Graham Luna sat alone in the back corner, waiting for Fernando Rosario, the Gold's AGM, to show up. Graham's notebook and laptop balanced on one knee, the flickering overhead lighting giving him the aura of a man planning a coup. He was there for business, nothing more, and the business of Rule 5 was never clean.
Fellow GBC front office members were seated at the conference room table, other starting to file in quietly. Seated across from Graham was Buenos Aires' Steven Luker. The “Scottish Savant” never raised his voice, never broke his expression, and never explained his methods. Luker rolled solo, without an AGM, tapping into his supposedly proprietary algorithms and occasionally scribbling something indecipherable in a spiral notebook. His Brisas were already spending big in free agency, committing $58M to Tim Bartlett, Cecil Clarke, and Calvin MacConacher, but Luker himself looked like a man more comfortable with numbers than people.
To his left was Sebastian Pruiti, head honcho in Jerusalem. Pruiti looked like a man who’d accidentally wandered into the wrong convention. Hired just two weeks ago after ownership stumbled across his blog breaking down NBA pick-and-roll analytics, he now found himself responsible for running a professional baseball team. The gum he chewed looked like it was serving as both lunch and stress ball, his jaw working overtime as he scribbled notes with shaky handwriting.
Sao Paulo's Ryan Cometa and Sydney's Scott Watkins were standing, deep in conversation, or perhaps negotiations. Cometa carried himself with the calm, steady demeanor of a guy who had already survived one season without being run out of town. Last year's club was consistent, if unremarkable, and consistency can be a form of success in the GBC. Watkins had the air of a man who knew his team had finally arrived. The Sharks made the playoffs for the first time last year, and he strutted through the ballroom with the confidence of someone who believed he’d found the formula.
Two chairs to Graham's right was Cairo's Will Dymek, who had the haunted look of a man still fielding angry fan letters about the Blair Peyton trade. The once-mighty Pharaohs had fallen from 107 wins to 72, and Cairo’s GM seemed determined to claw back some credibility. Instead of an AGM, he brought a bankers box crammed with statistical printouts, which he spread across his half of the table like a prepper unfurling survival maps. Between shuffling papers and mumbling to himself, Dymek radiated the aura of a man simultaneously trying to rebuild a dynasty and justify his existence to ownership.
Last but not least was Grant Hawthorne, top brass in London. Hawthorne looked every bit the enigmatic mastermind, his laptop plastered with a sticker of his girlfriend Jenny, which seemed to confuse half the room. His AGM, Alastair Kingman, was whispering to Hawthorne like a stage director feeding lines to a nervous actor, though Hawthorne himself exuded no nerves.
Tokyo's Boyd Flanagan, the writer-turned-GM with family ties in the league, didn’t even bother to make an appearance, leaving the Pearls’ table as empty as a runaway wedding reception. It was a glaring absence given Tokyo had just hemorrhaged 32 WAR in free agency and left half their pantry unlocked for rivals to raid.
Moscow's Mike Neugebauer, who once steered Edmonton through years of contention, opted to skip the draft altogether, as did fellow former BBA GM Jeffrey Everroad, recently hired to save the Athens franchise. Everroad's no-show simply underscored the dysfunction in Athens. His front office had more vacancies than employees, and whispers in the ballroom suggested the Centaurs were considering AI bots to fill coaching roles.
Once everyone was settled in, the draft officially kicked off...with a whimper.
The first three teams passed without ceremony. Dymek cracked first, popping up from behind his fortress of manila folders: “Cairo selects Carl Vincent, pitcher, from the Tokyo Pearls.” A thirty-something lefty with a decent track record but even longer list of injuries and surgeries, but still. Cairo clapped politely for themselves.
Watkins didn’t look up from his phone. “The Sharks take Aurelio Garcia, Moscow Thunder Bears,” he muttered, thumbs already back to tapping.
Then came the Gold's turn. Graham's voice cut through the room, flat and certain: “Johannesburg selects Ishtaq Dar, reliever, Tokyo Pearls.”
Dar was 34, left-handed, and carried himself like he’d seen every bad bullpen fire of the past decade up close. He’d spent early part of last year in the BBA, getting 20 appearances with the Phoenix Talons. Graham had targeted him in free agency but lost the bidding war to Tokyo. Now the Pearls had inexplicably left him exposed, and the Johannesburg GM pounced like a cat on a loose tuna can.
Dar was a textbook LOOGY — Lefthanded One Out GuY — though with his sidearm slot and unholy marriage of slider and forkball, “one out” often turned into “a parade of lefties shuffling back to the dugout like kids sent to detention.” In Johannesburg, Dar would walk straight into a bullpen that had more holes than a batting-practice screen.
The second round came around and Graham stayed locked in, despite having seven unanswered text messages out to his AGM. Cairo plucked Steven Quinn. Sydney, predictably, doubled down on another first baseman, Leonardo Arevalo.
“Johannesburg selects Masinisan Sumait, center fielder, Tokyo Pearls,” Graham said, not even glancing up.
Sumait was so fast he could out-run his own shadow. He’d spent the last three years buried in Sydney’s system, including a 3-WAR season at AAA where he stole 26 of 29 bases and covered center like a human air-traffic controller. Tokyo had signed him on a minor league deal two weeks ago and, in a paperwork fumble so bad it could be classified as comedy, never added him to the 40-man.
For Graham, the appeal was obvious: insurance. Fareed bin Sa’eed was already a Gold Glove in center, but the thought of two elite glovemen patrolling center in a platoon was like locking the outfield in a vault. The bat was another matter. Sumait couldn’t hit a piñata with a broom handle. But Graham imagined nights where Sumait, glove still warm from the previous inning’s robbery, stood on second after an infield single and follow-up stolen base.
It was early into the third round when Jerusalem's Assistant GM Fernando Rosario finally burst through the doors. Hair uncombed, shirt half-buttoned, he stumbled into his chair, cheeks red from running.
“Breakfast ran long,” he gasped. “Ran into Cobble Hill's Doug Olmsted at the omelette bar.”
Graham glanced at his watch. “And?”
“He offered me a gummy. I thought it was vitamin C. Next thing I know, I’m in a tattoo shop.” Rosario tugged up his sleeve.
The room went still. Hawthorne from London squinted. Watkins briefly looked up from his phone.
Graham tapped his pen against the notebook. “At least it’s spelled correctly.” Then, back to writing.
Rosario scribbled in his own spiral pad, circling Sumait’s name so hard it nearly cut the page. He whispered, “That kid’s legs are worth two wins easy.”
“Or he’s back in Tokyo by late April,” Graham muttered.
“Or both,” Rosario grinned.
The third round began with the room sagging into fatigue. After several passes by general managers already making tonight's dinner plans, Graham raised his hand. “Johannesburg selects Julio Gonzalez, second baseman, Jerusalem Hebrew Hammers.”
Gonzalez was #91 on the GBC prospect list, a 25-year-old who’d wandered from Charm City’s BBA system to Cape Town, where he hit .325/.373/.581 in AAA. Smooth swing, nice hands, no guarantee he could stick in the bigs. Still, Graham liked the upside. In a perfect world, Gonzalez forced his way onto the roster as a utility bat.
The two Gold executives made their way into the hotel lobby when Rosario tugged down his sleeve again, suddenly sheepish. “Do you think I overdid it?”
Graham closed his notebook, unreadable as always. “It's on-brand, I'll give you that.”
They pushed through the hotel’s revolving doors and out into the blinding sun, both squinting as if they’d just left a cave.
"I can't believe three teams didn't even bother to show up," Rosario noted. "And four of the teams in there didn't event make a pick. They sat on their hands, and we walked out with three guys who could—” He held up his fingers, ticking them off. “Shut down lefties. Steal bases like a thief at Christmas. And…well…hit a little, maybe, if the wind’s blowing out.”
They stopped at the curb, waiting for their shuttle back to their motel across town. Graham tilted his head toward Rosario. “Sometimes the stuff nobody else wants? That’s how you build something.”
Rosario blinked, then broke into a grin. “Or at least how you end up with a guy named 'Masinisan'.”
The shuttle pulled up, belching exhaust. They climbed in, two men looking like they’d just robbed the clearance aisle.
For the Johannesburg Gold, the Winter Meetings had ended not with a bang, but with a handful of names, a dubious tattoo, and a stubborn belief that value could be found anywhere, even in beige ballrooms under bad lights.
