December 1, 2056
by Banjo Jackson
Nashville, TN
*Bluebirds GM Chad Nason sits alone in his darkened office as his empty whiskey glass slams on desk*
CN: Brittani! Harris is still on assignment with this Bikini crap, who else we got available?
BJ: Let’s see….how about Thompson?
CN: No. No he hasn’t been around long enough. We need a vet for this one.
BJ: We can try Chevy Scarn, but he just returned home to Boulder.
CN: Perfect. Get him on the phone.
*Nason pours another glass of bourbon*
CS: Sir?
CN: Scarn! I know you just got home, but we need your help. Those damn River Monsters have our number – we need to do something about that. Any ideas?
CS: Well, there’s something we’ve actually been working on for several years now.
CN: Yeah? Let me hear it.
CS: Well, we knew the GM over there was gonna be trouble as soon as he took over, so we got to digging immediately. We wanted to know our enemy and did a full investigation into his prior life. The guy is pretty clean. Except one thing. Several years ago he was kicked off a cruise in Venezuela for being too intoxicated. We got the CCTV and Ehlers looked completely blacked out, so we started scheming.
CN: What did you come up with?
CS: We noticed their was a sandlot near the port and saw Ehlers stumble into a pregnant woman watching her two kids play using discarded milk cartons as gloves. He got a little handsy before heading to a bar. He wasn’t allowed back on the ship and spent the evening sleeping on the park bench. But we got to thinking. Ehlers doesn’t remember what happened and we sent our scouts to Venezuela with images from the CCTV recording. We told the scouts to ignore talent, but try to find these kids and mother. After several weeks of striking out, we stumbled across the older brother who happened to be our taxi driver on the way to one of the games.
CN: Where are you going with this? I’m getting drunk and it’s getting hard to follow.
CS: Just wait. We re-routed to his mom’s house and offered a large sum of money to her youngest child. He wasn’t much of an athlete, but we knew the mom needed the money. You won’t find record of us signing little Diego Santiago. But there is an Ayres Ehlers.
CN: A. Ehlers? Ehlers!? Like Alan Ehlers!
CS: Very good, sir. We’ve given him a whole backstory to go along with his new name. We’ve groomed him to be one of us in the guise of a baseball player.
CN: Wonderful! We need to send him to Twin Cities and start gathering intel. I’ll send him an offer for his “love child” and send little Diego into the Twin Cities farm system to wreck havoc. He might not ever make it to the Show, but hopefully he can sniff their plans. Maybe we can even get Hector Davila in return. About time we start trying to outsmart Ehlers. Good work Scarn. Say hi to your parents me.
Happy birthday @ae37jr
