2063.03 – The Man with the Binder

[Graham]

The Golden Palace was neither golden nor a palace.

It was a ballpark with pretensions—part retro-chic, part open-air sauna thanks to an overzealous solar panel initiative that had accidentally increased the average temperature in the executive suite by six degrees.

Graham Luna stepped out of the car and into the stadium’s side entrance marked "Personnel Only," which felt both accurate and vaguely threatening. His bonsai stayed in the car, for its own safety. A lone security guard gave him a half-wave, the kind that said, I don’t know who you are, but you’re dressed like you might know where you’re going.

The inside of the stadium was a maze of narrow hallways, exposed pipes, and dust bunnies accumulating in corners and baseboards. The smell was somewhere between popcorn, coffee, and the ghost of a regrettable Fish Fry Night promotion from last season. Every door creaked like it was being paid to.

He was led through a series of corridors painted in forest green and gold and finally ushered into what appeared to be a conference room/storage closet. Within were an assortment of unmatched foldable chairs, a second-hand Formica conference table, and a whiteboard still bearing a hastily erased scouting report of someone named “Dale (???)”.

Sitting at the table was a man in a rumpled dress shirt, sleeves already rolled up, a yellow legal pad in front of him, and a binder so thick it required its own area code.

Fernando Rosario didn’t stand. He simply nodded and gestured for Graham to sit.

“I know who you are,” he said without preamble, his voice low and slightly gravelly, like a true crime podcast host. “And I know what you’ve done.”

Graham blinked. “You do?”

Rosario opened the binder. The man had tabs. Color-coded. Laminated.

“Fantasy league record, third place in 2057. Decent analytically-inclined drafting philosophy. Two attempted blog launches. One failed YouTube channel about scouting techniques. Videos had decent lighting, admirable amateur-level production value, but you never learned to edit out the 'ums'.”

Graham felt his soul briefly attempt to evacuate his body.

Rosario kept flipping. “But you know the numbers. You’re weird about spray charts. And,” he paused, “you understand failure. That’s important here.”

Graham tried to formulate a response, but Rosario leaned back and delivered what Graham would later call The Monologue:

“I’ve been with losing teams before. I’ve watched front offices eat themselves alive like feral dogs over backup catcher arbitration hearings. I’ve seen scouts fight each other with radar guns over a kid who couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with a hand full of rocks. And I’ve survived five stadium moves, three ownership groups, and one cursed foam finger promotion that gave an entire fan section conjunctivitis.”

He tapped the table with two fingers, steady. “You don’t need someone who knows how to win. You need someone who knows how to rebuild from a smoldering pile of metrics and unpaid invoices. I’m that guy. I eat dysfunction for breakfast. And I’m hungry.”

Silence fell. In the hallway, someone dropped what sounded like a crate of unsold promotional bobbleheads.

Graham nodded slowly. “Do you, uh… have references?”

Rosario tapped the binder. “Page 114.”

Graham didn’t dare open it. Instead, he glanced at the whiteboard again. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that someone had doodled a smiling sun in the corner. Below it: “Spring is a lie. Win anyway.”

He stood and offered a hand. Rosario shook it, once, firmly. “Ball’s in your court, boss. I’ll be at the batting cage if you need me. Or the boiler room. Depends where the power’s working today.”

As the door clicked shut behind him, Graham remained in the room, unsure whether he had just conducted an interview or been recruited into a rebellion.

He sat back down and opened the binder, starting at page one. The table of contents alone ran for two more pages and included entries like "Exit Velo and Existential Dread," "Non-Euclidean Trajectories in Late-Inning Relievers," and “Why I Will Never Draft a Player Named Chad Again.”

He closed it gently, the way you’d close the Necronomicon. He looked out the smudged window and saw the empty diamond below. The Golden Palace, for all its flaws, had one thing going for it: it was his now.

Next on his list? Meet the rest of the front office.

Unless they met him first.

[Jwalk100]

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[Graham]

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Patient Zero right there.