Player Spotlight – German Evdakov
By Khepri Quraishi, Egypt Today Sports
January 1, 2049
Today I am here to tell you the saga of Pharaoh pitcher German Evdakov. Grab a glass of Stolichnaya, sit back, and enjoy.
Not many baseball stories begin in the Saratov Oblast in Russia. This one does. On February 16, 2025 a boy was born in the town of Rtishchevo’s Medical Center (НУЗ Отделенческая больница) on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street to proud parents Tabor and Alyona Evdakov. The boy was named German as a sign of respect for Tabor’s great grandfather who had moved from Leipzig in Germany to the Saratov Oblast as a miner. It was Alyona’s third child by Tabor after having two girls (Naamah and Walentyna). Tabor was a hard working railroad repair worker while Alyona stayed home to care for their children.
German became the star of the team. He pitched and played third base, loving every minute. There wasn’t a lot else to do in the blue collar town in the middle of nowhere. The coach of his team had a brother that had emigrated to Sweden and lived in Sweden. In 2043 Tabor and Alyona arranged with his coach’s brother to have German attend university in Sweden at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, GIH in Stockholm.
Alas, GIH didn’t have a baseball team. But Stockholm also was home to the Sundbyberg Heat, a professional baseball team. Sundbyberg also sponsored the Stockholm Vikings, a team sanctioned by a federation of Stockholm universities including GIH. The Vikings played other Scandinavian and northern European university teams. German played on the Vikings team as a pitcher for two seasons. In 2043 he struggled – 1-2 with a 6.03 ERA. Then in 2044 he blossomed – 6-1 with a 1.42 ERA even winning a Pitcher of the Month Award and the IFC C2 Pitcher of the Year Award.
That caught the attention of international scouts, and German entered his name in the 2044 UMEBA amateur draft. The Middle East seemed more likely to give a Russian playing in Sweden a shot than tougher possibilities like the BBA draft. Beirut drafted him in the ninth round, the 73rd overall pick. Beirut assigned German to Ulaanbaatar in the Far East Baseball League, its class A franchise. Ironically German was heading to Mongolia, once a satellite state to Russia in the USSR.
German played for the Ulaanbaatar Battalion from 2044 through 2047, consistently being named in the top 50 prospects in the UMEBA, but never really putting up impressive statistics. Early in the 2046 season he was promoted to Lima Reyes, Beirut’s class AA team. He was pitching fairly well when he tore his biceps in June and missed three months. In October his ranking as a top prospect fell from #36 to #66, probably as a consequence of the uncertainty caused by the torn biceps.
Then in December, completely to his and probably everyone else’s surprise, he was drafted in the first round of the UMEBA Rule 5 Draft by the Cairo Pharaohs. So, after a brief stay in Lima, German was off to Africa to report to the Pharaohs. The general consensus was that he would be released back to the Beirut organization under the rules of Rule 5. That didn’t happen. He started out in the Cairo bullpen, but when Drees Geestman struggled as a starter, he suddenly got a shot in the rotation. He was hardly a sensation, but he pitched well. He finished up with a 7-4 record and a 4.48 ERA, resulting in a WAR of 2.0.
German is looking forward to the 2049 season. His parents, Tabor and Alyona, and his sisters, Naamah and Walentyna, are coming to Cairo for Spring Training. This will be their first chance to see him play since his schooldays in Rtishchevo. And it will be their first chance to meet Narantsetseg, his Mongolian girl friend and fiancé, who travelled with German from Ulaanbaatar to Lima to Cairo.
