Brains! 2063.6: Holcombe Luckiest Person, None of it Good

[aaronweiner]

(Note: they couldn't be bothered with a REASON why Steve Holcombe is out for the season. No press release. Nothing in the game log. Clearly not important. So here you go.)

https://statspl.us/brewster/reports/new ... _9120.html

It was completely unforgettable. In June, two years ago, Steve Holcombe bent down to tie his shoes and felt a pop in his knee. MRIs showed that he had a torn meniscus, and not only became the first person in the history of mankind to blow out his knee tying his shoes (Ed: seriously, Google it), he would be out for the rest of the 2061 season in a year that the Zombies were a playoff team. It's possible that the Zombies don't trade for Majd bin Nawaf and Majid bin Husam if that doesn't happen. Dominoes fell. Things happened. None of this has appeared to have paid off, either, making Steve Holcombe's bad luck the team's bad luck.

"I thought that would be the unluckiest thing to ever happen to me. I was wrong," said Holcombe. "This one is worse."

Last season, Holcombe was absolutely on fire, posting his second best major league season and showing why he was drafted in the first round in 2057. The team rewarded him with a $5.1 million contract for 2063, which Holcombe definitely earned. This year, however, Holcombe started out absolutely miserably, posting an absolutely ghastly .545 OPS in April, a mark he's tried to dig himself out of all year long. And that started the problems.

"I kept thinking back about the knee," said Holcombe. "I was terrified something was going to happen to me, and I was going to end the year with horrible numbers. So I called up Jimmy "Zombie Head" Vogler. And you know what happened after that."

Holcombe got some very unusual designer drugs from Jimmy, which weren't performance enhancing; rather, they were recreational pharmaceuticals. The slugger could afford them with his new deal, and it seemed to settle him: despite his poor outfield defense, Holcombe's bat was as good as ever in May, June, and July. There was only one problem. He forgot to pay his bills.

Everyone saw what happened after that. On August 18th, playing in Cape Fear, Steve Holcombe led off with a double in the top of the sixth inning, chasing starting pitcher Nathaniel Davis. While he was on second base, waiting for the pitching change, it appeared that a muscular, slightly overweight man carrying one of the souvenir bats on "Tariel 'Livewire' Bogolyubski Souvenir Bat Night" was making menacing gestures to him in the crowd, pointing the bat at him like Babe Ruth calling his shot, swinging the bat forward as if to pantomime hitting Holcombe with it, but he was doing it down the first base line near the flagpole, and nobody really noticed him until checking the cameras later.

Then, in the 8th inning, after a Cape Fear rally ended by a Jose Montoya groundout, the man came charging out of the crowd as Holcombe started jogging off the field. He stomped on Holcombe's foot, causing him to visibly wince, and then took the Bogolyubski bat and swung on Holcombe's leg, breaking his fibula. The slugger will be out for the rest of the season.

Baker explained later while informing on his boss at Police HQ. "I was tasked with breaking the guy's legs, and I got to the game late because I know they let you in free after the fifth inning, and the only place I could really get to him was in right field, and so that was my best shot at him. And I got him. Jimmy's gonna be pissed that I did it so publicly, but that guy's not easy to get to."

Holcombe is not expected to be suspended for the incident, as both the team and the Association feel he has suffered enough. "You know what the worst part is? I owed Zombie Head like $500 and I thought I had paid him, but apparently someone stole the dead drop in Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park. So I owed this guy $500, which he thought was now more like $2000 because he doubled it twice, and so he sent that goon."

In response, the Zombies, who are now 64-64 in what might be the most average of all average seasons ever to regress to the mean, stated they would no longer offer ceremonial bats to fans. But there's nothing average about Steve Holcombe.

"I feel like I could win the lottery and a plane would fall on my head on the way home," said Holcombe. "To be totally honest, that was exactly how I felt after taking Jimmy's stuff. Really not worth it."