All it took Saturday was a two-minute stroll through the Twitter forest to confirm the obvious: Reports that Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton is being fitted for crisp, clean Bronx-issued pinstripes has folks in Boston clutching at their pearls.

Or as WEEI’s Trenni Kusnierek put it, hysterically: “This is a kick to the gut if you’re a Red Sox fan.”

And away we go.

But not to worry: I have two solutions to the unbearable specter of the Yankees rolling out a 2018 lineup that has Stanton and his 59 home runs teaming up with young Aaron Judge and his 52 home runs … and Gary Sanchez and his 33 home runs … and the enormously underrated Didi Gregorius and his 25 home runs … and, well, you get the idea.

Here are your two solutions, Red Sox fans:

1) Stop following baseball. Or, anyway, stop following the Red Sox. The Yankees are clearly the team to beat in the American League East next season and for many seasons to come, so get out now while the gettin’s good.

Or 2) And, really, this is the best course of action: Red Sox fans who are whining and caterwauling about Stanton going to the Yankees can … stop whining and caterwauling about Stanton going to the Yankees.

Seriously, all you folks who live on the lunatic fringe of Red Sox Nation, this is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. It’s George Bailey realizing that Bedford Falls is a much better place because he was born. That’s right, folks: It’s a classic True Meaning of Christmas Story, with Yankees fans and Red Sox fans joining hands and singing holiday songs as they count their collective blessings.

For Yankees fans, it’s simple: Stanton is a 50-homer guy being added to a lineup that socked 241 homers last season, one shy of the franchise record. Lordy.

And Red Sox fans? A couple of days ago I put it out there that recent events represented small pieces to the puzzle toward making the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry something special again. I cited the Red Sox’ Apple Watch Caper (with the Yankees reporting the Sox to Major League Baseball) and the managerial hirings of Alex Cora and Aaron Boone as those puzzle pieces – small puzzle pieces.

Now we have a very, very big puzzle piece: Giancarlo Stanton playing for the Yankees. The acquisition returns the Yankees to what former Sox CEO Larry Lucchino famously called “The Evil Empire,” the idea being that Boston’s longtime rivals are capitalistic goliaths who simply outspend everyone to get what they need. (Omitting, of course, the inconvenient truth that the Red Sox are not above doing the same thing.)

Too often last season the Yankees were referred to as “likeable.” I even heard hardened, longtime Red Sox fans travel to that Bizarro Baseball World.

New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro made a great point Saturday when he tweeted, “Not that it matters, but that brief, fleeting moment where you could argue the #Yankees were likeable and not just to Yankees fans? Yeah, that’s over.”

It does matter, Mike, because it’s now OK for Red Sox fans to hate the Yankees again. It’s certainly about time.

And if the removal of #likeableyankees isn’t enough for you, there is this: Red Sox President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski is now on the clock. If the Yankees’ acquisition of Giancarlo Stanton is a pitch to the ribs of Red Sox nation, it’s time for Dombrowski to deliver some payback in the form of a big-ticket acquisition of his own.

Whoever it is, it won’t be as big-ticket as Stanton. Whatever the Red Sox do, it’s safe to say the Yankees go into 2018 as favorites to win the American League East.

But that’s OK. It’s not like the Red Sox have never rallied from insurmountable odds to beat the Yankees. (See: ALCS, 2004.)

This Stanton business has Yankees fans celebrating and Red Sox fans recovering from that kick to the gut Trenni Kusnierek was talking about, and it all adds up to what could be a lot of fun next season.