As the Whitman Missionaries baseball bus sped back from Caldwell, Idaho like a potato in a slingshot, catcher Mack Harden ’15 looked behind him and laughed as yet another one of his teammates doubled over and began vomiting.

“Back of the bus!” he jeered without mercy, pointing towards the quarantine area the baseball team had created in the back four rows. As expected, his 11 gastroenteritis-stricken teammates raised a salute of middle fingers.

Seven minutes later, Harden joined their ranks, clutching his stomach in pain.

“Back of the bus!” the back of the bus yelled, and Harden raised a middle-finger salute to the back of the bus.

A visibly distressed, gaunt and pale Harden appeared the following morning in the Pioneer media room. No, actually he didn’t, and The Pioneer doesn’t have a media room. He appeared in the Welty Health Center. Well, maybe “appeared” isn’t the right word, because he was sleeping there. He sat up in bed and coughed moistly.

“I’ve literally eaten nothing but chewing tobacco and yellow Vitamin Water for two days,” Harden groaned. The Pio asked a clarifying question, as this dietary habit is not unusual for Harden. “Well, usually I have some sunflower seeds too. But I can’t even keep the seeds down.”

Harden, like much of the Missionaries baseball team, has suffered from a violent outbreak of the infamous Norovirus. Known also as the “winter vomiting bug,” the Norovirus proliferated without warning and without sympathy, causing abdominal pain, loose stools, nausea, huge whiffs on hanging curveballs and a deluge of Norovirus-related Twitter posts.

“It was chill, though, ‘cause we made a snowman and put all our chews in its mouth,” said French exchange student and third-baseman sophomore Francois Mathieu, speaking about the effects of the Norovirus on the team’s play.

The Pioneer caught up with the Norovirus that afternoon in 2-West’s media room. That’s simply not true––2-West doesn’t have a media room either. The Pioneer caught up with the Norovirus that afternoon in the 2-West bathroom. Well, that’s not exactly right, because The Pio didn’t really intend to speak with the Norovirus. The Pioneer caught the Norovirus that afternoon in the 2-West bathroom.

The single-stranded RNA non-enveloped member of the Caliciviridae virus family apologized, but expressed gratitude toward Whitman’s newly-thriving baseball program.

“I feel really blessed,” said the recently-aerosolized virus from genogroup I, poised to start another outbreak of epidemic gastroenteritis. “That weekend was so much fun. Not every infectious agent gets the chance to build up inside members of Whitman’s baseball team––what an honor! The night I spent in Mack’s stomach was unforgettable. I mean, he’s the catcher on the baseball team!”

The virus lamented, however, that its remarkable performance was overshadowed by the fact that Whitman’s baseball team won a game that weekend, ending its losing streak against the College of Idaho.