quote:

At that kensei, sat back in his chair and quietly smiled. A moment later, Jampact entered the room. "Honey," She called to kensei, "There appears to be a talking dog in a fedora, a duck and a rabbit riding on some sort of death machine, and they told me to tell you that they're waiting outside to kill you and destroy all hope in the Super-League."

Old McDonald posted:

PART XI - EXHIBITION GAME

The shining sun. Birds chirping. The tell-tale sounds of a concession vendor peddling his wares. Lush, green, immaculately maintained grass, stretching on as far as the eye can see, punctuated by a diamond. A stadium organist playing memorable tunes. The temperature sitting at just the right level. Upon awaking, Anarchy found himself in some sort of baseball wonderland. He rubbed his eyes and looked around. The ballpark he was in was pristine. The scoreboard was spotless, the dirt comprising the basepaths was perfectly laid out, and audience members were shuffling about with a slight murmur of anticipation. The place resembled a minor-league ballpark more than anything he had seen in the Sub-Par League in its picturesque design.

It was only then Anarchy noticed he wasn't alone. Around him were eight other players, their expressions of confused marvel mirroring his own. He recognized these players as members of other Sub-Par League teams. One or two of them he knew vaguely from The Dugout Phone, but most of them were unknown to him. It seemed like they were minor league players like him. With their confusion still looming large, they were interrupted by a voice coming from the speakers. "Would the visiting team please take their places in the dugout? The home team will be with you shortly. And yes, that means you out in the field." With no other idea of what to do, the nine players took their place in the dugout, waiting for what may come.

Eventually, silence fell over the grounds. Anarchy looked towards the audience and found them all sitting in their seats, unmoving, unblinking. When he turned back to the field, an entire squad of baseball players had suddenly appeared there. Nine players, eight of which seemed to be entirely identical. Clones were nothing special in the Sub-Par League, but usually, they differ between each other in some way, but not these eight. They also seemed to be very generic - they had no outstanding physical characteristics at all. If you put their face amongst any random team throughout the ages and say that guy was a utility infielder, everybody would believe it. The ninth player seemed similar, but had several things about him that made him slightly unsettling to look at - one eye positioned slightly lower than the other, extremities that seemed slightly longer than their counterparts.

"This is loving weird." Luis Tiant summed up the situation succintly. "So, uh, are we like supposed to actually play these guys?" Buddy Lewis asked the rest of the group, receiving no answers. In lieu of answers, the voice from the speakers once again started to speak. "Visiting team, please take your places in the field now. The home team will bat first." Eric McNair was the first to leave the dugout, signaling the others to follow him. "Come on, guys, this isn't going anywhere if we don't play along. And hell, you look like you haven't actually played a real game in ages either. So let's just go and try and have some fun while we're here and figure out just what's going on later." With no real argument against it, the rest of the group made their way to the field, lining up the way they were used to, with the nine players somehow making a baseball squad with everybody fielding their preferred position.

With Luis Tiant taking the mound, one of the eight duplicate players set up in the batters' box, and the game was officially on. With the announcer's voice sounding from the speakers, serving as umpires for all bases, Tiant begun facing off against the clones, and doing well. It seemed that the clones were not particularly proficient in hitting, attempting to play like a contact hitter, but largely just grounding out weakly. The top of the first inning was over after about ten pitches, and the teams switched. Eric McNair was the first to face off against the other team's pitcher, the one player that seemed slightly off. As the pitcher got ready to deliver his first pitch, Anarchy felt uneasy, like a great magical power was about to be unleashed. He would be right.

The pitcher wound up, then unleashed a fireball that screamed straight by McNair, singing his bat in the process. McNair hadn't even moved, the radar gun clocked the pitch at approximately 200 mph, and the announcer called strike one. Anarchy recognized that this pitcher was undoubtedly a Fireballer, like Excelsior was, but who outstripped the capabilities any Fireballer Anarchy had seen had ever had. However, the next pitch was even more baffling. The pitcher once again wound up, and the pitch was shrouded in smoke the moment it left his hand, flying towards McNair, who helplessly hacked in the cloud. Strike two. Smoke balls were a useful tool to any Fireman that wanted to support their Baserunner comrades in a pinch, but the entire idea of the smoke ball was that it acted like a smoke grenade: You throw it at the ground and it sprays smoke around. This was some sort of variant that started emitting smoke immediately and also traveled further than a regular smoke ball.

Whatever this pitcher was, he had somehow combined the arsenals of multiple classes of magic pitching to create some sort of abomination super-pitcher, and the third pitch he threw reinforced that notion, as he unleashed an Eephus pitch that took approximately two minutes to come down, screaming past so quickly it was hardly visible apart from the hole it bore into the ground. Strike three, and out. McNair turned to complain, but found himself simply staring at the catcher, since the umpire was a disembodied voice after all. And how do you argue with a disembodied voice umpire? Dejected, he walked back to the dugout. The next two batters didn't fare much better, as the mysterious pitcher unleashed sinkers that dug through the ground before popping back up just before the strike zone, changeups that changed their speed three times on the way to the plate, and when a hitter showed bunt, he received a curveball that circled around his bat for his trouble. The side was quickly retired in an immaculate inning.

The game would develop into a pitcher's duel of the strangest kind: On one side, a normal pitcher was dispatching batters with relative ease due to their lack of hitting ability, on the other side, a superhuman pitcher was dispatching batters with pitches that should not have been physically possible. The game remained scoreless through the fifth inning, however, in the bottom of the sixth, a change began to occur - not a gradual one, but a more immediate one. The mysterious pitcher fired off another one of his fireballs, and with it blazing past so quickly, one could be forgiven for not noticing that the ball seemed significantly larger as it whizzed by. It was only as eyes turned back to the mound that they saw what had happened: The pitcher's hand had detatched from his arm and stuck to the ball, as the mound was starting to be stained red with the blood spurting from the place where a hand used to be.

Losing blood didn't seem to concern the pitcher at all, as he simply switched from using his right hand to his left hand, throwing in a bizarre one-handed motion. While it did take some of his velocity, a 160 mp/h ball is almost as much trouble as a 200 mp/h ball, and his other trick balls only had their effectiveness slightly dinged. He proceeded through the inning with no problems, and also had scoreless innings in the seventh and eighth, though he did allow a baserunner on a misthrown changeup that simply hung in the air above the plate, basically begging to be hit perfectly, though he didn't get far, getting picked off on the very next pitch. Tiant was starting to tire in the top of the ninth, and Anarchy volunteered to replace him, as he had a couple tricks up his sleeves himself when it came to pitching, and so he used his trick pitches to induce weak contact to the right side to ensure Tiant didn't have to field anything - since he was now manning the shortstop position. It worked, and the bottom of the ninth inning saw another twist in the road for the opposing team.

Setting up to throw the first pitch of the inning, the mysterious pitcher's left arm simply entirely fell off - as if it was held to his torso with shoddy glue that simply stopped sticking at some point. As he then bent over to try and retrieve the ball that was in the hand that was now laying on the ground, his head also decided that its destiny lie elsewhere, and it simply rolled down the mound, with the rest of the body collapsing in on itself. The rest of the players simply stared at the pile of parts that had now assmembled on the mound, unsure just how to proceed. Eventually, the speakers crackled to life once more, with a computerized voice speaking through them: "Primary test subject unable to continue. Abort experiment."

After that statement rung through the air, the ground began to shake as the entire park, bar the playing field, sunk into the ground, being replaced with a plate of cold metal that locked everything down beneath. The surrounding sights flickered and faded out, giving way to blank metal walls. The cloned players quickly shuffled off to the side, sealing themselves in lockers. The computerized voice spoke once more: "The experiment has been concluded. All external test subjects are to leave the premises immediately or risk being incinerated in the cleaning process." After that, a large "EXIT" sign flashed up on one side of the room, and given the statement they just heard, eight of the players decided they wanted no part of incineration and ran in that direction, leaving the catacombs of the stadium behind them. Anarchy, however, had other plans. He knew that the other two were still in this place somewhere, and he was going to find them.

Scanning the room, he found a side door over on the other side, and darted towards it, hoping it wasn't some sort of maintenance closet, and luckily for him, it not only opened, but revealed some sort of hallway. He entered it, slamming the door shut behind him and running down the hallway. There were no doors in sight for quite some time, and the hallway was silent except for a rumbling sound that was probably the contents of the room he was just in being burnt to a crisp. He kept running and eventually reached a large double-sided door. Anarchy opened it, finding a small sort of antechamber that seemed to be some sort of study primarily made for writing. Bookcases lined the walls, and the centerpiece was a large desk with an open book laying on it. On the right side of the desk lay a quill and an inkwell filled with blood, and on the right side lay some books, presumably reference material. Anarchy checked their titles:

- Progressive Atmosphere Manipulation For Fun And Profit, by mrnoun
- Contact, Speed And Why I'm Better Than You, by Pander
- Jesus loving Christ Don't Do This poo poo: A Treatise On The H-Zephyrs, by Smasher Dynamo
- The Anatomy Of The Dinger, by TheFlyingLlama
- Kontaktschlagmann Greift An / Achtung - Flugballwerfer!, by TheMcD

Finally, he looked at the open book, which so far had only the title and author written on it: "Banning The Dinger From Existence, by Armitage". He then heard the set of doors on the other side of the room open, and saw Armitage step through them. "You know, it's considered rude to just break into somebody's home and rifle through their documents. But I guess you types never had much of a sense of manners. No matter, you're coming with me now." Anarchy considered getting ready to fight, but the six abominations that stepped into the room had him reconsidering that strategy. Armitage laughed. "Now, now, don't try anything dumb. It's not like I'm going to kill you - in fact, you're going to be allowed to witness my greatest triumph! Come on, follow me!" He exited through the doors again, Anarchy following behind him, constantly shadowed by Armitage's creatures.

When Anarchy entered the next room, he was stunned. He didn't know what he expected, only that this wouldn't have been it.

Pungry posted:

Maybe the joke of "don't make roster changes and your team will be good" is actually true. The Pippoes are finally good!

Smasher Dynamo posted:

The Rochester Generics have clinched a playoff spot!

The Akabira Killer Mikes have clinched the Norris-Smythe Division!


Super-League XXIII, Week 25 Injury Report

Burns Zephyrs
Larry Walker (OF) (Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Smasher!) - Out for Season

quote:

Pick 'em: Let there be an end to it!

Omni-Titles
Frogs (c) @ White Mountain Widowmakers

Interim European Championship
Slaughterhouse Nine (c) @ Rochester Generics

Interim United States Championship
Khartoum Doom @ Moscow Golden Tsars (c)

Interim Intercontinental Championship
Nega Llamas @ Burns Zephyrs (c)

kensei posted:

frankenfreak posted:

Also a reordering of the rotation based purely on ERA:

SP1 Nichols
SP2 Roberts
SP3 Newcombe
SP4 Spahn
SP5 Maglie
LR Blackwell

FairGame posted:

A ground ball heavy starting pitcher roughly equivalent in production to an Eddie Plank

HPJoker posted:

Who is Nakitani and how did I acquire him

Monathin posted:

If we're throwing out fishing offers, I would like to request that if anyone has a good aged of the following pitchers they may be willing to part with:

- Lon Warneke
- Mickey Welch
- (Unlikely) Rube Waddell

To consider contacting the Morioh Crazy Diamonds at some point during this offseason. I have a dumb gimmick I would like to commit to.

TheMcD posted:

Pick'Em: Widowmakers and Generics take, others retain.

AnAnonymousIdiot posted:

From the Spiral Mountain Breegulls Management Team:

Oh no! I am not losing the lead!
Play harder you jocks! Our time of need
Is here! And Nap you’re the temp 2B
Till Rogers gets better! To victory!