It turns out, the Yellow Springs Nine pitching staff took one look at the Loserville lineups and said “not today, assholes.” Sure, they knew the score. Of course they understood this moment in history, and yet it did not matter. Carlos Valle won a pair of games, throwing six solid innings in game one, then following that with six and a third scoreless in game four. Carlos Pineda allowed only two hits in his Game 2 seven innings, and Ernesto Ramos allowed only a solo homer in six innings to lock-down Game 3. Combined, the bullpen allowed only one run over 10.2 innings, and the fans went home, stunned on both sides—Nine faithful boggling over the idea of a sweep in October that did not leave their own side with the goose egg, and Slugger fans just wearing their normal dazed expressions.
And so, the blood flow has been staunched for at least four more games.
The plague has been beaten back.
The hordes have been turned.
Yellow Springs fans have returned to their homes as they await the youthful Vancouver Mounties in the Cartwright Cup, returned to stare fate in the eye, knowing they have been here before and wondering if the powers that be have just dangled the carrot out that much farther only to mash them upside the head again later—wondering if the inclusion of the Mounties in the thread is here only to add freshness to a stale act two that we’ve all seen before.
The team has lost in the Cartwright each of the past two seasons, after all. To Loserville last season, and Calgary the season before.
The ranks of the team’s losses under the Collins reign is epic and long, starting with a hapless fade against Omaha (now Mexico City) in 2026, and gaining steam with Doubleday exits in 2028-2030 to Huntsville, Long Beach, and the aforementioned Loserville.
Jacskonville destroyed the club’s psyche in the 2031 Landis and again in 2033, sandwiching the team’s Geoghegan exit at the hands of Calgary in 2032. The new Omaha dumped the team in the 2034 Geoghegan, then came a run of three more Doubleday dumpdays, to Calgary (2035), Long Beach (2036), and Edmonton (2038) before those last two Cartwright exists.
Add it up and you see the team has lost to Mexico City. It’s lost to Omaha, to Huntsville, and to Edmonton. Twice the Nine have fallen to the Surfers, twice to Jacksonville, twice to the horrid excuse of a city in Kentucky. Then there’s Calgary, who has managed the Nine trifecta, booting the Yellow Springs franchise once of each—Geoghegan, Doubleday, and Cartwright.
And so fans look ahead and ask the fates: Why are thou so fucking morbid? Are you setting us up to merely add Vancouver to the register of Nine killers, or are you arranging things so that the Frick exile in Calgary can simply complete the set with a Landis trophy over the defeated Nine?
Either way, they are braced.
And, yet, despite these facts, and despite the historical certainty of the rails this team rides, a young boy sits in the stands and waves his pennant while he eats his caramel popcorn, cheering, grinning, and clapping his hands as the Nine finish off the Sluggers in four games.
“We won!” the boy screams, his cheeks as red as the uniforms of his favorite team, his eyes bright with joy and hope for the future. “We won, Daddy! We won!”
And the father smiles and gives his boy a high-five before hefting the kid up into his arms and walking away from the stadium, perhaps trying to find the right way to explain certain truths of the world to his young man, or, perhaps, trying to let that same young man’s eternal hope seep into the bones that he wishes or hopes or perhaps even wills against all of his better instincts to be not quite so old, and not quite so jaded.
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