2063.27 – Gold’s Vision Board is Far-Sighted

[Graham]

Graham Luna had spent the better part of twenty minutes rearranging five paperclips, two coffee stirrers, and a can of cardamom-flavored Zyn into a rudimentary zen garden on his desk when his phone buzzed.

“I mean, what if we just asked nicely?” Fernando Rosario’s voice crackled through the speaker.

“Asked who, Cairo or the baseball gods?”

“Either. Both.”

The Johannesburg Gold had just notched a crisp 5–0 win over Cairo the night before, a much-needed palate cleanser after two sluggish weeks that had reduced their division lead to just two games over the surging Sydney Sharks. Still, most of the league wasn’t talking about Johannesburg’s win. They were buzzing about Cairo’s bombshell: Blair Peyton, generational talent and statistical WMD, was officially on the trade block.

It was the kind of news that lit up league Slack channels like a solar flare.

And in Johannesburg, it lit up the phones. Graham had eight emails in his inbox from rival execs, each a variation of: “Checking your level of interest!” Which translated loosely to: “You can’t afford him, but we’re required by international treaty to include you.”

Johannesburg wanted Peyton like the moon wants to touch the Earth, but they weren’t built for that kind of gravitational pull. Their farm system was fine, but not Cairo-seducing. Their war chest was more of a coin purse. They were a team stitched together with thrift-store brilliance, chewing gum, and the occasional burst of wizardry from Simao Hayagawa or Adam MacDonald. Not exactly prime trade bait for the league’s biggest star.

“We are,” Graham muttered, “a smoke-and-mirrors operation.”

Mal Gertz, unpaid intern and sentient Gen-Z algorithm, poked her head into the room, half-eaten pretzel in one hand and a dog-eared 2063 BBA Media Guide in the other.

“Should we put a Peyton Topps card on our vision board?” she asked.

“Do we even have a vision board?” Graham replied.

“We have a cork board with assorted thumbtacks and a sticky note that says ‘Win games.’,” she answered.

“Close enough,” Graham said with a shrug.

“Oh, and by the way, one of our fans just tweeted a photoshopped pic of Peyton in a Gold uniform with the caption ‘Already ordered the jersey.’”

“Only a problem if they added a realistic trade package.”

“They didn’t,” she said. “They just wrote ‘a few young pitchers and one of our catching prospects.’”

Earlier, Rosario had texted, “Unless Cairo suddenly wants a reliever with back hair and a passion for drone photography, we’re not even in consideration.”

Graham knew it. The whole front office knew it. Peyton would land somewhere dramatic. Jerusalem, Tokyo, London.

The Gold couldn’t outbid. So they wouldn’t. Instead, they focused on what they could control: smarter baserunning, sharper route efficiency, and getting Rosario to stop labeling every chart “Game Juice Index.”

Athens loomed next. They were bad but had just installed former BBA GM Jeffrey Everroad in the front office. Graham had circled the series in his planner, jotting down a quiet note to “accidentally miss the Athens pre-series mixer.”

Graham opened Rosario’s updated “Fundamentals Tracker.” Walk rates were inching back up. Defensive lapses had slowed. The margin, as always, was razor-thin. One good week could extend the lead. One bad one could flip the whole division. He minimized the window and opened up his email, where a blank message to Cairo’s GM stared back at him. He thought about writing something diplomatic. Or gutsy.

Then he closed his laptop.

Let the others scramble. Let them spend.

The Gold would survive the only way they knew how:

Smoke. Mirrors. And smart baseball.

[Jwalk100]

Smoke, mirrors and smart baseball are three of my favorite things.