Baseball

Baseball

America's pastime made it halfway through the 21st century with only a few, teeny changes: chipped players, the collapse of the old league structure, and a three team playoff in the World Series. And making things even more interesting, the traditionalists in North American baseball are under increasing pressure from the zaibatsu to open the World Series to competition with Japanese teams. But it's still basically the same old ball game.

North American League

Even after things fell apart and the old U.S. broke up, the governments and big corps agreed to keep baseball going. That was the beginning of the North American League (NAL). The North American League championship is still called the World Series, but the order of play has changed to fit a three-conference structure. The team at the top of each conference at the end of the regular season wins the divisional pennant and goes on to play in the World Series. Two of the three regional champion teams are chosen at random to play the first game of the series. The winner of that game plays against the third championship team. The loser of the second game plays the loser of the first game, and the loser of that game is out. The two remaining teams play each other for two out of three wins.

Most baseball teams are based in the UCAS, CAS, or CFS. But just because Mexico turned into Aztlan and joined the NAN,
its people didn't stop loving baseball, and the San Diego Jaguars prove it. Besides, a hot baseball team run from San Diego, a former U.S. city, lets the Azteks sneer at the anglos. Beating them at their own game, the Azzies' favorite pastime.

The Miami Sharks tap Into a lot of the Cuban and South American talent that used to end up on the U.S. teams in the old
days. Now a talented Caribbean League player can stay in his own country and still play pro ball.

The team no one expected to see is the Portland Lords. When a new set of franchises opened up in 2046 to expand the NAL divisions to eight teams each, a winning bid from the Hemlad Cartel in Tir Taimgire surprised the drek out of everyone. A lot of jokes made the rounds about elven players in satin uniforms, but the laughs only lasted until the Lords' first game, when they shut out the L.A. Dodgers 5-0. Yeah, the team was almost all elf, but the players were some of the toughest athletes in the Tir and they carried primo cyber. They took the Coastal Division pennant in 2048 and are a definite prospect.

Baseball and Cyberware

Unlike football, which started modding up players almost as soon as the tech was available, baseball stayed cyber-free until 2032. At that point, the rules were relaxed to let pro teams and AAA farm teams load a player with up to 3 Essence Points' worth of cyberware. The regulations also allow custom cyber, at reduced Essence costs, but only the hottest stars get that kind of investment from a team.

As an interesting aside, Japanese baseball turned to cyber a few years earlier than North American teams, for at least two reasons. First, the tech was in better shape in Japan. Second, muscle implants and other mods helped dose the last gap between heftier gaijin players and the more lightly built Japanese athletes. Exhibition play leaves no doubt that the Japanese teams can take on American players toe-to-toe, and many bettors predict some kind of official international championship within a few years.

The usual program for a hot rookie is a year or two playing in the bush leagues unchipped. Then, if he still looks good, he gets bumped up to AAA ball and picks up some basic mods, usually wired reflexes or muscle implants. If a player gets picked up by "the Show" (the big leagues), his contract spells out the upgrades and additions he will receive to his mods. Most players and their agents spend more time on mods than on salary.

Cybered players have sent the old records to the showers. For example, "Lock-on" Lorenzo Hayes, left fielder for the Yankees, topped the records of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Saduharu Oh in 2049, and is now up to 847 career homers. Hayes has 4,195 hits so far, and so is zeroing in on Pete Rose's lifetime record of 4,256 hits. In 2042, Harry "Ironjaw" Bartlett goblinized into an ork after five years on the mound for the L.A. Dodgers. He stayed on, kept pitching, and retired in 2048 with a lifetime record of 5,301 thrown strikeouts, beating Nolan Ryan's final total of 5,299. Oddly enough, anti-metahuman jerks spent more time griping about Bartiett's race than his heavily reconstructed pitching arm. When Bartlett pitched a scorching game against the Yomiuri Giants, Japan's most revered baseball team, in the 2043 World Ail-Star exhibition, the newsnets of the Yomiuri corporation nearly foamed at the mouth at the Americans' incivility in expecting the Giants to face a kawanihito ("changed person") on the mound.

Updates

  • July 2062:. Party-boy pitcher Mike Dutton of the Chicago White Sox has been outed as an adept in a press conference by NAL spokesperson Julia Weiss. Mike confessed to the charges, saying that the franchise knew of his abilities and hired hired him anyway. The team manager, Ian Yamaguchi, allegedly used Dutton's minor cybernetic modifications to keep the media from suspecting anything while Dutton maintained his cover by Masking his magical aura. The owners of the White Sox deny the allegations, but the results of the investigation made for one of the messiest Chicago scandals in years.
  • The Denver Spirits made their first appearance in the Central Division in 2062. Their opening season showed promise for 2063, with 65 wins and 96 losses.
  • October 2063: It's been a strange week for baseball. CAS and Aztlan are still exchanging accusations, after five people died in a terrorist bombIng during the Texas Lone Stars vs. San Diego Jaguars playoff game. With both teams refusing to keep playing, the World Series has gone to the Boston Red Sox by default.

Teams

City Team Nation
Eastern Division
Atlanta Braves CAS
Baltimore Orioles UCAS
Boston Red Sox UCAS
Federal District of Columbia Senators UCAS
Manhattan Yankees UCAS
Montreal Expos Quebec
Philadelphia Phillies UCAS
Richmond Generals CAS
Central Division
Chicago White Sox UCAS
Cincinnati Whites UCAS
Denver Spirits Denver
Detroit Tigers UCAS
Kansas City Royals UCAS
Miami Sharks Caribbean League
St. Louis Cardinals CAS
Houston Astros CAS
Texas Lone Stars CAS
Costal Division
California Angels PCC
Los Angeles Dodgers PCC
Portland Lords Tir Tairngire
Sacramento Padres CFS
Oakland (Orkland) A's CFS
San Francisco Giants CFS
San Francisco Whales JPC
Seattle Mariners UCAS
San Diego Jaguars Aztlan
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License