens swooped down from another galaxy, snatched the real Yankees in the dead of night, carted them away one by one to several space ships anchored in the Charles River, and replaced them with pods. Yes, pods. There is no other possible explanation.

How else to account for their “offensive malaise,” as Peter Abraham called it tonight? 

Wang wasn’t bad. Under normal circumstances, he would have pitched well enough to win.

But the real Yankees were replaced, so instead of watching the regular Posada, we were forced to watch the pod Posada. Just look at him. You can tell he’s a pod. He doesn’t even blink his eyes. No wonder he struck out four times.

I believe that A-Rod was the first to be abducted by the aliens. Sure, he goes through the motions now and acts as if he’s the real A-Rod, but it’s obvious he’s been tampered with. Notice the transformation from his first day back from the DL when he hit a homer and was feeling pretty swell…

…to his more recent at-bats during which he appears hostile to the mere idea of driving the ball.

I’m beginning to think that Swisher was always a pod who only lured us into thinking he was a good player, but it’s just plain painful not to see Jeter come through in the clutch. That GIDP in the fifth convinced me that he’d been snatched by aliens, wrapped in a towel and brought to a location far, far away.

I won’t even bother talking about the others. They’ve become pods, pure and simple, even Tex.

How will the situation be remedied? Will the real Yankees be restored to their own bodies? Can this team be saved?

Yes, but only if three things occur on Wednesday night:

* They get more than 4 hits.

* They don’t leave 12 men on base.

* They become infuriated by fans who do the tomahawk chop.

P.S. I succumbed to pressure and got a Twitter account today. My user name is SheFanJane. Apparently, SheFan was already taken by an imposter – a pod, perhaps.