In case you hadn’t been aware for whatever reason - nobody watching Nancy Grace in the house or anything - police recently found a woman who had been abducted as a little girl 18 years ago. Her name is Jaycee Dugard, and while in captivity, she was forced to give birth twice to two daughter who were also kept in isolated captivity. Suffice it to say that the 18 years she spent confined by suspected rapist/murderer Phillip Garrido have left deep, permanent scars on her life. Her family must be unbelievably overcome with joy to have her back, even as she deals with the nearly two decades of trauma on her life.

(A father finally reunited with his daughter. This calls for sports jokes!)

Fortunately, the ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER’s Mark Whicker - you’ll want to remember this name by the time you get to the end of the story, trust us - decided to appropriately honor Dugard’s return to the real world with a column today.

And by that, we mean he wrote a whimsical sports article about everything she missed called “Many odd things have happened in sports the past 18 years.” Yes, seriously. You’ll want to read on, because it only gets worse.

Once again, this is actually a real story from a real newspaper:

How long before she fully digests the world she re-enters? How difficult to adjust to such cataclysmic change?

More than that, who’s going to explain the fact that there’s a President Obama?

Dugard’s stepfather says she’s going to need a lot of therapy — you think? — so perhaps she should take a respite before confronting the new realities.

So, Jaycee, whenever you’re ready, here’s what you’ve missed:

•Barry Bonds, who was just leading the Pirates to their second NL East title, wound up breaking Henry Aaron’s home run record. How did such a skinny guy manage that? We’ll deal with that later.

•Well, actually, some baseball players began taking drugs in order to hit more home runs and throw faster fastballs. Football players, who had cornered the market on most of their drugs, began driving drunk, slapping their wives, selling drugs, and killing people. The baseball players caught more grief.

Yes, this is clearly what the family needs to begin the healing process. An anecdotal, tongue-in-cheek retelling of the last 18 years of sports culture. Why, Dugard’s going to be smiling again in no time, just you wait and see!

More? Of course, there’s more.

•Jackie Autry isn’t in charge of the Angels anymore, as you might have surmised by looking at the standings.

•Joe Torre now manages the Dodgers, after a fruitful detour through New York. Tommy Lasorda? Sure, he’s around. He hasn’t called?

•You disappeared a couple of months before John Daly came into our lives at the ‘91 PGA. Who’s John Daly? Never mind.

Once again, because we’re having trouble wrapping our heads around this fact, but this is how someone - who’s paid by a newspaper to write for a living - has decided to address someone who was held in captivity against her will from the ages of 11 to 29. Jackie Autry and John Daly jokes.

But to Whicker’s credit, he doesn’t actually make light of her capture and imprisonment, right? Right?!

•The two NFL teams that we used to have? They’ve been gone for 15 years. You haven’t heard anyone complain about that? Neither have we.

Well then. That just happened.

Anyway, there’s tons more there than we could print here, for brevity’s sake. Go ahead and read the rest, if you’d like. And once again, the author is Mark Whicker, of the Orange County Register. Email address, according to the column, is mwhicker@ocregister.com. We’re sure he’d like to hear your thoughts on his latest article.