“Quack, quack,” go the Mets’ team physicians.

According to sources close to the New York Mets, last month a talent scout within the organization was given a top-secret assignment: Quickly and quietly travel to South Africa to evaluate a completely unknown cricket player who locals say throws so fast that only those touched by the supreme deity Unkulunkulu are willing to play wicket-keeper to his bowler. A team physician also made the trip in order to give the prospect a preliminary physical if the stories about his potential fastball proved true.

Although it’s unclear whether the cricketer was worth the trip, it’s now a badly kept secret that the doctor who made the journey has become the latest in the Mets’ long list of moronic misdiagnoses. An unnamed employee in the Mets finance department, who claims he was the only “no” vote before team owners gave Bernie Madoff a mind-blowing $500 million, told Bud Fox News:

The doctor started getting sick on the flight back. By the time he landed at LaGuardia, he had a fever of 103, had sweated straight through his clothes, and had lost at least one race to the bathroom if you know what I mean. The guy had dysentery. But he dismissed it like Zach Wheeler’s minor elbow pain that turned out to be a season-ending torn ligament. When he collapsed then threw up at the luggage carousel, he said it was just a delayed reaction to biltong, but I’ve never seen beef jerky do a number like that on a guy.

Promising rookie pitcher Steven Matz just went on the disabled list for at least three weeks with a partially torn lat muscle. Mets fans, a group that team owner Fred Wilpon is slowly exterminating, are hoping he won’t join this year’s five-body pile-up:

• Aforementioned Zach Wheeler, whose elbow pain, described as unserious, was a symptom of a torn ligament, will be out for about 18 months while he recovers from surgery.
• David Wright, whose “mild” hamstring strain somehow transmogrified into a career-threatening narrowing of the spine, is out indefinitely.
• Rafael Montero, whose shoulder inflammation wasn’t considered serious on April 30, is still on the shelf two-and-a-half months later.
• Daniel Murphy, whose quad strain wasn’t considered serious, missed 22 games.
• Traivs d’Arnaud, whose “hyperextended elbow” put him in the day-to-day category on June 20, was on the disabled list a few days later with a spained elbow. Because this is the Mets, his return date is unknown.

A second team doctor treated his dysentery-stricken colleague for what the former described as “jet-lag-induced fever” and then released him. Upon hearing of the release, Fred Wilpon switched his team’s health insurance to Obamacare, not, as some speculated, to improve quality but to cut costs.