When you sign a BBA contract, you never know where life may lead you. Gary Powers, from Murfreesboro, TN, signed in 2045, after being picked 225th by the San Antonio Outlaws. He toiled a couple of years in the minors, then pitched 98 BBA innings for SA in 2048-50. The Outlaws then buried him in their minors, before he was claimed off waivers by Boise in '55, pitched 42 innings with the Spuds, posting a 6.00 ERA. Nobody, nobody, bothered to hire the 30-year-old in 2056...he must have taken up art or gardening.
Tokyo (GBC) finally hired him in late '57, and he pitched as a starter down the stretch for the Pearls. In '58 he was in the Pearls pen, threw 30.2 innings with a 1.43 WHIP.
Enter rookie GM JRamirez, who was tasked with strengthening the Pharaohs of Cairo. He didn't have much cap space to work with. The team, Ramirez saw, needed a closer, and the soon-to-be 33-y.o. Powers was among the free agents. Ramirez liked his fundamentals, saw that he had had a decent if not remarkable year with the Pearls, and signed Powers to the GBC two-year maximum-length contract, for $550K and $500K. He stuck Powers in the pen and said 'go get em."
Powers started slowly that first season, with a high ERA after a couple of weeks. But then he caught fire. Ramirez, by then, had departed to Des Moines, and Cairo was under league control.
Powers started a three-year run of 84, 96, and 87 relief appearances for the Pharaohs, that middle number setting a GBC record. He turned those appearances into 125, 157 and 147 innings pitched, three All-Star teams, and 12 saves in 22 post-season games. Cairo won the Grand Slam Cup all three years (2059, 60, 61), and Powers was a big part of it. The Pharaohs gave him a $6.5mm raise for '61. They couldn't match or beat that for 2062, and Powers became a free agent again.
Chicago signed the now 35-year-old Powers on New Year's Day '62 to a one-year contract of $3.1 million. Powers made the Opening Day roster, was listed as long relief. In the first week of 2062 play, Powers (after all those innings for Cairo), hasn't seen an inning pitched. His velocity has dropped some over the past couple of years, his movement has improved. We'll see what happens with this durable, high work-ethic reliever. His extreme-groundball rating certainly worked in a Cairo that featured shortstop Dima 'The Kazakh Vacuum' Rozinov, who won the SS Great Glove Award all three years Powers pitched there.
Did Powers career peak in Cairo? Is his best behind him? Probably so. But Gary could make several teams' pitching staffs and maybe we'll see him in the BBA post-season. Who knows? Chicago could get there; they are an improving team full of young talent. And Powers' baseball adventure continues.